Monday, February 16, 2009
Eight Chapters from Diamond Star Available for Free
The first eight chapters of Diamond Star, the next book in Catherine Asaro's Skolian Saga, are available on the Baen website. Diamond Star will be released in May 2009. Here is the description from Amazon:
Del was a rock singer. He was also the renegade son of the Ruby Dynasty, which made his career choice less than respectable, and gave him more to worry about than getting gigs and not getting cheated by recording companies, club owners, or his agent. For one thing, the Ruby Dynasty ruled the Skolian Imperialate, an interstellar Empire, which had recently had a war with another empire, the Eubian Concord. For another, Del was singing on Earth, which was part of a third interstellar civilization, and one which had an uneasy relationship with the Imperialate. Del undeniably had talent, and was rapidly rising from an unknown fringe artist to stardom. But, with his life entangled in the politics of three interstellar civilizations, whether he wanted that or not, talent might not be enough. And that factor might have much more effect than his music on the lives of trillions of people on the thousands of inhabited worlds across the galaxy.
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6 comments:
Yay! Thanks for posting this. I read the 8 chapters last night, staying up way past midnight. It was good. It seems like it will be lighter fare, but that's very welcome, after the ominous tone that The Ruby Dice took towards the end. Also, who knows? The story is moving forward! ~waiting impatiently till May~
Anastasia - I'm glad to hear it was good! Since I still have a lot of catching up to do with the rest of the series, I didn't read the chapters. I am curious about the ominous tone of The Ruby Dice now. The last couple of Asaro's books I've read have been lighter, happier, and fluffier and not nearly as good as Primary Inversion and The Radiant Seas so I'm looking forward to reading something darker. (The last two I read were Skyfall and the first book in her Misted Cliffs fantasy series, The Charmed Sphere.)
The last several books in the Skolian Empire series: Quantum Rose, Ascendant Sun, Spherical Harmonic, all take place at more or less the same time, rounding out the story from different characters' viewpoints (Quantum Rose won a major Romance novel award and is about one of Roz's brothers, Havyrl; Ascendant Sun is Kelric of The Last Hawk coming back, unfortunately, it's much weaker than The Last Hawk and also the weakest of her Skolian novels I think; Spherical Harmonic is about Dehya - how she escapes during the Radiance Wars - if you recall, she simply disappeared into thin air).
In all of those books, characters deal with the aftermath of the Radiance War. In The Moon's Shadow, the story begins to move forward again. Finally, those tantalizing glimpses of who the Rhon and the Aristo could be reconciled that we saw in the end of Radiant Seas and also hinted at in Ascendant Sun were addressed again. But the main conflict between Skolia and Eube seemed to be over. Perhaps that's why Catherine Asaro did what she did towards the end of The Ruby Dice - introduce a new potential for conflict. I should be excited, but instead I'm scared, because it would bad and sad and heartwrenching and I don't want anymore bad things to happen!! LOL. So if Diamond Star postpones that while still giving me Asaro-writing-Skolia goodness, I'm happy.
I am very much looking forward to reading Quantum Rose, Spherical Harmonic, and The Moon's Shadow (although I only have the latter at the moment). The Last Hawk is one I have, too. Do you think it's better to read Schism before that one? I keep wanting to read The Last Hawk first just because I want to be able to read the next few books and find out about the aftermath of the Radiance War. And I do really want to know what happened to Dehya!
Wow, there's a lot of books and catching up to do...
Schism and The Final Key are prequels, a bit light but still pleasant. Like Skyfall (which I believe you read), they can be read at any time.
The Last Hawk is one of the best books in the series, and could actually stand alone. Events in that book are only referenced in Ascendant Sun and The Ruby Dice, and even then, the book isn't "spoiled" by them.
Yes, I did read Skyfall. I liked it, but not nearly as much as Primary Inversion or The Radiant Seas. My favorite part of Skyfall was reading more about Kurj. Roca wasn't that interesting to me, but I love reading about Kurj.
Thanks for the information on the books. I'll probably read The Last Hawk before Schism since it makes no difference. I'm curious about it if it's one of the better books in the series.
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