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Jaran #2
An Earthly Crown
In the second book of Kate Elliott's Novels of the Jaran, Tess Soerensen is pulled between two powerful men--her brother and her husband--and their competing revolutions.
On the planet Rhui, the nomadic tribes of the jaran are uniting the settled cities of their homeland one by one. Their charismatic leader, Ilya Bakhtiian, has his loyal wife by his side, but there is something about her he doesn't know. Tess Soerensen is a human. And not just any human, back home, her brother, Charles, led an unsuccessful revolt against the all-powerful Chapalii Empire. Even though Charles was later made a duke in the Chapalii system, his revolutionary bent has not faded, and he is traveling to Rhui to locate Tess and uncover precious information about a past insurgency. Charles's insistence that Tess join him is as strong as Ilya's reluctance to part with his beloved wife--and neither considers that Tess may have her own plans for the future. As three fiercely independent spirits struggle for a solution, the fates of both the human race and the jaran hang in the balance.
"An Earthly Crown "is the second volume of the Novels of the Jaran, which also include "Jaran," " His Conquering Sword," and "The Law of Becoming."
On the planet Rhui, the nomadic tribes of the jaran are uniting the settled cities of their homeland one by one. Their charismatic leader, Ilya Bakhtiian, has his loyal wife by his side, but there is something about her he doesn't know. Tess Soerensen is a human. And not just any human, back home, her brother, Charles, led an unsuccessful revolt against the all-powerful Chapalii Empire. Even though Charles was later made a duke in the Chapalii system, his revolutionary bent has not faded, and he is traveling to Rhui to locate Tess and uncover precious information about a past insurgency. Charles's insistence that Tess join him is as strong as Ilya's reluctance to part with his beloved wife--and neither considers that Tess may have her own plans for the future. As three fiercely independent spirits struggle for a solution, the fates of both the human race and the jaran hang in the balance.
"An Earthly Crown "is the second volume of the Novels of the Jaran, which also include "Jaran," " His Conquering Sword," and "The Law of Becoming."
512 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1993
39 people are currently reading
567 people want to read
About the author
Kate Elliott
108 books2,895 followersAs a child in rural Oregon, Kate Elliott made up stories because she longed to escape to a world of lurid adventure fiction. She now writes fantasy, steampunk, and science fiction, often with a romantic edge. She currently lives in Hawaii, where she paddles outrigger canoes and spoils her schnauzer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
May 14, 2017
Massively confused and mixed feelings. Some bits are amazingly awesome (that last scene?!) Some bits I really didn't enjoy but they could lead to amazing consequences and plots (Nadine...) And some of it... was unpleasant, and depressing, and I guess I've had too much homophobic societies between real life, Bujold, Wilson and this.
The strange thing is, after 500 pages, I'm still not quite sure where the plot is supposed to go. It's all very meandering, and yet awfully gripping (for me anyway).
The strange thing is, after 500 pages, I'm still not quite sure where the plot is supposed to go. It's all very meandering, and yet awfully gripping (for me anyway).
March 1, 2015
I had to grit my teeth and make a concerted effort to finish, which was perplexing since the first novel in this series, Jaran, was such a page-turner. Furthermore, I howled with derision at the penultimate, climactic scene, in which . Seriously?!... I admire Kate Elliott a great deal, but this is really not her best work.
September 25, 2019
I really, really enjoyed this one. I was actually a little surprised at how much (and I just bumped it up from 4.5 stars to 5 as I started this update/review). I remembered it well, but thought I hadn't liked it nearly as well as Jaran. This time, this one has sneaked ahead.
The first time, I went into this book, expecting it to be "all about Tess" like the first one had been. This time, I remembered that the world expands and it all becomes much more of an ensemble piece from here onwards, so I think that helped, as I took the time to immerse myself in the stories of the other characters and not just hang out for the Tess and Ilya bits. They are only part of the story from here out.
