Customer Reviews

Skyfall (Tor Science Fiction)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Skyfall (2003) is the ninth novel in the Skolian Imperialate series, but is the first in internal sequence. Around 4000 BC, a group of humans were transported from Earth by aliens to the planet Raylicon and, over the next twelve centuries, built an interstellar empire. This empire was ruled by the Ruby Dynasty, a line of empaths and telepaths. They achieved a level of technology that was capable of rearranging solar systems and of modifying the genetic structure of their colonists. The collapse of the Ruby Empire left the colonies isolated from Raylicon.

After more than four millennia, the Raylicons began to regain their lost technology and reattained interstellar flight in 1843 AD. Shortly thereafter, genetic experiments by Doctor Hezahr Rhon created a new breed of psions, the Aristos, who could receive but not transmit. Moreover, these Aristos experienced pleasure when receiving the pain of others. The Aristos separated themselves into a new polity, the Eubian Concord, and started conquering Raylicon planets and enslaving the populations.

In 1904 AD, Lahaylia Selei founded the Imperialate in opposition to the Eubian Aristos and activated an ancient Lock to restore the Kyle interstellar web, thereby giving the Skolians the huge advantage of instantaneous communications. After two centuries of reigning as the Pharoah and sole Ruby psion of the Imperialate, Lahaylia found and married another Ruby psion, Jarac, who activated a second Lock to increase the power and scope of the Kyle web. Jarac became the Imperator, the commander of all Imperialate armed forces. Their marriage produced two daughters, Dyhianna and Roca.

In this novel, in 2203 AD, three centuries after the founding of the Imperialate, Roca is trying to evade the agents of her son Kurj in order to return to Parthonia for the debate and vote on invading the Platinum Sectors. The Eubians have brashly taken over the entire region against the prior claims of the Imperialate and the metals in those sectors are urgently needed to maintain Imperialate technology. Roca is against the invasion plans. However, Kurj has her proxy and is determined to keep her from attending the session so that he can use her votes to support the proponents of the invasion. Kurj has been so warped by his mistreatment by his abusive stepfather and by later experiences with the sadistic Eubians that he is totally opposed to any accommodation with the Eubians. Moreover, he will do anything to protect his mother, even if she doesn't want him to do so.

In her flight, Roca is stranded on Capsize, an antiquated spaceport that doesn't even have foul weather guidance systems. Her only transportation is a rusty bucket of bolts that looks like it can't get off the ground unassisted. However, it holds together long enough to take her to Skyfall, where she should be able to transfer to another ship going in the right direction.

Her first glimpse of Skyfall is captivating; it has blue clouds in a lavender sky. The grasses propagate by releasing bubbles that float away on the breeze. The local inhabitants reside in a storybook castle.

Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat less picturesque: the water contains harmful chemicals and the castle is necessary for protection from raiding neighbors; however, the grass is benign. The Allied administrator, who is the entire staff of the spaceport, is friendly and makes her comfortable. She learns that Skyfall is a low tech world with a feudal-like society. Although the Allied Worlds of Earth have claimed the world, it is obviously an ancient colony of the Ruby Empire. As they are talking, a crowd of locals ride up on their animals and surround the port house. In the ensuing conversation, the locals get excited, their leader Eldri lifts her up onto his lyrine, and the whole party gallops away.

Eldri is a strong psion, probably with Ruby Dynasty genes. Her first glimpse of him floods her mind with his feelings and thoughts. Although he doesn't know what is happening, he too receives her feelings and an inkling of her thoughts. They are immediately infatuated with each other, but Roca forces him to behave and almost talks him into returning her to the port. However, his charming personality and the Ruby pheromones overcome her resistance to the point that she agrees to ride with him to his home and return the following day. Unfortunately, his castle is located in the nearby mountains and the weather turns to snow. Lots of snow. So much snow that she misses the supply ship for which she is waiting. Now she is stranded on Skyfall for at least a year.

Meanwhile, back on the Orbiter, the mobile command post of the Imperialate armed forces, Kurj is quietly going crazy over his mother's disappearance. He knows that she has fled because of his actions and he is desperately hoping that she has not come to any harm. He has all available intelligence resources searching for her and he himself spends hours at a time in the web checking obscure databases for references to her. Unfortunately, his mother was a famous dancer even before she became a high level politician and the sheer number of references is overwhelming.

