Synopsis: From the back cover of the DAW Books first edition: They called it "boost" - a synthetic drug created by the humans, it seemed to be the long-sought-for answer to the fading powers of the Choyan tezars, the pilots who used their soul-fire to guide starships at FTL speeds across the galaxy. Yet only humans could produce boost, and no one was certain of its long-term effects. Still, with the Houses of Cho in conflict, the tezar training school at Blue Ridge destroyed, the emperor himself extremely vulnerable, Palaton stripped of the heirdom to the throne and a fugitive on his own world, and his human comrade Rand a prisoner on the planet Sorrow, who was left to stand against those ready to use boost to establish rule by a brand-new House - the House of Tezars? Only time would tell whether boost was truly a new beginning for the Tezars - or the beginning of the end for all of Cho...