Rating: 
Summary: Asaro at the top of her game
Review: _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.
Rating:
Summary: Asaro at the top of her game
Review: _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.
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