No Choice

In this all-new tale, published here for the first time, World Fantasy Award winner K.J. Parker delivers his signature blend of action, humor, and unexpected but perfectly logical twists. Set in the tantalizingly detailed world of much of his other work, No Choice tells the story of a narrator from a landed and politically connected family with a history of losing scions in battle.

At first, it isn’t a stalled and seemingly doomed war that concerns the main character, but the fact that his father has been sentenced to death for a murder he most definitely did commit. Political maneuvering and family dynamics come in to play, but to no avail, so off to the wars the narrator sails.

There, he conceives a series of nested plans that may very well preserve the life of a man who deserves to die, win a war that nobody should be fighting, and maybe, just maybe, save his own skin in the bargain.