I read this for Thomas at SFF180's Space Opera September. By the time I was 40% through, it was clear that this (my book for greater than 500 pages) was all planet-bound, so I checked to see if it could still count, since the first and third books in the series were both on the masterlist. Thomas very kindly agreed to let it stand, as it is part of the ongoing story which is about space empires, rebellions and other suitably space opera stuff. I'm glad, as I'm running out of month and didn't really want to try to tackle another huge book.
There are some very interesting LGBT+ themes beginning to play out here, regarding differing norms and levels of acceptance in different societies at different levels of development, both socially and technologically. I remembered they were in here, but I was a little cautious about how they played out, given the book was first published in 1993. Happily, I felt that the answer was "well done". I recently reread another book (Silence in Solitude published in 1986) where I had the same concerns and the same answer. My feeling in general is that both authors did a good job looking forward from where they were at the time in terms of sexuality, and the only failing is that both books seemed to be pretty binary gender-wise, only considering male and female gender options, whereas now, we acknowledge humanity is more varied than that. I nodded and figured if the authors were writing these books today, they would have considered gender as well. I certainly didn't need to cringe, like I did with The Big Jump.
This is really only half a book, as the story was too long and it was published in two volumes. My goal is to read His Conquering Sword by the end of the year. There is one more book after that, and while the stories told are complete and finished, sadly the entire arc was never written. A few years back I saw Kate Elliott comment somewhere that she thought she'd solved the plot hole that had stumped her at the time, so I keep hoping.
The first time, I went into this book, expecting it to be "all about Tess" like the first one had been. This time, I remembered that the world expands and it all becomes much more of an ensemble piece from here onwards, so I think that helped, as I took the time to immerse myself in the stories of the other characters and not just hang out for the Tess and Ilya bits. They are only part of the story from here out.
I read this for Thomas at SFF180's Space Opera September. By the time I was 40% through, it was clear that this (my book for greater than 500 pages) was all planet-bound, so I checked to see if it could still count, since the first and third books in the series were both on the masterlist. Thomas very kindly agreed to let it stand, as it is part of the ongoing story which is about space empires, rebellions and other suitably space opera stuff. I'm glad, as I'm running out of month and didn't really want to try to tackle another huge book.
There are some very interesting LGBT+ themes beginning to play out here, regarding differing norms and levels of acceptance in different societies at different levels of development, both socially and technologically. I remembered they were in here, but I was a little cautious about how they played out, given the book was first published in 1993. Happily, I felt that the answer was "well done". I recently reread another book (Silence in Solitude published in 1986) where I had the same concerns and the same answer. My feeling in general is that both authors did a good job looking forward from where they were at the time in terms of sexuality, and the only failing is that both books seemed to be pretty binary gender-wise, only considering male and female gender options, whereas now, we acknowledge humanity is more varied than that. I nodded and figured if the authors were writing these books today, they would have considered gender as well. I certainly didn't need to cringe, like I did with The Big Jump.
This is really only half a book, as the story was too long and it was published in two volumes. My goal is to read His Conquering Sword by the end of the year. There is one more book after that, and while the stories told are complete and finished, sadly the entire arc was never written. A few years back I saw Kate Elliott comment somewhere that she thought she'd solved the plot hole that had stumped her at the time, so I keep hoping.
April 8, 2021
While the worldbuilding is still there, it felt like the worlds got less cohesive and well-considered the more layers were added on. It's a shame to consider that hundreds of years after space travel, gender relations on Earth are still stuck in generally the same place as now...
While I'm glad to have gotten a better glimpse at Charles and his retinue, the other people he brought on the world felt completely unnecessary and illogical. I would have rather have spent more time with the Chapaali or the jaran or the other cultures within that world.
...also that the jaran seem to be the ONLY matrilineal society in their world? That feels a bit like a shame.
While I'm glad to have gotten a better glimpse at Charles and his retinue, the other people he brought on the world felt completely unnecessary and illogical. I would have rather have spent more time with the Chapaali or the jaran or the other cultures within that world.
...also that the jaran seem to be the ONLY matrilineal society in their world? That feels a bit like a shame.
