Stranglers' Moon

Stranglers' Moon is a 1976 science fiction novel by American writer Stephen Goldin, the second book in the Family D'Alembert series, the first of which was expanded by Goldin from a novella by E.E. “Doc” Smith. This is the second in a series of ten Family D'Alembert novels. Set in a future where humankind has expanded to the stars but reverted to an old-style feudal system of government in an advanced technological setting, all known planets and space are ruled by an Earth-based Empire.