K.J. Parker

K.J. Parker is the fantasy-writing identity of Tom Holt, bringing ingenious systems, dry wit, and reluctant improvisers into stories of political pressure. How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It occupies the middle position in the Siege sequence. It follows Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and leads into A Practical Guide to Conquering the World. Orbit identifies it specifically as Book Two and frames the story around Notker, a playwright, actor, and impresario whose gift for invention becomes useful to an empire in crisis. Theatre and statecraft consequently meet inside the machinery of a siege narrative. The wider Parker bibliography contains Devices and Desires, Evil for Evil, and The Devil You Know. Macmillan credits the author with two World Fantasy Awards and records professional experience in journalism, numismatics, and law, backgrounds well suited to fiction attentive to language, money, institutions, and rules.