Series: Saga of the Skolian Empire | Publication Date: December 1, 1998
Catherine Asaro's novels showcase her unique ability to weave a fine web of adventure, hard science and romance.
The Radiant Seas continues the story begun in Primary Inversion, the tale of Sauscony and Jaibriol, each the heir to an interstellar empire, as their lives become entangled again in the machinations of the Skolian Empire. As they begin to pick up what's left of their lives, the fate of much of the known universe comes to rest on the shoulders of their fragile young family. Interstellar war erupts and Jaibriol is snatched away to become the unwilling ruler of the Highton Aristos. Sauscony must lead an invading space fleet to rescue Jaibriol from his own empire -- without revealing that they are married.
The Radiant Seas is an ambitious romantic epic that will further establish Catherine Asaro as a new force in the sf field.
Sauscony of Skolia and Jaibriol of the Highton Aristos are truly star-crossed lovers: They are the heirs to interstellar empires that are implacable, age-old enemies. When they seek to save their secret relationship in an exile disguised as death, they disturb the delicate balance of power among Skolia, Aristo, and Earth. Interstellar war erupts, empires rise and fall, and it looks as though the Highton Aristos may recover first, with their dark lust for conquest intact.
The Radiant Seas follows the critically acclaimed novels Primary Inversion, Catch the Lightning (the 1997 Sapphire Award winner), and The Last Hawk as the fourth of a proposed seven novels in the Saga of the Skolian Empire, an exceptionally well-written and well-plotted series that mixes space opera, future history, hard SF, military SF, and romance. By internal chronology, The Radiant Seas is the direct sequel to Primary Inversion. It is also Catherine Asaro's most ambitious novel to date. Fans of the earlier books will find The Radiant Seas less focused on romantic aspects, and readers new to the series may find this novel starts slow, but the complex story is always clear and soon picks up speed. Hard SF fans will revel in the numerous brilliant ideas extrapolated from physics and genetics (the author is a physicist), while readers uninterested in science will find the novel unmarred by chunky speculative-science digressions. All will find The Radiant Seas bursting with fascinating characters and subplots, and will quickly discover they can't put the novel down. --Cynthia Ward
From Publishers Weekly
The fourth volume of Asaro's saga of the interstellar Skolian Empire takes place in the 23rd century, when the rivalry between the Skolians and the Eubians is rising to a murderous climax. At the same time, the heirs to the two empires, Sauscony Valdoria of Skolia and Jaibriol Qox II of Eube, having fallen in love in the saga's launch novel (Primary Inversion), now fake their deaths and raise a family on an unknown planet?until the deadly intrigues of the Eubians lead to Jaibriol's kidnapping. Now Imperator of Skolia, Sauscony leads her warriors on a mission of vengeance and rescue. The strongest and clearest parts of the somewhat jumbled narrative involve the lovers' raising of their family and the final climactic campaign. Much of the remainder is too crammed with characters (albeit sometimes appealing ones), plots, subplots, counterplots and double handfuls of exotic (and not always fully developed) technologies. There's also a surfeit of sex and torture, which, after serving its purpose of demonstrating the decadence of the Eubian ruling elite, comes off as gratuitous. This isn't a bad novel, but it falls short of the state of the art even in space opera and isn't up to the level of some of Asaro's own work, including last year's The Last Hawk. Agent, Eleanor Wood. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Propped against the bookcase in Catherine Asaro's home office is the framed diploma of her Harvard Ph.D. in chemical physics. Nearby, dangling from the doorknob, is a bag stuffed with the tights and leotards she wears when she pulls herself away from her writing for ballet classes. A former professional dancer, this California native has little time for the ballet barre these days. Instead, she's fielding speaking offers and meeting deadlines for her novels.
Winner of the Nebula (R) Award for her novel, THE QUANTUM ROSE, and her novella, "The SpacetimePool," Catherine blends exciting adventure, science, world building, romance, and strong characterization into her fiction. Her latest science fiction novel is DIAMOND STAR (Baen), and her most recent fantasy is THE NIGHT BIRD (Luna). She also writes thrillers, including ALPHA and SUNRISE ALLEY.
DIAMOND STAR (is about a rock star in the future. The book's release is the culmination of what Catherine describes as "one of the most exciting collaborations I've ever done." Working with the Baltimore rock band Point Valid, she recorded a music CD that offers readers a soundtrack to the book. Starflight Music released the CD, also titled Diamond Star, performed by Point Valid--Hayim Ani, Adam Leve, and Max Vidaver--with Catherine as a guest artist. Catherine wrote the lyrics for most of the songs, and Hayim wrote the music with Point Valid. Catherine also composed several cuts on the album, and Hayim offered her several of his original compositions.
