Kirth Gersen, having dealt with three of the five demons who destroyed his family and his home planet in the Mount Pleasant Massacre, continues his journey through the universe on a quest to find and eliminate the remaining two.

Kirth Gersen, having dealt with three of the five demons who destroyed his family and his home planet in the Mount Pleasant Massacre, continues his journey through the universe on a quest to find and eliminate the remaining two.

Kirth Gersen, having brought arch-villain Malagate the Woe to justice, sets his sights on Kokor Hekkus, another of the Demon Princes. The name Kokor Hekkus, which means "killing machine" in the language of the planet Thamber, does not refer to Hekkus's own predilection for homicide, but to his fondness for horrific and murderous devices, including the giant robotic executioner that first gained him his nickname. As a boy, Kirth Gersen survived a raid on his home planet masterminded by five interstellar crime lords known as the Demon Princes. This five-novel sequence recounts his carefully-planned and implacable revenge. In this, the second volume, his target is Kokor Hekkus, better known as the Killing Machine. All Jack Vance titles in the SFGateway use the author's preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online community of Vance's admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles, and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate overlaps.

Himari Momochi inherits Momochi House, an estate that exists on the barrier between the human and spiritual realms. Aoi is the human Omamori-sama, or guardian of the house, who can transform into a powerful spiritual being. But once Momochi House had chosen Aoi as its protector, all evidence of his existence in the human world was erased, and he has never been able to leave. Can Himari break Aoi free? -- VIZ Media