The Planet Sartori is a Highly Developed But Sparsely populated and remote place, occupied by survivors from twentieth-century Japan and devoted to the isolationist, Imperialist traditions of the premodern era. The only known visitors are invited writers who participate in the Renga poetry competitions, which are judged by the Emperor himself. The penalty for a lackluster entry is ritual death on the spot, and some famous but burnt-out writers have been known to choose a blaze of glory as their final exit.

When Ramsey, the hero from Bloodsport, the first volume in this series, is invited to the competition because of his widely known writing about hunting and death, he's just crazy enough to accept. Accompanied by Ball, his robot valet, Ramsey arrives only to discover that the Sartori interest lies more in Ball than in himself. They see him as their ideal "Zen Robot" of legend and are determined to pry out the secrets of his human origins from him at any cost.