The Unbeheaded King
core novel 1983 Novaria
Record
| First published | 1983 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.72 (348 ratings, collected 2026-08-30) |
| Page count | 185 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780345307736 |
| Internal chronology | 3 |
Synopsis
The Unbeheaded King concludes L. Sprague de Camp's Reluctant King trilogy, following Jorian, the fugitive former king of Xylar, as he continues to evade both his home kingdom's insistence on completing its beheading custom and the new rivals and schemes he has accumulated across Novaria in the previous two books. Having spent The Goblin Tower and The Clocks of Iraz on the run and pursuing quests for the sorcerer Karadur, Jorian must finally confront the unresolved threat that Xylar's agents still pose to his life, while the picaresque, wry tone established earlier in the trilogy carries through to its close. The novel brings Jorian's long flight from his own throne, and the various entanglements it has produced, toward a final resolution for the Reluctant King sequence.
Where it sits
- Universe: Novaria
- Series: The Reluctant King core; position 3 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: L. Sprague de Camp
Notes
- From the series record (The Reluctant King): Core trilogy of the Novaria setting, later gathered into the omnibus The Reluctant King.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Reluctant King: position 3 of 3: previous The Clocks of Iraz (1971)
Sources
- Wikipedia: The Goblin Tower / The Fallible Fiend / The Clocks of Iraz / The Unbeheaded King
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Sprague_de_Camp
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