In this story, Roca and Eldri fall in love and, despite her nanomeds, she becomes pregnant. Then a local enemy lays siege to Windward, Eldri's castle. Moreover, Eldri is having grand mal seizures which are coming at more frequent intervals and threaten his life.

This story starts slowly, but builds momentum to the point that the ending seems to flash by in an instance. The politics is frustrating, since it impels characters in unnatural directions. However, the call to duty is finally beat into subservience and the Skolia family members stop tormenting themselves over ideology. While the ending is not entirely a happy one, there is reconciliation, acceptance and rapport.

Highly recommended for Asaro fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of couples overcoming their own misconceptions and environmental obstacles to achieve happiness within a complex society.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Catherine Asaro cannot make up her mind. I am sure from her point of view it keeps her from being bored. I prefer the science fiction side of her writing, but I admit, I liked this romance. It filled in some past/future gaps in the ongoing Skolian story and, unlike The Radiant Seas, was an easy read. But still the characters did not always ring true to themselves as described in other novels, especially Eldri. I had a hard time believing him to be so impulsive and hot-headed as a young man. The character's edges were not as hard and sharp as they were in Primary Inversion. The intensity of the Rhon connection that I felt with other Asaro lovers like Soz and Jai, Vryl and Kamoj, or Althor and Tina, was missing. This story is tamer. If this is your first time with Catherine Asaro's Skolian Sagas it is a sweeter, softer place to start. But my personal favorite will always be Primary Inversion. Forget having babies, I love it when the Skolian women kick ....

First, the good part. I love Asaro's science fiction ideas and her descriptions of alien worlds. Her descriptions of the planet Lyshriol (aka Skyfall) are always wonderful.

However, at its heart, the novel Skyfall is little more than a cliche romance story. Worse, it follows a worn-out romantic plot that I've always found insulting: woman is forcibly kidnapped and held against her will, and then falls in love with her kidnapper and comes to identify with him and his world. Can we say Stockholm Syndrome?

Asaro excuses this behavior with some of her nifty science fiction: that the people with Rhon genes are irresistibly attracted to one another (which also accounts for Kurj's rather tiresome Oedipus complex, one assumes). This explanation has shown up in a number of her books. Even with a reasonably sci-fi explanation, though, this particular plot is always guaranteed to get my hackles up.

There are some fun political machinations going on in this novel. The scenes dealing with Kurj's origins, history, and tragic choices are terrific, and demonstrate how desperate (and amoral) the Skolians are to protect themselves from their enemies, the Aristos.

But, sadly, there's just not enough of the nifty science fiction that originally drew me to Asaro's work. The main emphasis in this book is the Roca/Eldrinson romance. It doesn't help that Roca Skolia is the most perfect, understanding, stunningly beautiful woman in the whole entire universe and everyone wants her. I doubt this woman has ever had a bad hair day in her life. *G*

Roca never is more than mildly annoyed and bemused at Eldinson's initial kidnapping of her, or the fact that he basically keeps her prisoner for quite a while. She's an empath, so of course she can feel that he's really a nice guy who didn't mean any harm. So hey, why not allow her pheromone-based attraction to grow? Bleah. Much too big an overload of romance fantasy cliches.

This book definitely falls into the "Futuristic Romance" category, rather than science fiction. If it hadn't been part of Asaro's Skolian Empire series, bookstores probably would have shelved it in the romance section.

It's a tribute to Asaro's writing that I even bothered to finish reading the novel. Like I said, I love her alien worlds, and her science fiction. But then I returned Skyfall to the library. This is the first of Asaro's Skolian Empire books that I haven't bothered to buy.

In this chilly prequel the extraordinary Catherine Asaro takes us back to How It All Began.

Roca, on the lam from her son Kurj, who's trying to ignite hostilities between the Traders and the Skolians while Roca's trying to prevent them, ends up on a low-tech backwater planet, Lyshriol (where part of story related in "The Quantum Rose" will take place), and the next thing you know she's carried off to a castle by the "barbarian" Eldrinson, who Roca quickly realizes is a powerful "psion." You don't have to have read any of the other books to guess what's going to happen next.

