The Moon's Shadow [Mass Market Paperback]

I originally thought I hadn't suffered from not reading any of the previous books in this saga, but now I wonder. Perhaps a number of the characters and events would have had a greater resonance and feel more grounded had I known something about them already.
Essentially this is the story of Jai, who has unwillingly become the Emperor of Eube to save a relative's life and in the hopes of bringing peace to the galaxy. He is young, ethical and idealistic. Unfortunately he is also a "psion" (telepath) in a society where the vast majority of the population are slaves and psions are the lowest of the low.
"The Moon's Shadow" did not develop as I thought it would. I was expecting something along the lines of "Daughter of the Empire", where a novice ruler uses her unorthodox grasp of law and tradition to survive and thrive in her unwanted responsibilities. This book is quite different. Jai does not show much capacity for wisdom or compromise, only ethics. Much of the book is therefore taken up with him stumbling from one crisis to the next, many of them created or prolonged by his refusal to adapt to his new situation and take advice. For me the most significant problem with this book was a certain lack of grounding. Time has passed, but we do not know how Emperor Jai has been spending his time. We are told he is increasingly unpopular, but we do not know with who or precisely why. Everyone, even the hardest characters in the book, who spend time with Jai are won over by him and think him worthy of their loyalty, despite their knowledge of his secrets and behaviour that is strange and weak by the standards of his new society. Too much telling and not enough showing, in other words. I also found the relationship between a very old woman and a very young man hard to take.
But all that aside, I did rather enjoy "The Moon's Shadow". Asaro's style is clear and flowing, and editorial mistakes were at a minimum. The setting is really interesting and the many of the characters and events are appealing.
So - worth reading, but not a stand-out for me.

Catherine Asaro's "The Moon's Shadow" is the final volume of a quartet within her fabulous Skolian Empire series that tells of the events in the aftermath of the Radiance War. (Newcomers are advised to read "Primary Inversion" and "The Radiant Seas" first.) While the first of these, "Ascendant Sun," was a classic space opera, in "The Quantum Rose" Asaro riffed on the once-high-tech world gone medieval theme, while "Spherical Harmonic" can perhaps best be described as a resurrection myth containing a quantum physics monograph (or perhaps the other way around).

And now in "Shadow," one of the best of the entire series, the author returns to her romantic side--plenty of sex, plenty of space opera. Above all, though, it's a novel of manners. The red-eyed Eubian "Highton" aristocracy speak with indirection and false politeness. The biggest faux pas one of them can make is to say exactly what they mean. And suddenly among them comes their naive and reluctant new young emperor, Jabriol III, who has to grow up and take charge in a hurry (a typical Asaro theme), dealing with potential assassins and dubious allies, all the while trying to start peace negotiations with the Skolians (he's half Skolian himself); more important, all the while trying to figure out what's going on. A tall and complicated order indeed.

Most delicious of all, though, readers are reintroduced to perhaps the most complex character Asaro has ever created, the Eubian finance minister Tarquine Iquar (who fans of the series will remember from "Ascendant Sun"). She's smart, she's tough, she's conflicted. For the second time in the series she appears on the book cover. Despite her age (which of course she doesn't look a bit of), she's not too old to do some growing up and taking charge herself. She knows the language of indirection, and she redirects it her way. She has plenty of secrets of her own. Will she reveal them? Indeed, dear reader, that is for you to discover.

If you haven't read THE LAST HAWK, ASCENDANT SUN and THE RADIANT SEAS you will probably miss a lot of the important story threads and character development in this story, as in a sense this is the story of the massive change in the Eubian empire that these previous novels were leading to.

At the end of the Radiance War Jaibriol Qox-Skolia was still a school boy on Earth. When he saw his parents die in a shuttle crash he opted to trade himself to the Eubians in exchange for his uncle Eldrin, the Skolian Ruby Prince who had been captured in the war. For Jai was the true heir to the Eubian empire, but he was also everything they despised - a "provider" psion and a Ruby Prince - both secrets of his past and heritage he had to keep from everyone in the empire if he was to survive even a single day.

This is the story of how Jai learned to survive as Emperor Jaibriol III and the difficult path to peace he finds at the heart of an empire that is the epitome of everything he hates. This is one of the best books in this series, but its true strength lies in the way it builds on previous events. In other books we have been given glimpse of the violent and corrupt Eubian empire and its vicious rulers the Highton caste but in this novel we get to know them in all their depravity and glory as Jai learns more about his father's people than he ever wanted to know.