June 16, 2018
When I first started it, I was a little iffy. I always feel uncomfortable after time gaps, like I'm a stranger thrown into the future and I feel out of place. But I got over that quickly enough; with the old characters I already knew as a foundation, I was able to stick around and meet an assortment of wonderful new characters. I burned through it pretty quick after that, really intrigued at the clashing of two cultures. And that ending? Five stars for an inclusive OT3 resolution!
May 28, 2019
The series continued strong through book #2. New, sometimes shocking, unfolding drama amongst the Earthers, the players, the natives (both sets of them), and the aliens. Such an anthropological puzzle, and watching them all trying to coexist while keeping secrets and pursuing their own goals and ideals is fascinating. And the everyday drama (who is sleeping with whom) doesn't hurt, either! On to volume 3!
April 13, 2017
It's hard not to draw parallels to another beloved, bisexual military genius, but I think I actually read Ilya the first time around before I ever discovered Aral Vorkosigan. While Aral's story had a tempestuous beginning, he received a lovely posthumous love story. It's heartbreaking reading about the jaran's homophobia, but I suppose it's one huge issue that keeps them from attaining "noble savage Mary Sue-dom". While I think I read further in the series back in the day, I legitimately don't remember what happiness Tess and Ilya find, but I hope for the best.
July 14, 2015
I hate writing recaps of follow up books in a series. I never know what to give away about the previous book so I’ll just copy and paste the blurb from the author’s website :
In An Earthly Crown, the nomadic tribes of the jaran are uniting the settled cities of their homeland one by one. Their charismatic leader, Ilya Bakhtiian, has his loyal wife by his side, but there is something about her he doesn’t know: Tess Soerensen is a human. Back home, her brother, Charles, led an unsuccessful revolt against the all-powerful Chapalii empire. Charles’s insistence that Tess join him is as strong as Ilya’s reluctance to part with his beloved wife and neither considers that Tess may have her own plans for the future. As three fiercely independent spirits struggle for a solution, the fates of both the human race and the jaran hang in the balance.
Obviously the reader is returning to the ‘verse of Jaran and the story of Ilya Bakhatiian as he tries to unify the tribes and sweep across the land. And so we’re returning to Tess’s story as well. But in this book the reader gets a much wider, possibly more objective look at the characters of the first book.
Four years have passed since the end of Jaran and Tess’s brother has come looking for her, bringing with him a company of actors along with his advisors. So we get to see their culture shock arriving on this “backwards” planet. Hiding their technology and pretending to be from a country across the water called Erthe, rather than a different planet.
And it is a great read. I loved it. It is a complete page-turner. Just like with the first book as soon as I finished one chapter I found myself diving straight into the next.
And it builds wonderfully on the first. In Jaran the reader was in the middle of jaran culture, we knew why things were happening, most of the time. Sure Tess didn’t know everything, but she asked, she found out. She was the only outsider in their culture and she was trying to fit in. Now there are a whole host of outsiders living with the jarans. They aren’t part of that society, neither are they trying to fit in, they dont want to cause offense or upset, but they are separate from the tribes people. None of them are moored on the planet, they are exploring and uncovering it and so give a completely different interpretation of many things than Tess did.
I guess you could say that Jaran was somewhat of a personal story((with aliens and empire)) whereas An earthly crown shifts into the story of a world and a people. We also get the chance to explore more of Ilya’s back story, and his relationship with Vasil. And look at how gay men are thought of. And that aspect of Jaran culture will probably trouble readers most. It certainly troubles the humans from earth, as does the casual attitude to death and war. A lot of this book deals with war, as the army of the jarans sweep into action and conquer the cities one by one. There are battles, and death, of course, but also culture clashes as the conquered peoples have different manners and customs to the jaran, how can they work together.
All in all it is a great book and I’d highly recommend this series. And because Elliott has said that she intends this and Jaran #3 to be read as one book I’ve already begun His conquering sword.
