Subject: Short Review: Lord Prestimion by Robert Silverberg

From: [email-masked] (P.D. TILLMAN)
Date: 08 Nov 1999 14:16:40 -0500

Lord Prestimion by Robert Silverberg (Majipoor #6, Prestimion #2)
	Review copyright 1999 Peter D. Tillman

Rating: B+. Colorful, beautifully-written but thin planetary romance.

This is Silverberg's sixth Majipoor book, and it's a bit thin.  I've read
and liked the previous five -- this is Jack Vance "Big Planet" country:
big, colorful landscapes, strange flora & fauna, teeming cities,
richly-caparisoned nobility, exotic aliens, bits of higher-tech in a
metal-poor, basically nineteenth-century civilisation. Good thick light
escape-reading, which is just what I was in the mood for. I noticed the
Vancian rodomontade more this time, because there's very little plot here,
maybe a novella's worth: Prestimion is crowned as Coronal after winning a
disastrous civil war in "Sorcerors of Majipoor." He's decided to heal the
scars of war by removing -- by sorcery, offstage -- all memories of the
war.  Naturally, this has unforeseen consequences, not the least of which
is one of the rebel leaders trying to start a new civil war. And he meets
a girl and makes her his Queen. Well, that's about it until Prestimion #3.

Mind you, this is by no means a bad book, but, thinking back, I found
Sorcerers to be the weakest Majipoor book up until now, so I suspect the
well is running dry. Unless you're a diehard Majipoor fan, I'd wait for
the paperback or a library copy. And I believe I'll let someone else be
the guinea-pig for Prestimion #3.

%T Lord Prestimion 
%A Robert Silverberg
%D 2-99
%I Harper
%O $25
%P 416 pp.
%G ISBN 0-06-105028-8

Links:

Here's a more positive review by Victoria Strauss (with more links):
   http://secure.cyberus.ca/sfsite/07b/lp61.htm
She liked "Sorcerors" more than I did, too.

Silverberg has a brief autobiography posted at:
   http://www.galegroup.com/library/resrcs/lit_cent/meetauth.htm
Highly recommended. Excerpted from Something About the Author, Volume 104
(Gale, 1999), which I've just added to my "to-read" list [note 1].

Silverberg writes a monthly column for Asimov's.
   http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_9908/reflect_wheel.html
is a particularly good one. Many more are collected in his recent
Reflections and Refractions (Underwood-Miller, 1997):
    http://www.hycyber.com/SF/reflect_refract.html

__________
1) Memo to Gale Group: I just wasted 15 minutes searching your website for
this book, which, remarkably, isn't linked to this excerpt *or* listed in
your online catalog!

And, when I went to Asimov's to get the URL for Silverberg's column, I was
greeted with a completely blank screen. (Just at www.asimovs.com --
internal pages are fine.) Ah, the wonders of e-commerce & the Web...

Read more of my reviews:
http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman