Skyfall

Dr. Catherine Asaro, theoretical physicist and former ballerina writes space opera like nobody's business. In this one, Roca, psion queen and ballerina(!) with the body of a porn star is swept away by hunky barbarian on horseback. Her family politics dictate interstellar politics and everybody's motives are spelled out in neon. Beyond over the top, the absurdity is delectable because the story is well paced and fun. (March 14, 2005)

Roughly sixty years before the events in Primary Inversion, the Skolian Imperiate stands on the brink of war with the Eubian Concord as a vote comes to the Skolian Assembly on whether to challenge Eube's claim to a region of space rich in platinum, crucial for the technology in both empires.

Skolian Foreign Affairs Counselor Roca Skolia, powerful psion and daughter of the Ruby Dynasty that rules Skolia, finds herself scrambling to get back to the Assembly in time for the vote after having been caught out in a diplomatic responsibility in a remote part of the Empire- no doubt the work of her hawkish son Kurj, leader of the elite Jagernaut branch of the Skolian military, who she fears intends to cast her votes by proxy in favor of the show more invasion.

However, Roca's plans go awry when her attempt to avoid Kurj's security by using an out-of-the-way route instead leaves her out of communication range and stranded on the idyllic-but-primative Ruby Dynasty colony of Skyfall, targeted by the politically neutral Allied Worlds of Earth as a resort colony. Roca quickly falls in love with the local leader Eldrinson, a psion whose rare strength may equal that of the Ruby Dynasty. She and the representative from the Allied Worlds stationed on the planet, Brad, find themselves caught up in a local power struggle, unable to help as Eldrinson's chronic seizures, beyond the treatment of the local medicine, worsen.

Meanwhile, back in the Empire, Kurj, who has been obsessively protective of Roca since her abusive second marriage when he was a child, fears that this time he may have gone too far, and starts combing the entire Empire to find her...

This was a re-read for me, though it's been so long I had forgotten a lot of what happened. Though this is chronologically the first book in the series and it stands alone pretty well, I'm not sure it would be a good place for new readers to start- the frame of war against Eube and the climax of the story would likely have more meaning to a reader already familiar with the way the universe works from other books, and the science part of the science fiction (such as the physicist author's carefully-worked-out faster than light drive and the way psions work in-universe) are mostly relegated to the background here. Primary Inversion or the two-part Triad (Schism and The Final Key) are more representative of the rest of the series, in my opinion.

This is a very character-driven rather than explosion-driven book, and yes, it does center around the romance between Roca and Eldrinson, with a secondary spotlight on the relationship between Roca and Kurj and the interrelationships among the rest of the Ruby Dynasty, including Roca's mother, father, and sister. The romance is fairly typical of the genre, down to the "barbarian" man/"civilized" woman cliche, but it at least manages to sidestep the "controlling alpha male/damaged kick-ass woman" trope so prevalent in the genre by making Eldrinson cheerful, sociable, and well-liked among his people and Roca a talented public speaker with a former career as a dancer- their relationship grows from mutual like and respect, rather than continuous bickering and "I'm dangerous, I might kill you," which puts it a step above the perhaps low bar of other romance subplots I've read in the genre.

However, if the strength of the book is the characters, its weakness is also there- their behavior is often incongruent with what we're told about the setting. I could never quite buy, for example, that the Skolian Empire was a matriarchy in the tradition of an older matriarchy that had lasted thousands of years. We are told that women have always outnumbered men in the military and still do, and proper behavior for men historically was to be decorative and chaste, but the gender roles of men and women presented in the Skolian Empire seem to instead come from our own historically male-dominant society, with women being subject to control from and in need of "protection" by men and social pressure on women to present themselves to appeal to heterosexual men; this runs through a lot of the book, from the behavior of Roca's abusive husband Darr, Kurj's guilt for not protecting her from him, Roca's complaints about having to stay young and attractive for the audience during her dancing career, and the number and nature of the objectifying comments we're told Kurj finds about Roca in records while he is looking for her.

