Palace

The Pinch #1

by Katharine Kerr, Mark Kreighbaum

Bestselling author Katharine Kerr joins with Mark Kreighbaum to present a vivid, alluring and terrifying world of the future.  They call it Palace, the capital of a planet located in a region of space known as the Pinch.  Here a bitter Lep outcast has been hired to murder two humans: Arno, the son of the Master of the Cyberguild, and Vida, a young woman destined for sensual slavery in the Pleasure Sect.  Arno is on the track of strange anomalies in the Map, the cyberspace repository of knowledge.  And Vida has powers that could change Palace forever.  As Arno goes into hiding to escape the assassin, Vida seeks refuge at Government House, the corrupt center of authority, where betrayal is a way of life and death.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Romance, Ebooks

450 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Born in Ohio, 1944. Moved to San Francisco Bay Area in 1962 and has lived there ever since. Katharine Kerr has read extensively in the fields of classical archeology, and medieval and dark ages history and literature, and these influences are clear in her work. Her epic Deverry series has won widespread praise and millions of fans around the world.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Palace, but it desperately needs a sequel, there are so many loose end which remain untied....

[TheCosyDragon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review has been crossposted from my blog at The Cosy Dragon . Please head there for more in-depth reviews by me, which appear on a timely schedule.

Vida is destined for sexual slavery, even as she tries to escape the protective confines of anonymity in a brothel. A lucky 'chance', set up by the previous generation means that there could be a way out - if only her fiancé would stop drinking and she can manages not to be killed by the Lep assassin sent against her. Meanwhile, someone is destroying the Map and making a mess of the whole basis of Palace's society.

While I was most interested in Vida as the strong female protagonist, the cheeky Rico got a lot of my attention too. The rapid changes in perspective seemed clean and sensible, and I didn't find myself wishing that I was back with the last person. It kept me reading frantically to the end.

Look, I thought it would be hard for me to keep track of which character was which, and which person acted for each faction. The factor/mentor/mentee relationships became more clear over the course of the novel. And indeed, I feel like I'd like to read it again, just to make sure that I got all the points in it. But my complaint was that the novel felt unfinished. Yes, some people suffered, but other people just got away with things!

The torturing methods described were a little graphic. But then I have a thing about eyes. So if you don't like torture, just skip over that paragraph or so. The death of a thousand cuts is fine though. Just not my eyes, my poor eyes!

Ah, to live in a world with a true mix of fantasy and sci-fi. The cyber-hardware could have been explained in more detail. I found it interesting that the different pieces of a person's body could have different implants, but it wasn't really clear why this was the case. The world building on the other hand was detailed, and the authors made a point of reminding us readers why each place was important, but did it as subtly as possible that I didn't just skip over those parts.

While I was drawn to this novel because it had Katherine Kerr as an author, I've actually only enjoyed a subsection of her prolific writing. That was way back before I got into fantasy proper. The promise of an equal collaboration, combined with the attractive blurb got me eager to read it. However, once I got into the novel, I felt like the blurb wasn't actually very accurate. Yes, it has those characters in it, but the focus is not at all on Arno. In fact, I'm not sure he even ever gets a change to 'speak' with his own written voice during the text.

I picked this novel up from my local Op-Shop for a grand total of, um, maybe 50c? Or $1? Totally worth it. 4 stars from me, only because I don't feel the need that I have to reread it right now, and I was content to move on to another book, even though this one left me gasping for air near the end.

I have just had a look on Goodreads and it seems there is a sequel. Given that my copy is a beaten up old one, is there anyone out there who has a copy of the second novel? It looks like these novels haven't been touched by reviewers anywhere in recent history!

