An Emperor Asoka started a project around 260 BC to collate and guard advanced knowledge gathered from around the world over the years. The project ended with making the nine books of secret knowledge and from then on, the nine different men are assigned to guard the nine books. Father Cyprian, a Christian priest, believes that their contents total tip the almost absolute of evil, and wants to burn them, so he invites Jimgrim and his faithful compatriots Ramsden and Ross to help him bring down the secret society that holds the nine books.

Talbot Mundy (1879-1940) was an English-born American writer of adventure fiction. Mundy spent his early adult years in India, East Africa and Middle East, and many of his novels and stories are set in that part of the world. He is best known as the author of King of the Khyber Rifles and the Jimgrim series.