5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hope this isn't the end..., June 6, 2001
The King of Dreams closes out Silverberg's Prestimion trilogy nicely, introducing us to the eponymous fourth power in the Majipoor hierarchy. As a major fan of Robert Silverberg's writing--and of Majipoor in particular--I looked forward to this book eagerly. And even though I enjoyed it, I think I enjoyed it more for just another glimpse at Majipoor--surely one of the best and most fully realized worlds in all of fantasy literature--than for anything else. As with all the books, we get a travelogue across this gigantic planet, with all sorts of new places and things and customs and peoples. But I have to say that the, other than the villian Mandralisca (who is deftly drawn), I found myself (as I did with the other two books that preceeded this) not much sympathizing with most of the characters, especially Prestimion. I liked Dekkeret and would have liked to see more about Dinitak (the King of Dreams), but Prestimion comes through most clearly, like an unwanted presence at a seance. That would have been OK, but the book builds up slowly and ponderously to a conclusion that takes, literally a paragraph or two to explain. Very anticlimactic. Still, a good quick read and a visit to a place I very much like to go to. (As someone once said, "Even a bad visit to France is a visit to France.")
That said, the most chilling part of this whole book is the note inside on the dust jacket. "The concluding book in the Majipoor Cycle." Huh? Please tell me that Silverberg's not going out on this note. We need to know more. How about a "Majipoor Chronicles II" or a look at Stiamot or something far in the future when the Metamorph Queen is the Fifth Power on the planet. Please, don't let it end!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Unsatisfying Conclusion to the Cycle, March 16, 2003
This review is from: The King Of Dreams (Mass Market Paperback)
I've seen too often now where writers decide that their favorite world of their creation was not adequately explored in their original trilogy, so they decide to embark on second and third installments of their now-epic sagas. (Yes, Stephen Donaldson and Katherine Kurtz--I'm looking at you.) That's the kind of thing we find here.
Silverberg produced a respectable trilogy back in the day when he fired up with "Lord Valentine's Castle". (Technically, this is a science fiction series, but it can also be read just as well from a fantasy standpoint.) There, he introduced the world of Majipoor and its governmental structure of the Pontifex, Coronal, Lady of the Isles, and the King of Dreams, along with the myriad races that have come to call the planet home. It was pretty good stuff. I doubt many people would call Silverberg a master of characterization, but he's great at big ideas and setting up seemingly simple, almost archetypical, plots that take a few interesting twists and turns along the way. So with the original set of books, you got a solid and entertaining tale of one man's journey back to himself. Arguably, it's a minor classic of the genre.
Then, much later, Silverberg bumped out the curious and pointless "Mountains of Majipoor" as a fourth volume (with its slim page count and irrelevant arc, it's pretty much just Majipoor Helper), and not satisfied with that, evidently decided to go for broke and churned out a second trilogy, set in an earlier time. The first book of the new trilogy was interesting enough, the second was somewhat less so, and the creative juices have pretty much dried up by the third.
Not a lot remains to be said, but the author persists in saying it, and at times it feels like we're very slowly traveling across the vast surface of Majipoor with the heroes, slogging wearily along with every footstep they take. From the original series, we already know that we'll see the introduction of the Fourth Power, the King of Dreams, so all of the sturm und drang leading up to that seems like a lot of empty noise. Meanwhile, minor characters take up undue stage time for no substantial payoff later. And the villains are grotesquely villainous without any hope of redemption. Silverberg does take some time to delineate Mandralisca, but basically only to conclude "Boy, he sure likes evil."
Ultimately, the books plods to its climax and then drops in its tracks right at the very denouement. It's as if the author ran out of sheets of paper, or realized he'd hit his contractual page count. We're hoping for a big emotional and dramatic payoff, but instead we get "Everyone is hit by a two-ton truck. The End."
Very frustrating. Everything after "Chronicles of Majipoor" really is only recommended for the purists who want to fill out their collections. Otherwise, there's just not anything compelling about the later material.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Just where to put this book?, July 31, 2001
I am a long time fan of all the Majipoor novels and as such I had been anxoiusly waiting for this one. Now I read it, and although I enjoyed it I just do not know what to think about it, especially because of Prestimion. Throughout the story his very valid concerns about the state of government and the attack on his closest family members seem to be no more than mere tantrums of an oldish king - although in truth they are very far from that, not to mention that Prestimion is not that old at all... (and Dekkeret is not that young...)
Finally I felt the conclusion too sudden and too rash. A war was fight and won, major characters died, a fourth power of the realm was established - which is one of the biggest changes in Majipoor's history - without clear answers on Prestimion's concerns as if he was a minor character in the story without real importance.
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