Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #358161 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Set in the distant future, Asaro's debut novel pits Sauscony Valdoria (Soz) and her crew of Jagernauts-bioengineered fighting empaths-against the Trader Empire. Traders are a race that derive pleasure from the amplified pain and anguish of empaths-especially Jagernauts, as Soz knows from personal experience. Soz is also a likely heir to the powerful Skolian Empire, rival of the Traders. On a neutral planet, she meets the Trader heir and discovers he has the unusual psi abilities her race possesses. The two link mentally and fall in love. But will Soz be forced to kill her lover to protect her empire? Though Asaro, a physicist, provides more than enough esoteric detail on faster-than-light inversion drives, cybernetic enhancements and computer networks, she manages to anchor her story with thoughtful, engaging characters and an intriguing vision of the future-and she leaves the door open for a sequel.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In a distant future where three empires battle for control of the galaxy, Sauscony Valdoria, the heir apparent of the Skolian Empire, finds herself inexplicably attracted to Jaibriol Qox, the son of the Emperor of Tarnth and the symbol of everything Sauscony has been taught to despise. Asaro's sf debut features strong male and female protagonists and a well-realized far-future world. Blending hard science with a familiar tale of star-crossed lovers, this novel deserves a wide readership.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In an unusually masterful first novel, physicist Asaro combines hard speculative science and first-rate storytelling to look at the galaxy's distant future. Earth's peaceful Alliance shares power with two other empires, those of the Skolians and the Traders, who are mortal enemies of each other. Heir apparent to oversee the Skolian empire, Sauscony Valdoria is a bioengineered fighter pilot who has inherited rare psychic abilities that link her to the powerful "psiberspace" Skolian Web. Taking shore leave on a neutral planet, Sauscony encounters Jaibriol, an heir to the throne of the sadistic Trader Empire. During a fortuitous melding of minds, Sauscony not only recognizes Jaibriol as her psychic soul mate but realizes her new love has been bred specifically to give Traders the power to vanquish the Skolian empire. Asaro innovatively blends computer technology and telepathy into the electrifying, action-rich drama she creates. This is one of the best sf first novels in years, a likely candidate for the genre's major awards. Carl Hays

Customer Reviews

Good writing and ideas but ultimately unsatisfying
I was impressed by "Aurora in Four Voices," which is one of the author's short stories set in this universe, and read in the foreword to the short story that this series was in the vein of Bujold's Vorkosigan novels. That convinced me to purchase this, her first published novel, in the expectation that I would read the entire series.

Although relatively short, unfortunately the book is an interminable slog filled with plot, character, and logic holes large enough to pass the Milky Way Galaxy through. Clearly, a first novel is a challenge but the result was too disappointing for me to read more in the series despite the fact that a later book, "The Quantum Rose" won the Nebula Award in 2001. Generally, the writing is quite good. Unless. Unless she. Unless she writes. Unless she writes sentences like this.

The book has been criticized for fusing genre romance with hard science, an idea which didn't put me off. However, the result is indeed a disaster. The main character is a silly authorial fantasy combining the solo swagger of a freshly-minted lieutenant with the raw power of an Admiral who happens to be the even more powerful - albeit surreptitious - heir to the throne, a fact she hides from everyone unless she, well, tells them. But. But wait. But wait there's more.

She's also a nearly all-powerful empath/telepath/cybernetic fighting machine under the thumb of her evil brother emperor whom she grudgingly calls "sir" since he's her commanding officer. In her spare time, as if she really were a lieutenant and not an Admiral, she leads a tiny battalion of four "fighter pilots" on highly dangerous solo missions risking her precious psion/imperial DNA. During her adventure, she lusts after the throne and plots conquest/treason. All the while this 47-year-old woman pines after the man she loves as she beds teenagers and really pines after the other man she really loves.

Other books in the series may solve some of these character/logic issues and reach the level evinced in the short story that spurred my initial interest in the Skolian universe. However, this will be the last book in the series I read.

PRIMARY INVERSION,Rocks & Radiates!

Review of a Catherine Asaro novel by Jack Lundy

Catherine Asaro's protagonist introduces Herself as Soz, a fighter pilot, a "Jagernaut" of the Skolian Empire, the commander of an elite squadron quartet of JG-17 "Jag" spacecraft. As we accompany Her star-faring through the far-off future, little by little, She allows us to sense She is more. Their Jags require pilots whose speed-of-sound nerves must merge with speed-of-light systems. This is made possible only because the pilots are cyborgs. Moreover, She is a "psiborg", for She can access a computing network that makes our present Internet seem a provincial cobweb by comparison.

Her squadron of fellow "psiborgs" scramble their Jags to fight their arch enemies, a rival, sinister empire whose space fleet is pacifying a world by creating a deluge on a disobedient world of Old Testament proportions. Alas, Her squadron's best efforts nearly get them killed, and they manage to save but a few ark-fulls of the innocent. During the aftermath, where She is reassigned for both Her failure and Her own safety, we learn She is Sauscony Valdoria, directly related to the Skolian Emperor, his sister. She is indeed a Primary in the most literal sense of the word.

Counter-pointing Her high ranking and Her deadly fighter pilot skills is Her humanity, Her soul. She is not exactly a telepath, but an empath, one who feels other souls' emotions rather than minds. Alas for Her, empaths are rare and are where they are. When She finds one, She feels a potent mutual magnetism, which results in beautiful, sensuous trysts where violence evaporates. But the stresses of Her profession, based on destruction, foster such a desperate, lonely emotional starvation that all the other empaths, poets, musicians, even the psichiatric ones, only merge like pleasant snacks.

Save one.

The one? A Jabriol Qox, the direct heir to the Empire Her civilization desperately fights. His empathic psi powers do much more than match Hers. They complement Her like She complements him, right to their marrow of Being. They LOVE each other. But, that Triumphant Empire he shall inherit has violently, mercilessly killed almost all Her family. And once, when She had been taken prisoner, one of their elite, one of this man's closest family, had personally tortured Her within a micron of insanity. She has vowed "Never again." Therefore, She, Primary, now must prepare for total war against Her soul mate, though She knows deep in Her guts that the Universe without LOVE is an absolute, desolate void.

Thus the Skolian Empire Saga starts.

WOW, I didn't like this book!
In reading the other reviews of this book, I discovered the writer is female physist. That makes a lot of sense, the main character is a middle-aged very powerful woman. It reads something like the fantasy of a powerful middle aged woman. I mean, the story itself is OK. If written differently, I could have enjoyed it. It had points where it read like a trashy romance novel, this woman and her younger boy-toys in sex scenes that were a little too vivid. It's science tech was very elaborate and well thought out, and sometimes described in such detail that it detracted from the story. Maybe re-written as "made for Sci-Fi Channel movie' the story would be enjoyable, it certainly has some interesting ideas, but as presented in this book, my suggestion would be to pass it up.