In An Earthly Crown, the nomadic tribes of the jaran are uniting the settled cities of their homeland one by one. Their charismatic leader, Ilya Bakhtiian, has his loyal wife by his side, but there is something about her he doesn’t know: Tess Soerensen is a human. Back home, her brother, Charles, led an unsuccessful revolt against the all-powerful Chapalii empire. Charles’s insistence that Tess join him is as strong as Ilya’s reluctance to part with his beloved wife and neither considers that Tess may have her own plans for the future. As three fiercely independent spirits struggle for a solution, the fates of both the human race and the jaran hang in the balance.
Obviously the reader is returning to the ‘verse of Jaran and the story of Ilya Bakhatiian as he tries to unify the tribes and sweep across the land. And so we’re returning to Tess’s story as well. But in this book the reader gets a much wider, possibly more objective look at the characters of the first book.
Four years have passed since the end of Jaran and Tess’s brother has come looking for her, bringing with him a company of actors along with his advisors. So we get to see their culture shock arriving on this “backwards” planet. Hiding their technology and pretending to be from a country across the water called Erthe, rather than a different planet.
And it is a great read. I loved it. It is a complete page-turner. Just like with the first book as soon as I finished one chapter I found myself diving straight into the next.
And it builds wonderfully on the first. In Jaran the reader was in the middle of jaran culture, we knew why things were happening, most of the time. Sure Tess didn’t know everything, but she asked, she found out. She was the only outsider in their culture and she was trying to fit in. Now there are a whole host of outsiders living with the jarans. They aren’t part of that society, neither are they trying to fit in, they dont want to cause offense or upset, but they are separate from the tribes people. None of them are moored on the planet, they are exploring and uncovering it and so give a completely different interpretation of many things than Tess did.
I guess you could say that Jaran was somewhat of a personal story((with aliens and empire)) whereas An earthly crown shifts into the story of a world and a people. We also get the chance to explore more of Ilya’s back story, and his relationship with Vasil. And look at how gay men are thought of. And that aspect of Jaran culture will probably trouble readers most. It certainly troubles the humans from earth, as does the casual attitude to death and war. A lot of this book deals with war, as the army of the jarans sweep into action and conquer the cities one by one. There are battles, and death, of course, but also culture clashes as the conquered peoples have different manners and customs to the jaran, how can they work together.
All in all it is a great book and I’d highly recommend this series. And because Elliott has said that she intends this and Jaran #3 to be read as one book I’ve already begun His conquering sword.
February 11, 2014
This is not as good a story as "Jaran," but I continue to be interested in the lives of Tess and Bakhtiian -- and now of Vasil. The fact that it took me a week to finish says a lot about my lack of engagement in the story. I seldom felt any urgency about what was going to happen next.
My primary criticism is the involvement of the theater group. I don't under why Elliott included them. I'm a former theater artist myself, and the challenge of reaching another culture through theater is an interesting one, but it makes no sense in this context: an interdicted planet where no cultural contagion is supposed to take place. I can't figure out why Charles, a pragmatist, thought it was a good idea to bring them along. They could be entirely dropped from the plot without harming the story line. I am hoping that they become actually pertinent to the plot by the end of the story.
Despite my disappointment overall, I am continuing the series. I want to find out where Bakhtiian and Charles will lead their respective peoples, and how Vasil impacts Baktiian and Tess's relationship.
My primary criticism is the involvement of the theater group. I don't under why Elliott included them. I'm a former theater artist myself, and the challenge of reaching another culture through theater is an interesting one, but it makes no sense in this context: an interdicted planet where no cultural contagion is supposed to take place. I can't figure out why Charles, a pragmatist, thought it was a good idea to bring them along. They could be entirely dropped from the plot without harming the story line. I am hoping that they become actually pertinent to the plot by the end of the story.
Despite my disappointment overall, I am continuing the series. I want to find out where Bakhtiian and Charles will lead their respective peoples, and how Vasil impacts Baktiian and Tess's relationship.
February 23, 2014
This is massively epic SF(F?) compared to the first book - the story has expanded massively in scope and implications compared to JARAN, which was very much Tess/Ilya’s story. It’s really a single story split across two books (His Conquering Sword being Part 2), and I spent a week or so happily buried in its pages.
