It is set in the Beklan Empire, the fictional world of Adams's 1974 novel Shardik, to which it stands as a loose prequel, taking place a few years earlier.

Maia, at 15, lives in the Beklan Empire's province of Tonilda with her mother, Morca, her three younger sisters, and her stepfather, Tharrin.

Beautiful and fun-loving, Maia shows promise of going far, and finds some professional satisfaction in providing Sencho's decadent pleasures.

To her surprise, she even enjoys the spectacle when a fellow bed-slave, the tempestuous Meris, is whipped and sold for dereliction of duty.

Maia learns that one reason for his extraordinary standoffish respect for her is that she looks (and dances) like his dead mother, Nokomis, who is still revered throughout the province.

Zen-Kurel accepts her invitation to bed, but leaves quickly to take part in a surprise attack scheduled for that very night.

The River Valderra, the boundary between the two countries, is thought to be uncrossably swift and rocky, but the Terekenalters plan to ford it with heavy ropes and strong men, thus surprising the detachment of Tonildan soldiers guarding the other side.

Occula intends to take revenge on Fornis when the time is right; meanwhile she is performing the sort of sado-masochistic services of which Maia had been incapable.

In danger of Fornis' murderous fury, Maia frees the two men, and with them and Zirek and Meris (who have been hiding since assassinating Sencho), she flees Bekla.

After an arduous boat escape from the Beklan Empire to Terekenalt, Bayub-Otal is killed and Maia receives a marriage proposal from the man she loves most.

The story ends with Maia refusing Occula's plea to go back to Bekla; she would rather help Zen-Kurel and his father manage their farm.

Much as Adams had invented words of the Lapine language for the rabbits of Watership Down, he employs some "Beklan" vocabulary for honorifics, natural objects, and sexual terms; the last "allows adults to leave the book within reach of children.

She called it "a sexy, swashbuckling, and hugely long romp," and said it resembled his previous novels in "its mood of personal exorcism and self-indulgence."

It said "Mr. Adams's artistry distinguishes his work from those didactic fantasies which border on science fiction"; instead the aim was entertainment, as shown in the elaborate settings, and the reader has no reason to put the book down.