Catherine Asaro

Major Bhaajan's next case has her investigating the disappearance of a woman from a gala where she was set to announce the winning of a major and lucrative contract. Bhaaj was at the gala because her employers - the Majdas - asked her to attend to look for anything suspicious. She is immediately sympathetic toward the woman's bewildered husband and is especially so because another investigator is so certain that he is guilty.

Things heat up when someone tries to kill Bhaaj as she show more investigates. Bhaaj isn't at all certain that it isn't her employers. But, no matter who wants her dead, Bhaaj isn't going to rest until she figures out what happened to Mara Quida. Things get even more complicated when another woman vanishes in the same way that Mara did. Only this one was an old friend of her employer Colonel Lavinda Majda who is third in line for the Majda throne.

I love the world building in this story which takes place on Raylicon - a dying world with a lack of fresh water and only two cities. The City of Cries is where all the wealthy, powerful, and beautiful live. The Undercity is where Bhaaj is from. The people there have their own culture and language and have little to do with the people from Cries who look down on them. However, it was recently discovered that the people in the Undercity have a much larger percentage of psychic gifts than the general population and those gifts are need to keep the galactic civilization working.

Bhaaj left the Undercity to join the army and then retired back home when her enlistment period was up. She came back with a galactic education, many physical enhancements, and a desire to help the citizens of Undercity survive and flourish in the greater galactic culture.

Her investigation takes her from Cries to the Undercity and out into the desert to the three ships that brought the original settlers from Earth to Raylicon thousands of years in the past and are now a scientific treasure guarded by the army.

An Appendix at the end of the book lets the reader see some of the ways this story and its science grew. Asaro has a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics which means that reading it seemed like magic to this math-challenged reader. The real math and science was no less magical than the science and math in the story. Luckily, readers can enjoy the wonderful, detailed and engaging characters whether or not math is a language they speak. show less

Major Bhaajan's next case has her investigating the disappearance of a woman from a gala where she was set to announce the winning of a major and lucrative contract. Bhaaj was at the gala because her employers - the Majdas - asked her to attend to look for anything suspicious. She is immediately sympathetic toward the woman's bewildered husband and is especially so because another investigator is so certain that he is guilty.

Things heat up when someone tries to kill Bhaaj as she show more investigates. Bhaaj isn't at all certain that it isn't her employers. But, no matter who wants her dead, Bhaaj isn't going to rest until she figures out what happened to Mara Quida. Things get even more complicated when another woman vanishes in the same way that Mara did. Only this one was an old friend of her employer Colonel Lavinda Majda who is third in line for the Majda throne.

I love the world building in this story which takes place on Raylicon - a dying world with a lack of fresh water and only two cities. The City of Cries is where all the wealthy, powerful, and beautiful live. The Undercity is where Bhaaj is from. The people there have their own culture and language and have little to do with the people from Cries who look down on them. However, it was recently discovered that the people in the Undercity have a much larger percentage of psychic gifts than the general population and those gifts are need to keep the galactic civilization working.

Bhaaj left the Undercity to join the army and then retired back home when her enlistment period was up. She came back with a galactic education, many physical enhancements, and a desire to help the citizens of Undercity survive and flourish in the greater galactic culture.

Her investigation takes her from Cries to the Undercity and out into the desert to the three ships that brought the original settlers from Earth to Raylicon thousands of years in the past and are now a scientific treasure guarded by the army.

An Appendix at the end of the book lets the reader see some of the ways this story and its science grew. Asaro has a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics which means that reading it seemed like magic to this math-challenged reader. The real math and science was no less magical than the science and math in the story. Luckily, readers can enjoy the wonderful, detailed and engaging characters whether or not math is a language they speak. show less

Major Bhaajan's next case has her investigating the disappearance of a woman from a gala where she was set to announce the winning of a major and lucrative contract. Bhaaj was at the gala because her employers - the Majdas - asked her to attend to look for anything suspicious. She is immediately sympathetic toward the woman's bewildered husband and is especially so because another investigator is so certain that he is guilty.