April 13, 2014
An Earthly Crown is the first part in the two-part The Sword of Heaven "novel," which is the sequel to Elliot's Jaran. I really liked Jaran, and I really like An Earthly Crown for the same reasons: it's chockablock full of intriguing sociological themes (culture clashes, gender roles, and the morality of war) and meaty melodrama. It's like a soap opera for your brain!
January 12, 2024
Romantasy is so popular these days but I feel like we need more sci-fi romances like this one. It's strange because I think the plot is too slow and unfocused, but the mix of cultures coming together amongst romantic angst with a sci-fi perspective is so interesting that it kept me engaged regardless. I'm not sure about some of the character and relationship decisions made in this book, or the way certain themes were dealt with, but there is definitely a lot to think about.
October 7, 2011
Reading the first book, I thought this series would be like a sci-fi version of The Blue Sword. This second book, though, was a teeny dash of Vorkosigan and a whole lot of boring. (Especially since nothing--NOTHING--seemed to have happened in it.)
March 22, 2018
In a few words: a sequel that doesn't scale successfully and I mean, I get this is some sort of white woman hetereosexual fantasy but it has a lot of Issues
What: Kindle library loan
Why: riding on the high of reading the first book in the series
As a caveat: I haven't read the third book in this series yet and I know the book was originally split over two volumes. So I'm reserving some judgement based on that there's still a lot of valid complaining to follow.
Worldbuilding flavour: light! Light as hell! The first book introduced this interesting galactic backdrop but only touched on it, which is fine, in lieu of establishing and focussing on all the nuances and details of the culture and lives of the jaran told through an outsider character, experiencing and learning in tandem with the reader, like a romance novel wrapped up in a ethnographic study. But this book just feels like it's retreading the same and painting broad strokes over the rest it attempts to introduce, scaling up and adding a heck ton of new characters from all sorts of cultures, but having them just react to each other and fumble around appropriate practices without any real meaningful conflict?
Also, am I one thousand pages in this series and barely know anything more about the super interesting Chapallii and intergalactic empires and rebellions? We get a barest glimpse of a birth and a female and otherwise characters are wholly uninterested in them except to note from time to time their opaque alienness.
The huge, glaring: whiteness of it all. This is true of the first book as well, but when you have so many more characters coming together and having cultural conflicts, it just becomes so much more obvious how flawed the approach is. A lot of SFF stories posit that humans are post racial, post gender, post whatever and then draw on real world and historical racial dynamics with their fictional "othered" group as a stand in. I get metaphorical whiplash when you end up with your oppressed minority Martians/mutants/vampires/super intelligent apes facing off against the speaker of human-led bigotry represented by characters from actually marginalized groups, upholding the systems (capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism) that those groups are subjected to in reality.
The humans find the jaran barbaric (and the Chapallii capitalistic/transactional/hierarchical). The jaran find the other people of their planet (which mirror cultures of the human's past) to be barbaric and unclean in turn. An ambassador is from a highly patriarchal and misogynistic kingdom and this purposefully contrasts to the matriarchal society of the jaran that allows for female sexual autonomy. The have slaves! Women have sex for money! Women veil themselves when in public! People pray with their heads touching the ground! I wonder what culture this is intending to invoke and criticise.
But the jaran are not malicious to the unfamiliar, we're told, they are intrigued by it. Sometimes, a story will let you know there are actually a couple characters of colour in their fictional world by calling attention to their physical traits, but what that only makes me realise that so far, everyone else has been overwhelmingly white. When only one person's skin colour is described, then that means everyone else is the default. Not even getting into the problematic equating of blackness to dark coloured skin.
There's a couple moments given to the jaran's reactions to non-white members of the human visiting party. I'm not sure what the reason is--to show off the benign nature of their reaction to the unfamiliar, or highlighting their isolation and ignorance. Nonetheless, the confusion about dark skin for dirtiness that doesn't wash off and the mocking of the eyelid shape of one of the East Asian characters are both things that have baggage in our culture and presumably so for the human characters. But this is presented as harmless, quickly glanced over. I know I wouldn't be able to use the same throwaway plot device, not at least without a lot of context given. And curious that only characters of colour are othered in this way!
