The Quantum Rose

Don't read this one out of order although you might think, looking at the blurb, that you could.... unlike Kelric in The Last Hawk however, this brother of his, Havryl, who is no warrior or intellectual, but has lived his life as a farmer, ends up on Balumil where the remaining Ruby military has dumped him out of the hands of the Allieds....(see what I mean? You need the context). His arrival on Balumil destabilizes the political infrastructure there when he grabs the gorgeous but affianced governor away from her fiance who is rat-mad about that, you bet, but really, he isn't all that nice to her so.... Due to off-world politics, some later action happens off-planet on Lyshriol where Vyrl grew up. Both planets share some similarities - show more a genetically altered population for a planet that has to be 'sculpted' (not fully terraformed) to enable the people to survive there. Kamoj's people were particularly engineered for docility and for skill with 'current' - (engineering) but they have lost their skills and are gradually declining as the planet is too harsh even sculpted for them to make it without some reliable machinery to provide warmth and light, for example during their very very long winters. What is particularly fun about this one is that Asaro wrote it using the 'dance' of particle physics as her inspiration. In a postscript Asaro offers one of the neatest explanations of that dance that I've ever encountered, I got it while reading it, although retention will be another matter. The Quantum Rose is not the best of the series as it is a wee bit labored here and there, and Vyrl and Jax the two men who are in love with Kamoj are not quite as convincing as, say, my beloved hunk, Kelric, but I read it as absorbedly as ever. I also note she has left room for a return to Balumil - lots of potential for more development of both the planet and the characters. ****

I see looking at the rest of the reviews for QR - it really is a good idea to read in order. She has set up a very complex 'verse and falling into the middle of it just isn't fun. show less

This is something of a sideline to the rest of the Skolian Empire books, and defiiately plays to Asaro's Romantic side rather than the Military SF of, say, Primary Inversion or the Politics of The Moon's Shadow. Look at the cover, pure Mills & Boon.

That said, there's just enough actual SF to count, IMO, and Asaro plotted everything with her particle interactions theory. The way she has some physical phenonomen at the base of her plots is amusing and one of the attractions of her work.

Un bel romanzo a cavallo tra fantascienza classica e cyberpunk, in cui si descrive un classicissimo triangolo amoroso, complicato dallo spazio, da imperi spaziali, da mondi terraformati, da creature geneticamente modificate in vari modi, la cui trama è costruita utilizzando gli stati quantistici, muovendo quindi i tre personaggi principali come se fossero particelle e facendoli interagire in modo quantistico.
Alla fine, ovviamente, il vero amore trionfa, così in cielo come in terra.

In no real way is this a hard SF book, it's a romance with SF elements.
Kamoj Quanta Argali is the young ruler of an impoverished province on a forgotten earth colony. Her people had been adapted to the planet and had survived. Now they're discovered by one of the factions of the galaxy and she finds herself married to Havyrl (Vyrl) Torcellei a member of the Ruby Dynasty, about which she knows really nothing. When her ex-promised husband finds that she is married all hell breaks loose. Sometimes there's a fine line between romance and not upsetting indigenous cultures!
This could have been set in a fantasy world with magic instead of technology and Sea instead of Space travel and you really wouldn't have noticed a great difference. I show more suppose I was expecting great things because of the award but it was an okay read, not a great read. show less

A book of the "Saga of the Skolian Empire" series, 'The Quantim Rose' is a book that probably requires a rudimentary background knowledge of the series to understand the full story. Overall, at it's core, it's a story of a romance between two worlds and cultures that go horribly wrong; which, our two protagonists struggle to overcome to change things for the better. Fans of Star Trek's "The Prime Directive" might find this of interest when the spirit of that rule is not followed in this book.
As interesting as that description sounds, 'The Quantum Rose', suffers from the fact that it's a book that's dealing with multiple plots at the same time that sometimes doesn't transition too well from one to the next.
Others also might find parts of show more this book disturbing, since it involves scenes of kidnapping, coercion, and rape.
Overall, another interesting chapter in the history of the Skolian Empire, though not quite up to the level of the other books in this series. show less

This novel is unique as it is both a play on the beauty and the beast fairytale as well an allegory on quantum scattering theory. I don't dislike Kamoj or Vryl just the book does not work entirely.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1984726.html

Many years ago, when this book originally won the Nebula, I read it and was distinctly underwhelmed. But that was in the days before my bookblogging became serious; now that I am almost finished working through the Nebula winners, I felt I owed it to the book (and to its author, who engaged with me very gracefully and decently over my criticism) to give it another try.

Well. In fairness the novel itself is not all that bad, just very ordinary; our viewpoint character is a beautiful aristocrat bred for a submissive personality (which she is able to overcome just sufficiently for the needs of the plot); she is loved by another aristocrat who is from a different planet and conceals a heart of gold show more under his rugged exterior and alcoholism; and a third aristocrat envies them and tries to break them up ( cut for possible triggering ). Our heroine then goes to her lover's home world where they discover a lost city which his people had carelessly forgotten about. Also the nice aristocrats are locked in conflict with the evil Earth people. Then we find out in an afterword that the entire novel is a metaphor for quantum scattering theory and the three characters should really be considered as elementary particles (I am not making this up).

I guess the kindest thing that I can say is that this sort of thing is simply not my cup of tea; and I think on reflection that among Nebula winners The Quantum Rose is not quite as bad a novel as Robert Sawyer's The Terminal Experiment, and roughly as bad as The Gods Themselves. show less