The individual stories titled "Ghosts of Stone" and "The Courts of the Conjuror" originally appeared, in a different form, as "The Pillars of Chambalor" and "The Silk of Shaitan" in the magazine Fantastic v. 14, no.

Destined to be sacrificed to the evil god, Brak wins his freedom—but the demon worshipers and their foul monsters infest all the lands between him and his goal, and in consequence every step of his journey brings new challenges.

Later, Brak is enslaved at the terrible mines of King Ushiram of Toct and starts a slave rebellion; confronts the conjurer Ankhma Ra whose Silk of Shaitan can rip the living heart out of anyone it touches; battles the treacherous Zama Khan at the ruins of cursed Chambalor and frees thousands of ghosts who had been trapped there in prolonged torment; and saves the life and throne of Queen Rhea of Phrixos (after she first saved him at considerable risk to herself) averting her enforced betrothal to the odious Lord of the Tigers.

In nearly every episode Brak also confronts a gigantic monster of one kind or another—some of them cultivated by human villains, others seeking human prey on their own account: The Doomdog, haunting the caverns of Toct; the Fangfish, in a deep pool at a sinister mountain pass above the realm of Tazim, Lord of the Tilling; T'Muk, The Thing which Crawls, a highly poisonous giant spider at Chambalor's desert; and a giant scavenger slug, which in the aftermath of battles at Phrixos feeds on dead (and wounded) soldiers.

His wants are limited to a few dinshas in his purse, enough to buy food, a pony to ride on (several of the poor beasts get killed in the course of the book and need replacing) and, of course, a properly sharp broadsword, without which he feels naked.

In later parts, this is counterbalanced by the warm-hearted Dareet, Zama Khan's daughter who deplores her father's evil ways, and later Queen Rhea, a veritable paragon of virtues.

Later on, when helping Dareet bury her evil and cynical father, who had followed no god, Brak fashions a rude cross to put on his grave.

The basic assumption made in that episode—that the minions of evil may physically bind you but can never take your soul unless you voluntarily surrender it—clearly follows the teachings of Christian theology on that issue.

He notes "[t]he Brak stories are unabashedly Conanesque in style and flavor: Howard's hero formed the pattern for the genre and John Jakes has limited himself to working in strict traditional confines.