Not for newcomers: Half of the book summarizes history covered in other books and involves people sitting around in councils...
The sixth book of The Symphony of Ages series (Elegy for a Lost Star, 2004, etc.) picks up on the further adventures of Rhapsody and the strange band of characters who’ve gathered around her over time.
Rhapsody faces a dire future as the lands around her begin to turn to war. The dragon race that protects the world has lost one of their kind, and it means a loss of the shields that keep the world safe. The evil demon race F’dor are out among humans causing trouble again, and to the south, the power hungry Talquist gets ready to invade the lands and people Rhapsody holds dear. The book begins slowly with a great many meetings being held and political alliances being made by both sides of the upcoming war. Once this is established, the pace picks up, with Rhapsody fleeing to safety with her old allies Grunthor and Achmed as her husband prepares for Talquist’s invasion. Talquist however, has a few tricks up his sleeve. Meanwhile, Rhapsody flees for the mountains as a dragon with a grudge does its best to kill her before she can reach safety. The fate of worlds and races relies on the outcome of the upcoming battle, which will come in a later novel.
Not for newcomers: Half of the book summarizes history covered in other books and involves people sitting around in councils of war, while the other half builds up to the first battle.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-765-30565-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
Fifth and final part—maybe—of Donaldson's hypercomplicated galactic Gap saga (Chaos and Order, 1994, etc.). The power struggle between corrupt but enlightened United Mining Companies police boss Warden Dios and the malign, manipulative UMC chief executive Holt Fasner has reached a critical stage. Meanwhile, the Amnion, aliens who intend to conquer human space by mutating humans into Amnion, close in on Dios's pawns, raging cyborg Angus Thermopyle, brutalized cop Morn Hyland and her clone/son Davies, and biology whiz Vector Shaheed. The latter has invented an antidote to the Amnion's mutation—inducing infection—but will he survive long enough to tell Dios about it? Not that Donaldson provides a summary of these events—you're supposed to remember all this, or else pick it up as you go along. Anyhow, eventually the threat posed by Fasner (he's done a deal with the Amnion, betraying the human race in return for immortality) will be neutralized, and the human power struggle resolved; but the Amnion, despite a temporary setback, remain, leaving plenty of scope for further sequels. Not quite as apocalyptic as the title suggests, though there's more than enough anguish, woe, and screeching metal to keep addicts hooked; for Donaldson, it's almost an upbeat conclusion.
Pub Date: April 15, 1996
ISBN: 0-553-07180-7
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
In a futuristic fantasy from paperback author Williams, set millennia after some disaster has destroyed a technological civilization, a huge poetic jumble (drawn principally from William Blake's prophetic books), known as the Text, is accepted as holy writ and considered to possess magical properties. But eerie, wandering Absences—swirling, terrifying blobs of magical other- reality—are slowly eroding the landscape and now threaten to annihilate Arcady, the sprawling estate occupied for centuries by the Hawken family. In the Border forests nearby, a civil war rages between Citizen Arouet's guardsmen and Hawken cousin Artemis's rebel partisans. Aunt Morgana summons the various, far-flung Hawken relatives to defend Arcady, and they respond. Then, however, Morgana rushes off, brother Solomon decamps, brother Endymion flees with his companion phoenix, Khole, while one-legged Diego's incompetent guardsmen clash with Artemis's well-drilled partisans. Inside an Absence, Khole is transformed into an angel and instructs Solomon on how, using real magic, he must tame the Absences—which are sentient and evil and have been set adrift by Arouet's mining operations. A sort of ecological parable? Maybe—the ideas here have a certain alluring, incoherent sumptuousness. A shame, though, about the long-winded narrative, unevocative prose, and whimsical plotting.
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-451-45500-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: ROC/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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