But this is a Catherine Asaro book and as always she can take the most hackneyed of situations and make something fresh from them.

The treat here is not what happens, or when; but how. That's where the suprises come in.

The last third of the book, which takes place mostly back in the high tech Skolian Empire with a bit of crosscutting, is emotionally wrenching and the climax is no bed of roses. As usual with Catherine, there's hardly a wasted word in the book's 307 pages (plus appendixes).

I love this book. I'm almost halfway and I can't put the book down. I've read all the other 8 6 or comething books before this one and its nice to finally read the story about Roca and Eldrinson.

Catherine Asaro is my favorite modern SciFi writer and this book is no exception. Though lighter in science than most of the series, it is still a fun read that lets you in on the softer side of Roca Skolia. I would rate the book itself at four stars.

The reason I marked this book as only three stars is because of the Kindle format. Instead of displaying the reading-friendly, nicely spaced lines that you usually see on the Kindle, this edition looks exactly like the paperback version of this book. (I know, because I own the paperback.) While it is sometimes nice to preserve some of the unique look of a hard copy book, in this case it does the text a disservice; the words and lines are so closely spaced together that it is difficult to read in a way that defeats many of the characteristics I enjoy about the Kindle display. I wonder if this is the dreaded Topaz format that receives so many low marks in Kindle discussion forums.

That said, I'm thrilled to see another of Asaro's books available for the Kindle. I already own almost all of her Skolia books in hard copy, and I would also like to collect them for my Kindle because they are books that I re-read regularly.

I'm sorry to have to say this, since I love Asaro's other Skolian Empire novels, so in contrast this was almost unbelievably boring. En route to Parthonia, Roca gets accidentally stranded on Lyshriol, is kidnapped by barbarians, falls in love, and spends a winter stuck in Eldrinson's castle. That's the bulk of the novel.

Since Asaro has apparently decided to go back and pull an Episode I-III on parts of her own universe, I was hoping we'd get some explanation as to why an incredibly famous, nearly 60-year-old dancer/Imperial princess/politician would fall in love with a hick who's literally young enough to be her kid on a planet where most people aren't even aware the rest of the universe exists. The answer is that he's really, REALLY, hot.

I was also hoping for some interesting information about Lyshriol. In later novels (not published later in real life, but occurring later in the series timeline) it's implied that the original Ruby Empire set up the planet and genetically engineered its residents to be human computers who could connect to the Kyle web/psiberweb without machinery. The setting of this novel would have been the perfect opportunity to flesh out that idea and provide the Skolian characters with more clues about that lost history. Unfortunately we don't learn much about Lyshriol except that everything on it is pretty pastel colours, e.g. blue snow (no word on WHY this blue pigment is in everything, either). I really wish she'd left the lyrines out, as I outgrew interest in My Little Pony a long time ago.

I'm giving this three stars instead of two because the parts that don't take place on Lyshriol are absolutely fascinating. We get to meet Dyhianna and Roca's colossal mother Lahaylia, who escaped from slavery to the Aristos, lived three centuries, and set up an empire to rival her former masters'. We get more information on how Skolian government works, as a half-democracy, half-monarchy, with a strong matriarchal tradition. And since Roca got into this mess in the first place by trying to evade her eldest son...we get more glimpses into the dark, furious, incestuous labyrinth of Kurj Skolia's psyche.

Unfortunately, since this takes place during an uneasy detente with the Eubian Concord, this book is missing one of my favourite aspects of Asaro's hard SF: the cool space battles at relativistic speeds. I really wish someone would make a computer game where you could have that kind of combat.

Recommendation: borrow this book from your public library, skim the boring bits.

Well written, filling in important information about the Ruby Dynasty and how it was reinvigorated. Also provides background about characters who have a more central role in stories that have already been published.

Most of the series I read develop chronologically. Asaro succeeds in writing stories out of chronological sequence so that I can get fully involved with the characters and plot even though I already know what will happen to them. One thing I notice in this and other books that move back in time (e.g., Schism) is that she develops characters whom I have already met without excessively repeating old information or contradicting it.

