Lord Prestimion (The Majipoor Cycle) Book

Robert Silverberg has been one of SF's most prolific and popular writers since the mid-1950s. His science-fantasy stories set in the huge and exotic world Majipoor began with Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)--which the SF Encyclopedia calls "polished but rather languid". In Lord Prestimion the hero Prestimion takes the throne as Coronal, co-ruler of Majipoor, 1000 years before Lord Valentine's reign. His crowning follows the long and ruinous civil war to overthrow an usurping Coronal, a war now literally forgotten: Prestimion's sorcerers have imposed amnesia on Majipoor in hope of preventing any further uprising. Such a memory-wipe reeks of wrongness and has seemingly caused the plague of insanity currently spreading. Meanwhile, one very bad man who was a leading rebel and warmonger recovers his memories and escapes to make new mischief... After various colourful, almost dream-like travelogues the situation is saved--a little too easily?--by telepathic gadgetry. (The device in question and several crossover characters appeared in the 1982 story-cycle Majipoor Chronicles.) Smoothly written but somewhat short on real suspense-- even in the swashbuckling comic sequence when Prestimion's regent fights and kills at least 21 would-be assassins during one morning's office paperwork. It's a man's life in the Majipoor civil service. --David LangfordRead More