[William Bentrim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Palace by Katherine Kerr and Mark Kreighbaum
Palace is a novel of the Pinch which is the area that has been “pinched” off of the rest of the galaxy. Interstellar gates that use to lead to the rest of the galaxy no longer work and haven’t for a millennium. The technology of the Pinch is sophisticated but not as sophisticated as before. Due to war, the AI s that controlled most everything were damaged and much technology has been lost. The ensuing years have left a society that is stratified and stagnant. A cull from the pleasure sector suddenly finds her life changed.
Vida, the cull, is thrust into political intrigue and violence. A mysterious “Riva” seems intent on causing her harm. Vida appears to have innate abilities to relate to artificial intelligence that are merely touched on in this book.
The authors do good characterizations with plenty of action. I enjoyed the book.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's mysteries galore in Palace that involve a technological past, a lost heritage and what it means to the entire civilization, a mysterious terrorist, the nature of Palace itself, cyberattacks and more.

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

A note on the star rating: I read this over 15 years ago and loved it. I'm not sure if it still holds up as well today.

[John Mahony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Palace is a huge city on a planet of the same name in a sector of space known as “The Pinch”.  The central character is Vida, a beautiful young woman from the Pleasure Sector, born of a once-noble family and imbued with a destiny.

The other main character, among a cast of many, is First Citizen Karlo Perinida, an off-worlder who rose to power after his military skills saved Palace in a war in which Perinida’s home planet was annihilated.  Perinida wants to marry Vida off to his eldest son to start a ruling dynasty — an action which is against Palace’s laws.
 
Perinida is married to an intelligent, influential and sexually active woman aged about 300.  She, like most upper class Palacians, takes a longevity drug.  Unfortunately for Perinida, his off-world genes won’t take the treatment and he ages while his wife remains youthful.  How galling it must be for him.
 
There are also some young computer nerd types and goings on in the  cyber space created by a super powerful computer which keeps things in order in Palace.  There is also trouble from a resentful defeated race and an old computer system which keeps Palace from being inundated by the surrounding swamps.
 
The tale has lots of colour and incident.  And also lots of loose ends setting up the next volume.

[kyttari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I definitely enjoyed Part 2 and 3 more than 1. I found 1 a difficult set up but 2 and 3 made up for it and the development of the characters and absolute perfect pace of the plot from about half way through until the end made up for it. Usually I would give a book that wasn't almost perfect a four rather than five but the concept of the Map and general uniqueness and complete originality of the setting, plot and species too DEFINITELY meant that this one deserved it's 5. Vida was a lovely character and characters like Hi and Pero and even Barra made up for some of Rico's pitfalls (his immaturity frustrated me immensely towards the end). I cannot wait to find the sequel (which will be a hunt and a half).

[Elizabeth Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really didn't do a whole lot for me. The setting was interesting; the humid swamp ecology was different to the usual and the Map was handled quite well. It was also fascinating to see how language has changed around technology--while there were many parts of the Map that rang true, the way we talk about the internet and VR has moved on to a degree.

Unfortunately, I didn't find the characters all that engaging. Vida doesn't really do a whole lot and Rico is kind of a jerk. I didn't buy their romance at all.

There was also a rape scene that was entirely unnecessary.

There was enough resolution to make it satisfying, while still leaving plenty of loose threads to chase up. However, I won't be continuing with the series.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read Palace around thirty years ago. I would definitely have re-read it in the intervening years, except I gave my copy away and never replaced it. I recall that at the time I thought it had a really original feeling to it and the plot had been interesting... and that I was looking forward to a sequel. Over the years, I looked for one from time to time... but it seemed that Kerr's foray into science fiction had not been a success.

Originally, I think I would have given this a solid four stars having really liked it, and being a book that stayed with me and had me look out for the sequel hopefully even decades later, that seemed justified. On this second read through, I felt less solid about that though, and vacillating between a three and a four, I felt I should really downgrade it just enjoyable. However, this review is actually being written after having finished the sequel The Eyes of God (more on that in that review). As a result, I am returning it back to its four star status, though perhaps not so solidly.

