Phthor
Arlo is the son of Aton, conqueror and victim of a dreaded Minionette.  Arlo has known no world but the cavern-world.  When war comes to the caverns he is a confused spectator.  Men, women, and other creatures bearing exotic weapons invade.  The women fascinate Arlo—they seem disturbingly familiar to him.  Well they might.

For these beautiful, identical, fiery-haired and smokey-eyed savage warriors are minionettes—figures of terror and dread on all civilized worlds.  And they are his kin.

Arlo's fate is to battle them and the superintelligence of Chthon at once, to work out a destiny shaped by a god more ancient than mankind—the destiny of the galaxy as well as his own.
American Science fiction, Life on other planets, Fiction, Prisons, Fiction, science fiction, general
Piers Anthony
Piers Anthony was born in Oxford, England.  When he was four years old, his family immigrated to the United States.  He graduated from Goddard College in Vermont in 1956, the year he met and married his wife, Carol Marble.  After working at odd jobs, he joined the U.S. Army in 1957 for steady income and medical insurance.  In 1958, he became a U.S. citizen.  He became an editor and cartoonist for the Battalion newspaper.  He left the army in 1959 and briefly taught public school before becoming a full-time writer.  Anthony currently lives with his wife on a tree farm which he owns in Florida.