Lord Prestimion

Lord Prestimion #2

by Robert Silverberg

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 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 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....

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Audiobook, Epic Fantasy

497 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

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Robert Silverberg is a highly celebrated American science fiction author and editor known for his prolific output and literary range. Over a career spanning decades, he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2004. Inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999, Silverberg is recognized for both his immense productivity and his contributions to the genre's evolution.
Born in Brooklyn, he began writing in his teens and won his first Hugo Award in 1956 as the best new writer. Throughout the 1950s, he produced vast amounts of fiction, often under pseudonyms, and was known for writing up to a million words a year. When the market declined, he diversified into other genres, including historical nonfiction and erotica.
Silverberg’s return to science fiction in the 1960s marked a shift toward deeper psychological and literary themes, contributing significantly to the New Wave movement. Acclaimed works from this period include Downward to the Earth, Dying Inside, Nightwings, and The World Inside. In the 1980s, he launched the Majipoor series with Lord Valentine’s Castle, creating one of the most imaginative planetary settings in science fiction.
Though he announced his retirement from writing in the mid-1970s, Silverberg returned with renewed vigor and continued to publish acclaimed fiction into the 1990s. He received further recognition with the Nebula-winning Sailing to Byzantium and the Hugo-winning Gilgamesh in the Outback.
Silverberg has also played a significant role as an editor and anthologist, shaping science fiction literature through both his own work and his influence on others. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, author Karen Haber.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘I had the greatest difficulty in detecting it. It moves as though under cover of perpetual night, even in daytime.’
‘Of course. The cloud of unknowingness again!’

A civil war has just come to an end and the victorious Prestimion, the designated Lord Coronal for the giant planet of Majipoor, has just been inaugurated as co-ruler with the retiring Coronal. Peace reigns, life goes on, and everything is as it should be.

But is it? For all is not well: there are swathes of Alhanroel – the chief continent – that have been incomprehensibly devastated; an important personage has been incarcerated and no one knows why; and all over the planet disturbing reports are emerging of individuals exhibiting strange behaviours before throwing themselves off high places.

Only three individuals – the new Coronal Prestimion and his confidants Septach Melayn and Gialaurys – know about the cause of the devastation, who the prisoner is and why he is dangerous; yet even they are in the dark as to why incidents of insanity are proliferating. And then the unthinkable happens: the prisoner escapes.

Prestimion has just won a massively destructive civil war in which as heir-apparent he defeated Korsibar, the usurping son of the retiring Coronal who has now become Majipoor’s co-ruler as Pontifex. Unfortunately the love of Prestimion’s life, Korsibar’s twin sister Thismet, also died; but, to wipe out any residual antagonism to his restoration and to heal societal rifts, the new Coronal arranged through an unprecedented act of sorcery to have the whole world’s collective memory of the war erased – apart from his own and that of his two close associates.

However, two dilemmas remain. First is what to do about the procurator Dantirya Sambail who, as surviving chief supporter of Korsibar’s rebellion, has no memory of his treason but is naturally resentful of being incarcerated; and secondly how to address the growing pandemic of madness, an infection that increasingly seems to be a direct consequence of the act that conjured up collective amnesia.

When Dantirya Sambail, having had his memory restored to comprehend his guilt, unexpectedly flees prison with his lieutenant, Prestimion has little choice but to attempt his recapture, necessitating a fruitless chase across Alhanroel, the chief continent. Meanwhile, his young protégé Dekkeret has, after a spell in Zimroel, suddenly and unexpectedly embarked for the distant southern continent of Suvriel, a move that may ultimately help to resolve the impasse that Prestimion has backed himself into.

But in the meantime further incidents indicate that the world continues to descend into madness. How will Prestimion resolve this? Will a voyage to the Isle of Sleep bring a solution and will the significant women in his life help ease the situation? Or does the key to the global puzzle lie with an enterprising young individual?

For a planet settled millennia ago by humans from ‘Old Earth’ Majipoor is a strange mix of what we’d regard as the medieval and the near future. For example, in place of the functionality of our internet there is merely a process of promoting morals by sending dreams to its inhabitants. In fact if not for it being set on an exoplanet, with instances of future technology such as vehicles called floaters and machinery for maintaining a consistent environment on top of the planet’s highest mountain, we could be forgiven for thinking this belonged to the genre of epic fantasy, such is the ambition that Silverberg displays in this novel.
So there is sorcery, telepathy, clairvoyance and shapeshifting, and duelling and castles and nobles, but also extraordinary life-forms in place of unicorns and phoenixes, and non-humans such as Vroons, Ghayrogs and Su-Suheris instead of fairies, goblins and elves. And also inexplicable incidents of cause and effect …

This, the middle title of the author’s Prestimion trilogy and one of the prequels in his ambitious Majipoor sequence, is what’s clearly a slow burn, taking its unhurried progress over three ‘books’ across the three continents of this planet in a manner which, unfortunately, doesn’t work for many readers; nor do particular plot-holes – the absolute certainty that contemporary written reports, would have survived the civil war to account for gaps in memory, for example – get satisfactorily explained, the ‘cloud of unknowingness’ notwithstanding.