So, what caused this discrepancy? Well, for one thing some of the ideas in the book are no longer so revolutionary to me - or perhaps to anyone else. One of the problems with technology in SF is that it sometimes dates in odd ways. One example of this which stuck out was the Map, which is a central part of the story. A kind of virtual world, connecting people and information and media... Wow... Er... Yeah, no longer really such an interesting concept. To be fair, I had come across early speculation about the Internet before Palace, but this had a bit of a different feeling to other things I had read at the time. Now... not so much, and it feels more like someone who was influenced by the film Tron rather than someone who uses the Internet every day and can see how daily, constant access has affected people.

Also, there is a lot going on in the book. A fair range of characters and different political motivations and schemes in place, more often than not behind the scenes or on the periphery of events, eluded to, but not given the spotlight of the main story. This is not really a bad thing... except that it leads into the biggest point, which is that the book feels like the first in an unfinished series. There is a lot of great world building. There is a lot of foreshadowing of events which seem like they might play out somewhere down the line - perhaps years into the future. There are a lot of mysteries which are not delved into to, never mind solved. While the main story has a conclusion, even that does not feel like it is the end of that story, but perhaps more like a satisfying way point in a trilogy. At the time this did not disappoint me, because the book was pretty freshly published and I presumed that in a year or three another instalment would come out, whether it be only by Kerr or by her co-author Kriegbaum, or another collaboration. However, it did not seem that was actually to be.

So, left with a feeling of unfulfilled potential and a little frustration that all those hints were never actually to explored, I felt that while the book does OK as a stand alone, it is not really that interesting. It definitely loses something not being a part of a great whole and the introduction to a setting. However... then I finally got my hands on the sequel and I can say that the last issues become totally solved. Star Wars is a fine film, but it works better as part of the greater trilogy. Likewise, Palace is a better book simply for the existence of The Eyes of God, even if it is out of print and ridiculously hard to find.

In further praise of Palace I would note that it was very difficult - if not impossible - for me to tell where the seams between the two authors' collaboration met. They did an excellent job of telling a single story, across multiple characters, in style which was not obviously different. The forward assures the reader that both authors took an equal part in the writing process and it was not one of these ghost-written situations, or one person doing the writing and the other the ideas. I feel that having read a lot of Kerr I could get a feeling where some of the ideas seemed to have originated perhaps with Kriegbaum, but quite possibly not. The characters are interesting and diverse, and seldom really black and white.

The real star though is the setting. The Pinch, it's history, it's people. Two thousand years ago an incident cut this region of space from the greater advanced galactic civilisation and deprived the survivors of some of their more fantastic tool. Four hundred years ago, a religious civil war tore apart society and added to the loss of knowledge and technology. Today we are presented with an advanced culture with technological marvels ahead of our own... but also suffering from the knowledge that they once possessed even greater heights and could do far more spectacular things. We also are presented with social artefacts which seem at odds with a really advanced culture, such as slavery and a strong political presence from the church. With so much going on, it is a fascinating delve into an alternate society - not necessarily anything groundbreaking in novelty, but definitely assembled in a pleasing pattern.

A very well put together book.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Palace throws you right into the action from the get-go, with little build-up and a blissful lack of exposition. Kerr treats the reader like they have a brain, and gives just enough information to let them figure out plots and schemes all on their own, while still giving concrete answers to certain mysteries later down the road. The story of Vera is both intriguing and entertaining, and her love-arc with Rico is thankfully not stifling like other space-operas. Overall, I enjoyed the read, although the book leaves just a few too many mysteries unsolved for my tastes.

[Matti Tornio · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty decent read, although with a number of rough spots. For starters I didn't find the main plot particularly interesting and many of the major characters are downright annoying.

The setting itself is great though, particularly the unique variant of the cyberspace. I'd be quite happy to read more stories set in the same universe. Unfortunately there's only one sequel and that book seems somewhat tricky to find.

[Loren Tuxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book absolutely blew me away. The world building is incredible, the characters are amazing and the writing is fantastic. Love love love. I have two copies because my first is falling apart!

[Chelsey Zuiderwyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it as a teen, loved the world they created, so captivating.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in May 1999.

