If you’d like to renew your acquaintance with this saga, go back and find your copies of the previous Dancing Gods books and do so. If you don’t have them, you’ll be able to get along with just this summary, but you should still go back and find those first three books, stocked by any good, intelligent, competent bookseller.

It has been five years for my own dreams to come and sort themselves out into coherency, for time is different there than here, but now I have it. When we left, everything looked bright, everything set, and what hadn’t been resolved before was clearly working its way to the end. Joe and Tiana, not looking as they did when they reigned, were free to travel and enjoy life and show the new land to Irving. Macore had some minor mental problems due to his sudden exposure to our culture, but, once back home, he’d straighten out. The saga was drawing to a close.

Alas, the Books of Rules covered more volumes than the Tax Code; not even a Ruddygore could remember them all. Still, he should have remembered, that most basic of Rules governing the ultimate battle between good and evil, for it was one that had saved all of their necks at one time or another.

Those who are familiar with the past adventures of our band may find the going here a bit more serious, a bit more adult, than past volumes, perhaps because that, too, is a Rule for sagas that are continued by tellers of tales who inevitably, alas, grow older themselves. But, bear with it; Destiny’s threads are interwoven, and one can not weave a tale until all the threads are in place. Our tale begins in madness, and descends into humiliation, debauchery, and degradation, yet all leads to a climax of pure, unabashed lunacy.