Lord Prestimion - Softcover

Robert Silverberg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002257092 ISBN 13: 9780002257091

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999

Synopsis

Prestimion should be jubilant. As the new Coronal Lord of Majipoor, the Starburst Crown is his at lost. But the victorious lord is burdened with a great secret: he gained the throne through a bloody civil war -- a war no one remembers! With the aid of a phalanx of sorcerers, Prestimion dropped the awesome Spell of Oblivion over his people to heal his war-torn land. Forgotten now are the betrayals, the intrigues, and the slaughter. Only Prestimion and two of his surviving comrades-in-arms know anything happened at all.

Yet Prestimion must still account for his world's devastation and do the impossible: bring to justice the kinsman who languishes in the dungeon because no one can recall his unforgivable crime. And in his hour of triumph, Prestimion will face a threat to his kingdom for more insidious than war -- a twisted madness that cannot be controlled....

About this title

Review:

Robert Silverberg has been one of SF's most prolific and popular writers since the mid-1950s. His science-fantasy stories set on the huge, exotic world called Majipoor began with Lord Valentine's Castle (1980), which the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls "polished but rather languid." In Lord Prestimion, the hero Prestimion takes the throne as Coronal, coruler of Majipoor, a millennium before Lord Valentine's reign. His crowning follows the long, ruinous civil war to overthrow a usurping Coronal, a war now literally forgotten: Prestimion's sorcerers have imposed amnesia on the people of Majipoor in hope of preventing any further uprising. Such a memory wipe reeks of wrongness and seems to have caused the infectious plague of insanity. Meanwhile, one very bad man, who is a leading rebel and warmonger, recovers his memories and escapes to make new mischief. After various colorful, almost dream-like travelogues, the situation is saved--a little too easily?--by telepathic gadgetry. (The device in question and several crossover characters appear in the 1982 story-cycle Majipoor Chronicles.) Smoothly written but somewhat short on real suspense, even in the swashbuckling comic sequence when Prestimion's Regent fights and kills at least 21 would-be assassins during one morning's office paperwork. It's just another day in the life of a Majipoor civil servant. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author:

Robert Silverberg has won five Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and the prestigious Prix Apollo. He is the author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels -- including the best-selling Lord Valentine trilogy and the classics Dying Inside and A Time of Changes -- and more than sixty nonfiction works. Among the sixty-plus anthologies he has edited are Legends and Far Horizons, which contain original short stories set in the most popular universe of Robert Jordan, Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, and virtually every other bestselling fantasy and SF writer today. Mr. Silverberg's Majipoor Cycle, set on perhaps the grandest and greatest world ever imagined, is considered one of the jewels in the crown of speculative fiction.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0002257092
• ISBN 13: 9780002257091
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400