This is the story of how the Castakas, feudal family that will give birth to first Metabaron, survived the onslaught brought to their home planet by the invading forces and finally settled on the remote planet, planet equivalent to Herbert's Dune in so many ways that it holds a mysterious ore that cannot be found anywhere else in the galaxy.

Story itself is nothing more than a filler - a prequel - to original Metabarons story. It is an epic story but not without faults - while you read it feels a little bit ... incomplete would be the word I guess. Few times I had to check page numbers to make sure I haven't missed anything (Castaka decides to create pirate fleet - that fleet does not does not exist on one page while on next page first frame we see a fully organized fleet storming a convoy - wait, what? When, how?).

Again for those that have read original Metabaron we have everything that Jodorowski seems to be obsessed with - rape, incest (this time it did not get as far as in Metabarons), lots of blood and gore and heads and limbs flying around, perverse characters and massacres, lots and lots of these. And did I forgot to mention sex? Yes, you get a lot of sex too. Way these things were presented annoyed me (as they did in original Metabarons). Unlike original Metabarons all these elements are little bit more contained (different times maybe - maybe readers are slightly saturated with similar themes) but as always they are present for that artistic shock effect. I guess this all comes from author's opinion that Metabaron cannot be a product of nothing more than completely perverse society. But again there are ways of handling it much much better - in regard to number of deaths, rapes and overall sadism of ruling classes Game of Thrones is on similar grounds but manages to show this in much more interesting way.

Art is good, not on par with original Metabarons but good.

All in all if you like an idea of revenge driven knight wanderer strolling through perverse feudal space empire, earning his bread fighting across universe as an ultimate mercenary this is a book for you. Highly recommended for any fan of space opera - just make sure that after this you read the original Metabarons. ( )