(But a mousy brunette girl is so alien and exotic to these alien barbarians, even though there's this continued obsession with beauty and not being beautiful and I'm not going to talk about the threesome.)
I could have really done without: a bunch of straight characters "poo-pooing" the one non-straight character in the group because apparently they knew better than he did. And lament that the characters might be better off dead! Cool cool cool, in this future, humans are self righteous about some things, but not enough to make a stance for what is right against a cultural and technological interdiction that they also don't care enough about to honor most of the time if it's inconvenient for them. (Ahem, Tess, why are you putting your husband under potentially life threatening medical procedures without his consent, holy shit!)
What: Kindle library loan
Why: riding on the high of reading the first book in the series
As a caveat: I haven't read the third book in this series yet and I know the book was originally split over two volumes. So I'm reserving some judgement based on that there's still a lot of valid complaining to follow.
Worldbuilding flavour: light! Light as hell! The first book introduced this interesting galactic backdrop but only touched on it, which is fine, in lieu of establishing and focussing on all the nuances and details of the culture and lives of the jaran told through an outsider character, experiencing and learning in tandem with the reader, like a romance novel wrapped up in a ethnographic study. But this book just feels like it's retreading the same and painting broad strokes over the rest it attempts to introduce, scaling up and adding a heck ton of new characters from all sorts of cultures, but having them just react to each other and fumble around appropriate practices without any real meaningful conflict?
Also, am I one thousand pages in this series and barely know anything more about the super interesting Chapallii and intergalactic empires and rebellions? We get a barest glimpse of a birth and a female and otherwise characters are wholly uninterested in them except to note from time to time their opaque alienness.
The huge, glaring: whiteness of it all. This is true of the first book as well, but when you have so many more characters coming together and having cultural conflicts, it just becomes so much more obvious how flawed the approach is. A lot of SFF stories posit that humans are post racial, post gender, post whatever and then draw on real world and historical racial dynamics with their fictional "othered" group as a stand in. I get metaphorical whiplash when you end up with your oppressed minority Martians/mutants/vampires/super intelligent apes facing off against the speaker of human-led bigotry represented by characters from actually marginalized groups, upholding the systems (capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism) that those groups are subjected to in reality.
The humans find the jaran barbaric (and the Chapallii capitalistic/transactional/hierarchical). The jaran find the other people of their planet (which mirror cultures of the human's past) to be barbaric and unclean in turn. An ambassador is from a highly patriarchal and misogynistic kingdom and this purposefully contrasts to the matriarchal society of the jaran that allows for female sexual autonomy. The have slaves! Women have sex for money! Women veil themselves when in public! People pray with their heads touching the ground! I wonder what culture this is intending to invoke and criticise.
But the jaran are not malicious to the unfamiliar, we're told, they are intrigued by it. Sometimes, a story will let you know there are actually a couple characters of colour in their fictional world by calling attention to their physical traits, but what that only makes me realise that so far, everyone else has been overwhelmingly white. When only one person's skin colour is described, then that means everyone else is the default. Not even getting into the problematic equating of blackness to dark coloured skin.
There's a couple moments given to the jaran's reactions to non-white members of the human visiting party. I'm not sure what the reason is--to show off the benign nature of their reaction to the unfamiliar, or highlighting their isolation and ignorance. Nonetheless, the confusion about dark skin for dirtiness that doesn't wash off and the mocking of the eyelid shape of one of the East Asian characters are both things that have baggage in our culture and presumably so for the human characters. But this is presented as harmless, quickly glanced over. I know I wouldn't be able to use the same throwaway plot device, not at least without a lot of context given. And curious that only characters of colour are othered in this way!
(But a mousy brunette girl is so alien and exotic to these alien barbarians, even though there's this continued obsession with beauty and not being beautiful and I'm not going to talk about the threesome.)
