Juanita CoulsonCritiques

The writing is good, the mystery is good, although not everything is answered. The descriptions of the art and surroundings are good.

More of the same: political, social & financial tawdriness, but now an ET stirs the pot. Again, a tedious beginning with the action really kicking in toward the end…and we know what the end will be, as the FTL drive crashes again and again, killing and/or horribly maiming the most important characters; and the hibernation ship heads off to colonize a new planet.

With a very tedious beginning, the story opens up to a pretty brisk YA political thriller…sadly, with a kind of hokey ending.
The hero belongs to an illustrious, and wealthy, family that is working, not very hard, to keep the family together. The older brother's political ambitions to be the de facto elected ruler of the world are hampered by his siblings' ambitions. All of this in the remnants of several horrific world wars where no political group trusts any other. Meanwhile, to make things more complicated, one of the siblings discovers that an alien artifact is homing in on the solar system and wants to talk to them. The wrong attitude to all this is assumed by the wrong people who want to assume the worst and are struggling to destroy the hero's rich family hegemony...and the alien artifact. All at the cost of human viability on Earth.½

I selected this book knowing that it was originally published in 1978, by an author who was most prolific during that decade. Although that's also the decade when I started reading sci-fi and fantasy avidly, I'd never read anything by her - and wanted to see what I'd missed out on!

Well... it was OK. However, the plot was firmly within genre tropes, without any strikingly original flourishes. The language was mainly unremarkable - but interspersed with occasional stilted phrases and overly-florid passages.

The main character, Danaer (I'll call him Dan) is a warrior of the horse tribes of Destre-Y, a country which has long been in conflict with the neighboring kingdom of Clarique, although both groups are part of the land of Krantin. When Krantin is invaded by warriors from over the sea from Maukland, led by an evil and power-hungry wizard who has no compunctions about using men as zombie warriors to gain personal advantage, Dan must try to help form an alliance between Clarique and Destre-Y in order to work together and repel the attack.

It doesn't hurt that one of the wizards of Clarique is a most-alluring young Sorceress named Lira, whom Dan has no trouble wanting to ally himself with at all. Soon their alliance is more than professional. Together - and accompanied by a fearsome sidekick in the person of the huge but goodhearted warrior Gordyan, they may be able to save their homeland and create a unified Krantin.

Before we get there though, there will be a lot of swords & sorcery.

Since this is clearly advertised as "Book 1" I was afraid that it'd end on a cliffhanger - but I was pleased to find that, no, this book wraps everything up in a nice, fully-resolved manner - it's fully a stand-alone.

Many thanks to Venture Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinions are solely my own.

It's a bit different, a star dynasty that spans multiple generations, it includes such wonders as the spare and the clone, as this family struggles to find their place in galactic history.

A futuristic, post-cataclysmic, sci-fi soap opera. At least, that's my impression. And, while I was never really intrigued by conventional soap operas, this held my interest pretty well.

On an Earth whose population has been decimated and whose landscape has been forcibly altered by natural causes and the effects of mankind's weapons, political and national boundaries have been altered. The Saunder family has gained wealth and power due to the actions of the manipulative matriarch, and the three offspring are in positions of great power and responsibility. But the family has cracks that ultimately will risk tearing the family apart. And into this volatile mix comes news that an alien spacecraft is approaching Earth.

Hysteria, propaganda, deceit, betrayal, and redemption. What every good stereotypical soap opera needs. Throw in some advanced technologies and alien visitation, and you've got a rather interesting result.½

I've had this book in my collection for many years. I recently picked it up to catalog here, and I realized I couldn't remember it at all. After re-reading it, I still can't remember a darn thing from reading it previously. It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't that good either. Compared to more recent fantasy novels, the combat was too simplistic, and so was the main villain, and the general plot. Its set in the same world as Death God's Citadel, though that's all they have in common.½

Simple and straightforward, but still an interesting read. This is sword and sorcery fantasy in the Howard tradition, but a bit less gritty, with a bit more sorcery.½