After Point Valid dispersed to college, jazz pianist Donald Wolcott joined the project as the accompanist for Catherine's vocals. Asaro and WOlcott perform and book conventions and other venues, doing selections from the soundtracks to Catherine's books as well as jazz and pop songs.
Catherine's short fiction has appeared in Analog magazine and various anthologies, including "Walk in Silence," "A Roll of the Dice," and "Aurora in Four Voices," which all won the Analog Readers Poll for best novella, and were nominated for both Nebula(R) and Hugo Awards. Her novella, "The Spacetime Pool" (Analog, March 2008), is currently up for the Nebula(R). Catherine has also published reviews and essays and authored scientific papers in refereed academic journals. Her paper,"Complex Speeds and Special Relativity" in the The American Journal of Physics (April 1996) forms the basis for some of the science in her fiction. Among the places she has done research are the University of Toronto, the Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She was a physics professor until 1990, when she became a consultant and writer.
In Catherine's youth, the arts were her focus. She studied ballet from age of five, trained in classical piano, and spent hours curled up with books. She successfully pursued London's Royal Academy of Dance syllabus through the first professional level and enrolled at UCLA as a dance major. Then she discovered she loved math and science. "I hadn't studied it much in high school, but at UCLA I ended up taking a lot of science and math," she remembers. "I struggled at first and sometimes I felt like I had no clue. Then one day I read the chapter in my chemistry book on quantum theory--and I was hooked. It felt more right than any other subject I had studied." She went on to earn a BS with Highest Honors from UCLA, a masters in physics from Harvard, and a doctorate in chemical physics, also from Harvard.
Catherine attributes her ability to entertain a broad reading audience in part to her upbringing. "My father is one of the four scientists who postulated that a comet hitting the earth caused mass extinctions, including the demise of dinosaurs. My mother was a student of English literature who loved to write, so from the beginning I was influenced by both the sciences and arts." While pursing her degrees, Catherine continued to dance, founding the Mainly Jazz Dancers and Harvard University Ballet. Perennially on deadline, she now focuses more on her writing than research, but she often speaks on the intersection of science and art at venues such as the Library of Congress and Georgetown University.
Catherine is also proud to coach the Howard Area Homeschoolers, whose students have distinguished themselves in numerous national math programs, including the USA Mathematical Olympiad, MathCounts, and the American Regional Mathematics League. She has served two terms as president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA).
Born in Oakland, California, Asaro grew up in El Cerrito, north of Berkeley. A challenger of rules since her childhood, she explores the boundaries of genre fiction in her novels. "It's like stretching different muscles for dance class," she says, adding that dancing and math aren't as dissimilar as people may think. "There is a beauty in seeing a math problem come together just as there is in performing a ballet. And the discipline it takes to do ballet well is similar to that needed to do math." But no matter what the style of her novels, she writes from the heart. "The flashy adventure is fun," she says, "but the characters mean the most to me, both as a reader and as a writer."
This review is from: The Radiant Seas (Saga of the Skolian Empire) (Hardcover)
Building on her three previous Skolian empire books, Asaro has produced a new story that is epic in scope, yet maintains a firm grasp on the human realities and dilemmas of her characters. The story has three threads--the life of the exiled lovers, Soz and Jaibriol, heirs to two empires that are irrevocable enemies, and what is going on in their respective homelands. With intricate plotting, the threads eventually converge for a dynamite, deeply satisfying conclusion, while at the same time making it clear that there must be another book to take the stories forward to full resolution. A week after finishing The Radiant Seas, I find myself still thinking about the story and characters.
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I can't agree with the reader below. I just finished reading the 4 books also, and found them to be a wonderful mixture of adventure and science, with a little romance thrown in. I'd say don't buy them if you like your SF to be an emotionless mix of techno-babble. But if you like original ideas, a non-stop plot, and real humans who think and feel and love, these books are for you.
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This review is from: The Radiant Seas (Saga of the Skolian Empire) (Hardcover)
The scene in which Soz returns from exile to wreck her revenge on the Trader empire HAS to be made into a movie. Half throwback to the Ruby empresses, half cyborg war machine; Soz is totally human and (hard to believe) a strong woman that loves men! Love doesn't conquer all; Soz conquers all in the name of love! Believable science: we are all familiar with particle beams; only Asaro tells how they are created. Everyone has FLT, Asaro uses her own theory (as published in a journal of physics) to bend space. Psi WITH an organic explanation! Oh, and space battles with microsecond timing and lots of explosions. Romance that doesn't make you barf and hard SF that works. If there is a New Renaissance coming, it follows on Asaro's heels.
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