Ascendant Sun (The Saga of the Skolian Empire)

_Ascendant Sun_, another in Catherine Asaro's "Skolian Empire" series, features Kelric (who was freed from his captivity on the female-dominated Coba at the end of _The Last Hawk_) and now finds himself heir apparent to the Skolian Empire. The trouble is, everybody thinks he's dead, and his "jagernaut" biological enhancements are failing. But of course, he seeks to regain power, although turns out to be yet another of Asaro's reluctant heroes (they always do what they have to do but they're seldom happy about having to do it) as he tries to pick up the pieces left by the destruction of the radiance war (told in _The Radiant Seas_). Asaro writes like an outfielder who makes catching fly balls seem easy. About three-fourths of the way through the novel, Kelric seems to have completed one part of his quest when, at the end of a chapter he apparently stares into the face of his enemy (how _did_ he get there??!!). A sentence later, at the beginning of the next chapter, he thinks otherwise, and then discovers the truth--which turns out to be the key to the whole novel. Asaro does all this in half a page. Half a page! The whole novel is filled with the same kind of faultless, seemingly effortless technique--you'll find in it good science, good sex, good adventure, and sassy AI's, to say nothing of good old plot, character, and action. Like all the books in the series _Sun_ has an electric charge to it. This is what science fiction should be and seldom is any more. Grab it.

Male-female relations are thoroughly explored in Asaro's Skolian Empire series. In this universe, humans are separated into three major political configurations-the Skolians, ruled by the Ruby Dynasty (a family of empaths who run the "psiberweb," a network of pure thought that permits fast interstellar travel, among other things), the Trader Concord, ruled by the cruel (and anti-empathic) Aristos, and the Allied Worlds of Earth, a.k.a. "us." The first two are descendants of humans removed from Earth c. 4,000 B.C. by an alien race and transplanted to the planet Raylicon. In those times, women were dominant and treated men as their slaves. That legacy lingers on (particularly in some backwaters, such as the planet Coba), alough in the Skolian and Trader empires the two sexes enjoy a rough equality. In fact, the hero of her latest hardcover, Ascendant Sun, often finds himself being treated as a sex object, a role reversal which Asaro handles quite nicely, avoiding cliched images of leather-clad dominatrices. Her men and women are both fully realized humans. When Asaro learned that I had just read Ascendant Sun, she laughed. "It's controversial, because of the sex scenes. Everyone focuses on that. But I was trying to say something with that book." The source of a lot of the confusion is the cover, which depicts the hero as a Fabio-like hunk. And in fact he is a hunk, but hardly a brainless one. Kelric, heir to the Skolian Empire, is an introspective empath who returns to Skolia from a long sojourn on matriarchal Coba, where he married several times and became the catalyst for a war to possess him (a tale chronicled in her first Kelric adventure The Last Hawk) only to be captured and enslaved by the sadistic Aristos, rulers of the Eubian Concord. As an outsider in a strange and repellant culture, he assumes the role of an anthropologist, collecting data through participant-observation, learning that the people he has known as enemies are more complex and more human than he had believed. As a moral being in a culture which does not share his morality, he makes the most honorable choices he can. The book depicts his struggle, not only to save humanity from its worst angels (embodied in the Trader Aristos) but to find his identity in situations in which his heredity and upbringing is sorely tested by circumstance. Asaro also explores the relationships between humans and their machines, particularly the increasingly permeable boundary which separates them. Throughout Ascendant Sun, Kelric must deal with all manner of machines, from the nanobots which maintain and heal his body to the giant starships which ply space. His dependence on machines mirrors our own. At the time of this writing, my own computer is down and has been for over two weeks, cutting me off from my e-mail contacts and keeping me from printing or accessing the Internet. I am reduced to using WordPerfect 5.1 on my laptop, without even a mouse for

A great book. Fast-paced, exciting. I'm having a difficult time picking my favorite book and hero/heroine from Catherine Asaro. This one goes to the top of my list (along with all her other ones). Kelric is a fascinating man with depths not often seen in action characters. And he *never* gives up. All I can say is that I couldn't put the book down and the next one can't come soon enough.

After spending nearly two decades as a prisoner on Coba, Kelric finally escapes. However, during his incarceration many changes occurred in his family's Empire. The Radiance War has left Kelric's kin either dead or imprisoned by the Allied forces of Earth, who now rule the Skoalian Empire. The powerful telepathic communication link between Skoalian, Eubian, and Aristo has collapsed. Into that void, Kelric, now the heir to the Skoalian Empire flees by accepting a job on a merchant vessel, but he is captured by the Aristo, who also hold his brother prisoner. The Aristo plan to use the siblings to open the Lock to the time-space continuum portal that will make them the most powerful beings in the universe. Kelric is the only hope to stop this dastardly plan of universal domination. ASCENDANT SUN, the fifth novel in Catherine Asaro's fabulous Skoalian Empire saga, is an exciting and enthralling work of science fiction. The primary story line is crisp and never slows down for a nanosecond. Kelric is a wonderful hero whose previous struggles (see THE LAST HAWK) seem soft compared to his current troubles. Though newcomers will be lost with the complexities of the tale, they, like series fans, will become gripped by the lightning speed of the action and the radiant vastness of the plot, sending new readers searching for the previous novels. Ms. Asaro continues to rise in ascendancy to the apogee of the science fiction universe with this triumphant novel.Harriet Klausner