Empress Game

Power, grace, deadliness defined. Always cunning, endlessly victorious...'One seat on the intergalactic Sakien Empire's supreme ruling body, the Council of Seven, remains unfilled: that of the Empress Apparent. The seat isn't won by votes or marriage. It's won in a tournament of ritualized combat. Now the tournament, the Empress Game, has been called and the women of the empire will stop at nothing to secure political domination for their homeworlds. Kayla Reunimon, a supreme fighter, is called by a mysterious stranger to battle it out in the arena. The battle for political power isn't contained by the tournament's ring, however. The empire's elite gather to forge, strengthen or betray alliances in a dance that will determine the fate of the empire for a generation. With the empire wracked by a rising nanovirus plague and stretched thin by an ill-advised planet-wide occupation of Ordoch in enemy territory, everything rests on the woman who rises to the top. "Mason delivers an old fashioned space opera-passion, politics, and the fate of Empires hanging on the strength and courage of a single woman. You'll want to reach immediately for book two."
Tanya Huff, author of a Confederation of Valor"Fast, smart, complex, and fun as hell...one of the best books I've read this year. A near-perfect blend of romance, action, and interstellar politics in a well-thought-out and original universe, with a tough-as-nails heroine you can't help but root for." Rachel Bach, author of Fortune's Pawn