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ToECS Book Two: Hopebane's Gambit
Dust Jacket
The electrifying Tides of Epic Conflict return with an epic Book Two: Hopebane's Gambit! Lord Hopebane has learned the dark arts of poisoning--and with the epic bombshell Lopae of Hopea by his side, the Court of Teisti can only be in for nasty, epic surprise! Will Lady Ambivilia see through his epic deceit? Will Hopebane take the epic throne? And will the epically sinister Yam-Eaters strike? You can only find out in Hopebane's Gambit!
Plot
Lord Hopebane is in Hopea, and has just completed his two-year training in the art of undetectable poisoning under Dark-Elemenstor hermits in Mont Skyfinger, while Blacksmith Smithy Blackfinger of Skyfinger has completed work on his Armor of Fullchesthood. He gives the garment to Lopae, and starts the long journey back to Teisti. On the way back, he tests the Armor's power on a few publicans and inkeeps, and finds few men can think straight with the enhanced Lopae in front of them.
Ambivilia has given up on warning the court about the dark forces in the Ultracraggoths, but she can't shake the feeling that something bad might soon happen. However, she feels at ease when she meets the charming Lord Hopebane, who promises that if they work together, they can forge a new court that won't take such important affairs lightly.
Back in the Ultracraggoths, Percy has infiltrated the Dark Forces, and has found that the Yam-Eaters have found a new tool--a certain Lord Hopebane, who has been tricked by two of their kind in Mont Skyfinger into throwing the court into disarray, making their plans for conquest even easier. Before long, all fields in the Sickle will grow naught but yams! Horrified, Percy begins to head back to his home of Bizarkule, where he plans to tell The Kapiten of the evil plots in the Ultracraggoths. On his journey back, he encounters many dangers, which he deals with in excruciating detail.
Hopebane now feels ready to begin his plans, having a small cadre of lords allied to him. He makes a minor power play, turning a large faction of lords against him. Lopae easily seduces their leader, and while he's distracted by her, Hopebane poisons him. Lopae quickly redresses herself, makes up his bed, and leaves him in it. The next morning, the man is dead, and in the chaos, Hopebane convinces a few of his former enemies to join him.
The book continues in this manner, alternating between gratutiously detailed seduction scenes, cold-blooded murder, and Hopebane talking to stuffy lords. One can safely skip through chapters 23 to 49, as they're really just the same thing over and over again, although the loving detail paid to Lopae's bosom is worth checking out, if only for the number of ways "heaving," "round," "ample," "full," and "large" can be combined.
Eventually Hopebane manages to murder the Cream Emperor, and, in a confusing series of rapid-fire seduction-murders, he kills off the next 13 as well, making sure anyone with imperial ambitions has their wish and death on the same day. In one phenominal act of hubris, he manages to kill and appoint three different emperors in a single orgy.
This results in Grodin Keili, a pitifully inadequate man, being appointed emperor, while Hopebane plans to overthrow him outright. On what he planned to be his final night in Teisti, he beds Lopae, then kills her as the last witness to his crimes. The novel ends as Percy returns to his hometown and bursts in the Kapiten's office.
From the betrayal of Lopae:
"I feel like you don't love me, Lord Hopebane," Lopae breathed heavily. "Like you are...just using my enhanced cleavage to further your evil plans."
"Nonsense," Hopebane smiled. "Now, my dear Lopae, I have a task for you."
"What evil deed or good person must I do now, my Lord?" she replied, her large bosom straining her armor.
"Drink this completely natural and non-poisoned glass of Amberberry juice for me, will you?"
"Amberberry? For me?" She asked, her eyes confused, her breasts large. "Could this be a sign that you do, in fact, love me? Could it be that I have not yet outlived my usefulness, and as such that you do not intend to poison me and cast me aside after bedding me and my chest?"
"Whatever gets you through the day, woman."
"Will you still love me the same way you do now when I'm eighty three, and my prodigious chest drags the floor like two drunken dwarves?"
"When you are eighty three, I will love you exactly as much as I do now. Now drink!"
She raised the glistening draught, and downed it.
"Aaaah," she cried, clasping her hands to her ample chest. "What cold is this that grips at my breast, when your hands are so far away? Could this be death? A quiver runs through me, like an earthquake in two mountains of gelatin, alas, when--"
"Oh, shut up and die, woman!"
"--my...back..hurts." She fell back on the bed, and her last breath escaped her firm, full, now-dead chest.
Hondana shivered in the shadows, and held still.
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