A Wizard in Peace

From the front flap of the Tor first edition: A Wizard in Peace is Stasheff in top form as interstellar liberator Magnus Gallowglass encounters the toughest tyrant of his checkered career - a stern Protector whose oppressive regime makes Oliver Cromwell's look like a Sunday-school picnic. For a thousand years, this lost colony planet has preserved order by dictating every detail of its citizens' lives - where they live, what they think, even whom they love and marry. Any dissent is punished with the torturer's rack. So successful is this brutal system that Magnus is hard pressed to find anyone willing to oppose it - until he recruits a pair of star-crossed lovers to lead the revolution, and reeducates a band of deluded would-be aristocrats to become the planet's new rulers.