The pair of books in this volume tell of the long and momentous life of one man and the strange turns of fate that take him from his planned career as an ordinary starship pilot to acclaim as a legendary hero and ultimately to a destiny far beyond anything he or his contemporaries could have imagned. The trilogy's third book Envoy of the Flame, which is available separately, is about the impact of his legacy on the future of humankind and the role of a young woman in bringing that impact about. These three are an independent and quite different story from Sylvia Engdahl's other novels with "Flame" in their titles,which though set two centuries earlier need not be read first. For more reviews see their separate editions.

Book One: Defender of the Flame

"This book reaches back to the brio and speculation of Engdahl's classic books of the Seventies." —Literary critic Nicholas Birns