However, if like me you’re a fan of travel guides, and want to revel in extended descriptions of geographical features, alien races, monumental cityscapes and aspects of cartography, this may well appeal; and if you don’t mind focusing almost exclusively on the angst-ridden guilty thoughts of a man supposedly in charge of running a giant planet populated by thirty billion inhabitants, then its 400-plus pages won’t seem at all daunting.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colorful, beautifully-written but thin planetary romance

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 this one, so I suspect the well was running dry.

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty thin plot, but lots of world building -- detailed descriptions of plants, animals, cities, odd cultures. Lots of traveling about the huge planet for very little payoff except descriptions of places and things. Robert Silverberg writes so well that it is easy to overlook the lack of plot.

One big flaw, in my opinion... at the end of the previous book (Sorcerers of Majipoor) Prestimion ordered his wizards to eliminate all memory of a two year civil war that engulfed the entire planet. We know that the people of Majipoor keep written records. Did they not write down one scrap about the war, or anything about the people who died in the war? Apparently some of the people who were killed have been completely eliminated from everyone's' minds and records. Others are remembered, but their deaths are attributed to something other than war. It just doesn't make sense. Perhaps that is why so many of the population is going mad.

[Ben Lund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do you ever get to the end of a book, and feel like nothing really happened. That's how I felt upon finishing this novel and it ended with a big fat "MEH".

Such a snore, Prestimion travels a lot, gets over his dead wife REALLY quick, and solves all the worlds problem in the last 10 pages. It feels a whole lot like of nothing happening. The first two books in the Prestimion trilogy have been very dissapointing, especially since the Lord Valentine series was so enjoyable. Even the first book in this series was eventually pretty good, even though it took half the book to get started. I can't seem to find the 3rd book at my library or through bookstores or as a digital copy, maybe it's a sign to give up on this series.

[Ryan McArthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, I finally finished this! What a slog. I didn't really like it, it was interesting but I preferred the other books, like lord valentine's castle much more than this. The majopoor books always feel a bit like a travelogue, which can be interesting. I'm not sure I liked the resolution, leaving some of the country mad.

[Hugh Fathers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having just re-read the original 3 novels, and enjoying them, it was even better to read another tale from Majipoor, that was new. The 2nd book of the original 3, introduced us to Dekkeret, and this one expands on what we learned there.
Robert Silverberg writes a good tale, with a good fast pace . . .

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many fantastic and incredible trials dominate Prestimion's early reign. The text is filled with long descriptions in the 18th century style, using many unintelligible words to describe people, places and other beings, yet the underlying theme slips through the labyrinth of meaning. There is magic, too, yet science dominates somehow. There were also many grammatical problems with the text, mostly punctuation, but also clearly incorrect words and some spelling (of actual English words) problems.

[Mark Edlund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science fiction series - Lord Prestimion is now the Coronal of Majipoor. The world is still suffering the aftereffects of who Prestimion finished the civil war in the last book. Some overlap in previous books and some seeds planted that pop up in his earlier books (yes, the timing is confusing). The next book is the last in the series.
No Canadian or pharmacy references.

[P. · Rating 1 out of 5]

drags on and on and nothing much happens

[James Traxler · Rating 4 out of 5]

More Majipoor.
Probably more like 3.5 stars, I think.

[Chip Hunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, even though this book was quite long, not much actually happened in it. The storyline at the end of this one hasn't really changed much at all since the last book. Basically this whole novel was centered around the Procurator of Nimoya's escape from Prestimion and the Coronal's efforts to locate him.. The spreading madness on Majipoor was emphasized but nothing was ever done about it be Prestimion.. Most of the book was taken up by descriptions of the landscape and fauna of the places that Prestimion journeyed through.. Nothing really exciting or surprising happened at all. Yawn.. Wouldn't reccomend this one. I guess I'll go ahead and read the last of the series since I've already come this far, but I don't really have high hopes for it..

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

c1999: FWFTB: Coronal, memory, Labyrinth, battle, Pontifex. Dare I call this as an old-school fantasy. Lots of lovely world building, magic and mystery but very little in the way of detailed characterisation. I didn't close the book feeling at all invested in Prestimion but that could be that I can't remember much from the first book at all. I would recommend to those really hardy spec-fic fans within the normal crew. "They had had the introductory formalities, the embraces and the feasting, and now it was just the two of them together in quiet conversation, Pontifex and Coronal, emperor and king, nominal father and adoptive son. "

[Jenny Clifford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is sort of a classic fantasy series, but set on an alien world filled with lots of different and original species. It reads almost like a space opera, and there are certainly a lot of sci-fi elements in it, as well as magic. It is a lot of fun, with lots of quirky and well written characters, and the plot is very suspenseful. The whole series is very unique, and very well worth a read.

[Lynn Calvin]

ereader ebook

[Deedee]

IL: UG - BL: 7.7 - AR Pts: 30.0

[Alex]

False

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while since I have read the other Majipoor books, so I can't really remember how this one fits in timewise but I enjoyed reading it and must revisit the other Majipoor books .