When the illicit corporation created by Zamos collapsed, it disrupted the lives of heroes as well as villains. With gambling dens shut down, gladiator Ned Gaddes has nowhere to fight. Beautiful Lorrice had hoped to sell her ESP talents to Zamos, but was forced to sell her body instead. And on the planet Khagodis, scholarly Hasso will be forced to leave his archives and unravel the shadowy web that has entangled their fate with the Lyhhrt's.

The struggle that ensues provides the ultimate test of their resources -- Ned's savvy toughness, Lorrice's psychic insight, and the fact that even a gentle Khagodi like Hasso could go head-to-head with a dinosaur. Like the best science fiction, Mindworlds is simultaneously exciting and thought provoking. Gotlieb offers a satisfyingly complex look at the ambiguous consequences of toppling even the most evil of empires, and the sacrifices that ordinary people must make to prevent the vacuum of power from being filled by equally corrupt forces.

Ursula K. Le Guin found Gotlieb's earlier novel Flesh and Gold "dazzling," lit up by "sex, violence, intricate plotting, light-speed pacing, an amazing variety of aliens, touches of Philip K. Dick's sardonic humor and Cordwainer Smith's obstinate idealism." Its sequel, Violent Stars, was described in Maclean's as "above all a poet's novel.... Gotlieb's language lifts her book from exotic thriller to literary achievement."