Most helpful customer reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Colorful, beautifully-written but thin planetary romance., Jan 20 2004
____________________________________________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. Cheers -- Pete Tillman
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Not too good... but not too bad either., Aug 18 2001
I agree with previous reviewers, who say that this book seems to be all about Prestimion's well nigh endless travelling over the globe and about describing every wonderful thing he sees, which is boring. Downright boring. But still, this was a pretty entertaining book in between those endless descriptions, which is more than can be said of many modern novels... So I still give this three stars. I'd give it four, if it didn't show quite so many similarities to Valentine Pontifex (including the "battle" of minds in the end of the book which also ends the war). All in all I recommend that you read this book if you like the Majipoor books, but I wouldn't try this as your first Majipoor-book.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Just a travelogue..., Nov 18 2000
This sequel to "Sorcerers of Majipoor" has to rank as one of Silverberg's weakest efforts. "Sorcerers" was a simple enough story but it was reasonably compelling; however, in "Lord Prestimion" not much happens. The Coronal and his lieutenants traipse about the globe for several hundred pages unitl it's time to wrap things up. Even Silverberg's luminous prose can't make up for the fact that there isn't much of a story to be told. Fundamentally, Majipoor makes no sense. The larger a planet, the less unified it would be and the more unstable the politics. On Majipoor, we are asked to believe, not only is there one language and culture but the same political system has existed without change for thousands of years. With a sufficiently vigorous plot, one can overlook this and suspend one's disbelief, but there's not enough going on here to distract you from the man behind the curtain (so to speak). Jack Vance's Big Planet, by contrast, depicts a giant-size world as it probably would be --- a thousand contentious cultures, no central political control of any kind, technology limited only by the lack of metals. Surely Silverberg is familiar with this venerable work (in many ways, one of Vance's best); but Majipoor is fantasy, not SF. Still, we know Silverberg can do much better.
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