Things heat up when someone tries to kill Bhaaj as she show more investigates. Bhaaj isn't at all certain that it isn't her employers. But, no matter who wants her dead, Bhaaj isn't going to rest until she figures out what happened to Mara Quida. Things get even more complicated when another woman vanishes in the same way that Mara did. Only this one was an old friend of her employer Colonel Lavinda Majda who is third in line for the Majda throne.

I love the world building in this story which takes place on Raylicon - a dying world with a lack of fresh water and only two cities. The City of Cries is where all the wealthy, powerful, and beautiful live. The Undercity is where Bhaaj is from. The people there have their own culture and language and have little to do with the people from Cries who look down on them. However, it was recently discovered that the people in the Undercity have a much larger percentage of psychic gifts than the general population and those gifts are need to keep the galactic civilization working.

Bhaaj left the Undercity to join the army and then retired back home when her enlistment period was up. She came back with a galactic education, many physical enhancements, and a desire to help the citizens of Undercity survive and flourish in the greater galactic culture.

Her investigation takes her from Cries to the Undercity and out into the desert to the three ships that brought the original settlers from Earth to Raylicon thousands of years in the past and are now a scientific treasure guarded by the army.

An Appendix at the end of the book lets the reader see some of the ways this story and its science grew. Asaro has a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics which means that reading it seemed like magic to this math-challenged reader. The real math and science was no less magical than the science and math in the story. Luckily, readers can enjoy the wonderful, detailed and engaging characters whether or not math is a language they speak. show less

A whole lot of genetic and biological determinism, matriarchy, men-as-sex-slaves and a complex and interesting universe encountered mainly in passing through infodumps that drift along whenever the romance plotline needs a rest. This last point is rather similar to [a:Sharon Lee|57980|Sharon Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1249574929p2/57980.jpg] and [a:Steve Miller|5829|Steve Miller|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1249575165p2/5829.jpg]'s early Liaden universe books. But the show more Liaden books also differ on a critical pointLee and Miller treat all their characters, male or female, Liaden or alien, with a reasonable degree of respect.

Asaro does not. Our Hero, who spent the last book ([b:The Last Hawk|672961|The Last Hawk (Saga of the Skolian Empire, #3)|Catherine Asaro|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1312060043s/672961.jpg|3926]) being traded around like a commodity between six different "queens" on the planet Coba, most of whom he was forced to sleep with, is captured and made a sex slave by the evil "Aristos," who feed off of the pain of telepaths like him. Part of auctioning him off to the highest bidder apparently required a fade-to-black gang rape of Our Hero by three women and a man, from which he emerges tired and wanting a shower. He then continues on with his journey, having sex with lots of people, including one of his rapists who is now his owner, mostly against his will (but he likes it and sort of falls in love with them because of his empathic abilities, UGH). 150 pages later, in the middle of a daring escape, he does pause briefly to reflect that "the rape they had committed imprinted on his mind at a level so deep, it had become a part of him, like emotional scar tissue" (Asaro, p. 241). It was easy to find this via Google Books, because this is the only place in the whole book that the word "rape" is actually used. After this throwaway line, which in no way is reflected by any kind of change in his thoughts, behavior or reactions to others, Our Hero completes his mission, escapes, and trades sex for shelter from an average-looking woman, falling in love with her because of how "caring" she is. The novel triumphantly concludes that for the first time he got to "choose" who to love rather than have her "chosen" by others, happy music, the end. Incidentally, this is the only relationship in both of the books about him where he's the one in a position of power (he's the Imperator of Skolia, she's a former slave conditioned to obedience) over his partner rather than the other way around.

There are no words. I want to keep reading because the universe is interesting, but a) throwing in a gratuitous rape for no reason, and b) dealing completely unrealistically with the consequences of that rape, not to mention the rest of the sexual abuse that is portrayed - means I'm not sure I want this woman getting into my head any more.

Yuck. It's frustrating, too, because part of what I liked about the first book where we encounter Our Hero is how realistically it dealt with the emotional and psychological consequences of the extreme objectification he experienced, from both overt and subtle angles, while being considered both "valuable" and "special" by the women objectifying him. show less