I could have really done without: a bunch of straight characters "poo-pooing" the one non-straight character in the group because apparently they knew better than he did. And lament that the characters might be better off dead! Cool cool cool, in this future, humans are self righteous about some things, but not enough to make a stance for what is right against a cultural and technological interdiction that they also don't care enough about to honor most of the time if it's inconvenient for them. (Ahem, Tess, why are you putting your husband under potentially life threatening medical procedures without his consent, holy shit!)
February 16, 2022
I wanted to swear with disappointment through most of this book, after liking the first one very much. Not only the story felt aimless, and the characters much more flat than in the first book, but the author proceeds with full out unprovoked conquest war by protagonists against the rest of their world. Justifications? "It's my destiny", "gods are with us", "we should rule the world", and "they are only khaja, after all". Are we supposed to root for that, and if not, why so much gushing by the author over Ilya's macho posturing and power? Yes, the "khaja" keep slaves and are more cruel to women, but the jaran don't make things any better - they just kill most men and leave the women and children to starve after plundering their belongings and burning their homes.
And galactic-bred, well educated Tess? Not only she barely spares a thought or two for all the suffering that ensues, in one scene she joins in claiming "war spoils" from a woman who came seeking help, and in first part of the book she wants to "prove herself" by becoming a soldier. Prove what, if women are already supposed to be respected in jaran culture? And what civilized person wants to prove themselves through violence? Faced with a khaja girl who is forced to prostitute herself to feed her starving family, her only comment is about a clash of cultures (she does help the girl later, but doesn't seem to have any thoughts about many others in such situations). Even all of the other galactic visitors most of the time blithely go along with the war, and a few of them seem to enjoy it.
Only towards the end of this book a few things happen that might hint interesting plot twists in the sequels (it would be interesting if Ilya and Tess end up having to leave the planet - and better for the peace on the planet, too), but overall, this book is a weak filler brimming with toxic values.
And galactic-bred, well educated Tess? Not only she barely spares a thought or two for all the suffering that ensues, in one scene she joins in claiming "war spoils" from a woman who came seeking help, and in first part of the book she wants to "prove herself" by becoming a soldier. Prove what, if women are already supposed to be respected in jaran culture? And what civilized person wants to prove themselves through violence? Faced with a khaja girl who is forced to prostitute herself to feed her starving family, her only comment is about a clash of cultures (she does help the girl later, but doesn't seem to have any thoughts about many others in such situations). Even all of the other galactic visitors most of the time blithely go along with the war, and a few of them seem to enjoy it.
Only towards the end of this book a few things happen that might hint interesting plot twists in the sequels (it would be interesting if Ilya and Tess end up having to leave the planet - and better for the peace on the planet, too), but overall, this book is a weak filler brimming with toxic values.
January 17, 2020
I think this book was amazingly written and the detail that goes into building the world and its culture was quite amazing if a little slow paced. My main issue is with the character of Tess. Even in the first book she is awfully mean to Ilya at times without really any good reason. He always seems to be the one really trying in their relationship. Also, Tess comes from a culture similar to ours and yet I find it ironic that she is usually the one to act “jaran” while Ilya on the other hand is much more like us in the end. Also for Ilya Tess is the center of his world. Even if she lives with the Jaran and they consider it ok for a woman to have lovers, they also frown on homosexual relationships. So I think she should either be Jaran with all that goes with it or stick with her own customes. This way, she is inconsistent and does what suits her best, no matter how selfish. I also found it wierd that she never really tells Ilya anything and I don’t even mean all the stuff about her origins. I always had to wait half the book before a simple transfer of information took place between them and sometimes I was still disappointed. And I’m not even going to go into how she just decided to alter his life without consulting him first.
So yeah, I didn’t like Tess very much but as a whole the book was quite good and I loved the complexity of it all as well as how lifelike the characters were.
So yeah, I didn’t like Tess very much but as a whole the book was quite good and I loved the complexity of it all as well as how lifelike the characters were.