This is replicated in a smaller scale with the characters, mostly through summary in the wrong places- we are told Roca is a dancer, we are told Eldrinson is a something of a judge among his people and they respect his leadership, we are told Kurj is a fearsome military leader, but we are never shown any of this on-screen- we are told Roca danced rather than shown it, Eldrinson's meetings with the rest of the leaders of his people happen off-screen, Kurj only has sparsely-told flashbacks, a couple of quivering assistants, and a faceless army of followers that seem to be presented omnipotent in stopping Roca from getting from point A to point B. We're told that the Assembly has iron-fisted control over the Ruby Dynasty's personal lives and that this is horrible and restrictive for the poor most powerful people in the dynasty, but at the same time we're shown Kurj obstructing Roca's duties with impunity and nobody interfering because they all fear him too much. These contradictions unfortunately rob the characters of the depth they might have had.

The few bright points of character interaction (especially among the members of the Ruby Dynasty) and the quick pacing of the novel sadly just weren't enough to raise it above average for me. show less

The most beautiful woman in the Skolian empire and a powerful empath, Roca ends up somehow stuck on a planet that is only visited by starships once a year, and which is completely without technology. There she meets the father of the Valdorian dynasty, Eldrinson, etc. Half the book is spent on Roca's time on Skyfall, the other half on her other son Kurj's efforts to become Imperator. It was good to see some of the 'history' of the Valdorian family written, but not so interesting that it required a whole novel. In this case, you should judge a book by a cover - this really is a romance novel. Weak science and some unrealistic government/economy plotting drag this down quite a bit. This is not a vision of the future, it is a romance with show more spaceships instead of sailing ships. show less

Meh! Nominally science fiction but actually 100% romance novel. Characters rather single-dimensional and rather unbelievable in some cases. Getting some backstory to the (better) Primary Inversion — the only other book I've read in her Skolian Empire series — was interesting, but not enough to really rescue this book. About the only thing I really enjoyed was the gender role reversal...e.g., women ruining men's honor by sleeping with them prior to marriage. Don't think I'll be bothering with any of the remaining 13 volumes.

Maybe it's a bit of a cheesy sci fi love story -- barbarian sweeps technologically advanced woman off her feet while they're trapped together -- but with an interesting backdrop of politics, people and technology, even the tale as old as time is worth retelling and rereading.

Having read the first of this series I found this one also, also a great read, all about Eldrinson and Roca and how they met, if you've read Primary Inversion (the first published) you know some of what happens and again it reminds me of Lois McMaster Bujold and her books based on Miles' parents.
Lois McMaster Bujold lite and not in a bad way.

This has many dated and oppressive tropes which are not as common in more recent fiction that make this book particularly cringeworthy.
It's hard to believe this is the same author that wrote Primary Inversion much less that this is written considerably later and the former was a first published novel.
That said once I acknowledged the uncomfortable sexism, tyranny packaged as moralistic war, that the natives to the planet of Lyshriol ( more or less native anyway) are an uncomfortable reflection of white supremacist colonial bullshit, I was not as put off by the uncomfortable love story?????
I wish the author would rewrite this.


Review from 2018:
This is as silly as I remember. I plan to re-read this series, since hoopla has it available as show more an audiobook, and the 2 Major Bhaajan books which are written in this universe. I truly love this series but not this book or the immediately following Triad duology.
Roca and Eldri are the parents of Soz and her dynastically important Valdoria Skolia siblings who make up the bulk of the main characters of the novels in this series. Their love story is told in mere paragraphs in various of the series installments. It's told more effectively in those paragraphs than in this novel. The setting on Lyshriol is nice as few of the books are actually set on the world of the Valdoria Skolia siblings. Still, the relationships feel hollow and forced. Eldri behaves in a way that makes it hard to understand what Roca saw in him. Roca's parents don't feel like parents, without context from the series the relationship with Kurj makes no sense. The novel just doesn't work for me. show less