At a time when many well-known science fiction authors seem to be putting their creations on the market for exploitation by new writers (books based on Isaac Asimov's robot stories or set in the universe of Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang spring to mind), Palace seems to be an unusual, old-fashioned collaboration. Here, the more famous author and the newcomer claim equal shares. The resulting novel is itself evidence that backs this claim; the prose generally is reminiscent of Kerr's solo writing (particularly of Polar City Blues), with distinct touches of another style - though to my mind Kreighbaum's influence is perhaps clearer in the background.

Palace is set in a large city (the name is a corruption of Polis), on a planet in the Pinch, a sector of space colonised many years ago by four of the intelligent species of the galaxy. Since then, they have lost contact with the Colonizers and suffered a considerable loss of technological knowledge - particularly following the religious Schism Wars, during which attacks were made on the artificial intelligences considered blasphemous by some groups.

Following a more recent war, racial tension is high in Palace between humans and the lizard-like Leps. Groups in both species are trying to exploit these feelings for political gain, and this is the volatile situation at the start of the novel.

The physical events are paralleled by a series of attacks on the Map, the computer network which holds together the worlds of the Pinch. It is accessed through virtual reality devices implanted directly in technicians' bodies or through public terminals scattered throughout the city. The destruction of equipment and loss of knowledge during and since the Schism Wars gives a plausible explanation of why the computer equipment is not a great deal more sophisticated than that we see today; the existence of a Cyberguild keeping its trade esoteric to maintain its monopoly explains which the natural language capabilities of the machines are sophisticated in some areas, weak in others (Unix terms turn up occasionally, for example). The technological ideas are those that have been current in much of the cyberpunk sub-genre; many being found in that archetypal cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer. I rather liked the term "Map" as an alternative to "Net" or, worse, "infohighway".

To say that I found the relationship between the background of Palace and other science fiction of the past two decades interesting is not to deny the quality of the novel, which is considerable.

[Eran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really love the completeness and immersiveness of the world. One of the books that makes you imagine living there, measuring time and months in their lingo, and walk around to see the world, go through gates and interact with the revenants, etc. I would be in the cyberguild, of course. 👨🏻‍💻
It's a good fantasy plot feeling with some very interesting sci-fi around it. The characters as well as everything else is well thought-out.

- I've had both The Pinch books on a shelf for years (of those I got from Rehoven) and now after consolidating shelves into the new apartment it was an opportunity to consider books I haven't got to yet, after all these years.
- Of course, I still read a digital copy on the kindle.
- I often avoid multiple authors in a book, but this felt cohesive and indistinguishable.

On to the second book! 😀

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very accessible cyberpunk, this multi-threaded novel shows the undercurrents, political leanings and intrigues of Palace, a high-tech futuristic society which relies on saccules (apparently non-sapient slaves) and bots for grunt work and makes community decisions via daily interactive polls.

If you like futuristic SF this has something for everyone: the high-tech Cyberguild with the masters and journeymen who maintain the Map (roughly analogous to the internet), multiple non-humanoid alien species, a longer-lived society and the benefits and pitfalls it brings, and the results of gene-mapping to create a ranked society. It also has political terrorists, unhappy citizens and people working undercover to reveal the truth.

[Robert Duffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't put it down, took 2 nights 417 pages. With co author Mark Kreighbaum it worked well. Simple story of an assassin's attempts and the people involved. They were able to flesh out a number of alian locales and technical constructs with many personalities sympathetically shown, both alien and human. Parallels with present day illegal migrants (refugees etc.) and the lucky citizens attitude are woven throughout the storyline. However as I said it was so well done I just kept reading it and was a bit like an addict who ran out of sugar when I finished.

[Ice Bear · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, and still awaiting a follow up

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fab book - I wish the sequel wasn't out of print!

[Leslie Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very intriguing plot about a futuristic society. Left me wanting to read more. Too bad the sequel is out of print.

[Cherie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book

[Ravsta P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing.
A pure stormforce of collaborative literary power. Highly recommend.

[Tiaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very enjoyable story, characters were well drawn and the aliens were very believable.