1986 SF, second of its trilogy. Silence Leigh, already a hyperspace
pilot, has now had some training as a magus, and is ready to have
another try at travelling to lost Earth.
The first book was a picaresque: look at this fascinating and
hazardous universe, and its glorious system of space travel using
celesial harmonies. This one is more of a caper; after the attempt to
reach Earth fails to overcome the defences, all that's left is one
hint at an older approach to FTL travel which might be able to bypass
them. But the details are lost, so this needs a collector of ancient
artifacts. Which would be fine, but he wants a small job done first…
…so from about a quarter of the way through, the main business of the
book is a rescue from a harem. The satrap who has the vital item wants
to overthrow the Hegemon, but his daughter is being held as an
honoured hostage in the Women's Palace… and it'll take a magus to
sneak in and get her out… and because the Hegemony is profoundly
sexist, all his agents (and all other magi) are men.
My feeling on this re-read was that if the first book established the
rules this second book is having adventures within the rules. Which is
fine, and it's good and well-written and it's great to see this kind
of magical problem-solving (in particular how Silence modifies a
library access card to allow her to touch any book rather than just
the ones she's authorised to look at)… but in order to maintain
dramatic tension, we need to know what's possible, and there's
inevitably less sense of wonder than in the first book where the
characters knew what could be done but the reader didn't.
The action is good; the relationships between Silence and various new
and returning characters are fine. (Particular as she realises that,
since her own experience is mostly of being the only woman who gets
things done rather than sitting around being decorative (and playing
deadly social power games), she has been participating in the same
assumption of female incompetence as the men.) But we get less of
Silence's relationship with her husbands (initially a marriage of
convenience that's slid into genuine love), and less piloting, which
seems a shame.
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