January 22, 2024
This book begins four year after Jaran. Tess Sorenson is now married to Ilya Bakhtiian, who has already conquered sic kingdoms and principalities. Charles Sorensen is coming to Rhui to bring Tess back to Earth, and he brings the Bharentous Repertory Company with him. The commingling of the Jaran with Charles group as well as the repertory company changes throughout the novel. Tess has adopted an orphan, Alekis, as her brother giving him status. He is also the best with saber of all the riders. As the story progresses, so does Bakhtiian’s war to conquer the kahja (non-Jaran).
June 10, 2019
If you liked the worldbuilding of Jaran and want some more of the sideplot, you will find some of that here. Mostly it feels a bit like set-up for the next book rather like some of the middle of Wheel of Time. I don't mind long books and tend to find the length a virtue, but this is not going to be fun for the impatient! I can see a lot of interesting directions for things to go from here though.
November 28, 2022
Wow this series is going in many interesting directions...can't wait to read the next book. The only drawback is that I have mixed feelings about some of the characters/characterizations however I love most of the characters and thought that the multiple new POVs added a lot to the story.
August 8, 2017
This one was good, but it got into sex a lot more, with homosexual and three-way relationships and adultery. This plays a large part of the plot towards the end. If the next book continues so, I won't keep reading.
November 2, 2016
Really enjoying this series so far. Some difficult questions in the background and a great portrayal of different cultures meeting and sometimes clashing.
December 14, 2017
OT3! OT3! OT3!!!!!!!!!!
March 3, 2018
This was fine I guess, but it really dragged.
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April 9, 20208 April 2020: $1.99 on Kindle
April 29, 2020
Great continued world building & loved the additional characters
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January 10, 2021 enjoyed being further invested in the story, but the book ends so abruptly it made me wonder if pages were missing. look forward to the next one.
September 14, 2022
Absorbing! I picked up this book again after a long time and stayed up all night to finish it.
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October 23, 2025Tess, an Earth-born woman, finds herself at the center of a conflict between her jaran husband, Ilya Bakhtiian, and her brother, Duke Charles, as the two men battle for control of Rhui. Original.
August 7, 2017
Good sequel that begs you to continue the series. It would not really stand on its own.
February 6, 2016
This is half a book in terms of plot and progress, but dragged on for what felt like two! I know it's a "part one", but still! There's hardly any plot arc whatsoever, just steady forward movement... To what ultimate end we have almost no more hints than were in book one. Things happen, new characters are introduced... But why should I care? What is at the heart of this book? You would think the book would be driven by Ilya's conquest- but the conquest is merely a backdrop for foreigners to react to. It could also be driven by Tess and Ilya... but they get about a sixth of the attention amid a large cast. Maybe we'll finally see the "cool" but revolutionary great man of the era- Charles in action? Not so much. How about this new (literal) cast of actors brought to a foreign "barbaric" planet? Will they spark some new action? Again, not really. The closest we get to the actors is through the eyes of ingenue Diana, an immature woman trying to deal with a new situation- she grows, maybe- but also makes choices that made me lose respect and grow bored with her. She's a less interesting heroine than Tess, for sure. The relationship that stands out most is a slightly twisted third party that comes between Ilya and Tess. In book one, I fell in love with Tess and Ilya's story, with the difficult dynamic of Tess and her brother's relationship, and with the even more complex dynamic of three hierarchical words layered in secrecy from each other. In book two, we see very little change in the status quo, and we live in the same world but with a bigger cast. I didn't really care much about the new characters. I like Tess and Ilya for their flaws, but a whole cast of messy humans with confused desires and prejudices started to become less fun. Also, there is no additional world building. We don't learn more about the alien overlords. We don't learn more about the jaran. We don't delve deeper into gender dynamics or the issues of artificially protecting the planet's culture and independence, it is all familiar ground from book one! So much is left unresolved, and the final two scenes drove my enjoyment from three-stars to two-stars. The ending was abrupt and gave no closure, which was maddening because there was almost no climax or payoff for so much reading! I didn't realize it was the ending when I got to it- I was shocked I couldn't turn to the next chapter- the real conclusion! I would never retread this book because there are no particularly heart-wrenching or heart-warming or exciting scenes to return to.
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