This stand-alone novel is part of The Saga of the Skolian Empire. For fans familiar with the storyline, Skyfall tells the tale of how Roca meets Eldrinson [have you ever wondered how improbable that meeting must have been?]. For those of you unfamiliar with The Skolian Empire Saga, this is not a bad place to start. Way into our future, the story goes, humanity reaches the stars only to discover that we are already there. Supposedly, a very long time ago, some ancient race took a sampling of humans from Earth then seeded them elsewhere, then disappeared, leaving humans stranded and having to grow their own societies independent of outside aid. One of these cultures now calls itself the Skolian Empire. Though they are ruled by an Assembly, the strength of that Assembly is in Skolian royalty. Ruby Dynasty psions have strong psychic powers. They run an unmatched and instantaneous interplanetary communications system (the Kyle Web) that keeps their empire strong. The problem is there are very few Ruby psions and breeding them is a challenge for even the greatest geneticists.

Roca is the daughter of Lahaylia Selei (Ruby Pharaoh) and Imperator Jarac [Skolian Empire fans know her as the mother of Soz, Kelric, and others]. Being that Roca is an Imperial princess who travels the stars the way we travel the highways, one can only wonder how it was she ever met a quiet man from the backworld planet of Lyshriol [Eldrinson calls the place Lyshriol, but prior to inclusion in the greater galactic society, outsiders just called that weigh-station Skyfall]. And so in this book we have the romantic meeting of two Rhon minds [one is reminded of the fireworks between Sauscony and Jabriol in PRIMARY INVERSION].

So--just how do Roca and Eldrinson meet? Serendipitously, of course. Roca's grown son Kurj from her first marriage wants to go to war with their enemy the Trader Aristos--it's the age-old tale of territorial dispute--but he doesn't hold enough votes to the Assembly to sway the decision in his favor . . . but his mother does. Only problem: Roca will vote against going to war. Now Kurj loves his mother but he does want her where she can't cast those votes. Roca doesn't catch on soon enough, and when she does, events fall against her getting back to the Assembly in time to keep Kurj from using her votes supposedly in her name. In her rush to get back, Roca covers her trail from Kurj's Imperial security and takes a little known route. Then more events fall against her, trapping her on Skyfall/Lyshriol for many months. By the time Kurj finally tracks her down, more events have been set in motion (love, for instance) and Roca has another battle ahead of her with the Assembly and her family: that of getting them to accept the fact that she wants to be married to a nobody (who is also a lost link to the ancient Ruby dynasty).

This is a nice love story with intriguing twists and action. Though classed as romantic science-fiction, neither the romance nor the science-fiction are over-played. It's a simple tale and an easy read. I recommend it most for Skolian Empire fans who like to get the entire story about the Ruby Dynasty. For pure entertainment, however, I think Asaro's PRIMARY INVERSION plus THE RADIANT SEAS offers more.

Twice married and widowed, Roca, heir to the Ruby Dynasty's pharaoh, seeks freedom from the manipulations of her son Kurj. He sees his mother as a tool to use in furthering the empire's goal of eliminating the Skolian Empire enemy, the Aristos. Desperate, she in a bid for freedom from her overbearing, manipulative son, Roca flees into space, but ends up stranded on the backwater planet, Skyfall.

Local ruling bard Eldrison captures Roca He takes his sky fallen prisoner to an isolated sanctuary. However, he soon finds himself enthralled with his prisoner. She quickly becomes his advisor and ultimately his spouse. As he teaches her to trust, she shows him what a woman can be when love allows her to soar.

SKYFALL is a stand alone entertaining since fiction romance that focuses on a clash of cultures between a highly advanced race and a more primitive people. Fans of Catherine Asaro must realize that this tale may be set in the same galaxy as her classic tales, but is quite different when compared with her previous Saga of the Skolian Empire works as this tale is a bit thin in terms of the physics that turn her thrillers into action packed cerebral gems. Still this warm tale of love between diverse cultures is another winner from one of the best writers the genre offers.

Harriet Klausner