Lord Prestimion - Softcover

Silverberg, Robert

3.63

386 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006511031 ISBN 13: 9780006511038

Publisher: Voyager, 1999

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The latest volume in the bestselling fantasy saga that began with Lord Valentine’s Castle: the eagerly awaited new novel in the Majipoor sequence, one of the most famous and fully realized worlds of modern fantasy.

A sequel to THE SORCERERS OF MAJIPOOR, this sumptuous fantasy is set in a world with four moons in the sky, a Desert of Stolen Dreams, a deadly Labyrinth which is the Register of Souls, rootless trees, flesh-eating flowers... Prestimion has won his title in a lengthy civil war.

Now Coronal of Majipoor, Prestimion’s first mistake is to use a sorcerer’s device to obliterate the war universally from memory. Majipoor must be seen as the perfect world. The result is mass psychosis. Thanks to his mother’s worldwide control of minds from the Isle of Sleep and the allegiance of clever Prince Dekkeret, Prestimion will defeat his resurgent enemy Sambail and cure his people... but only just.

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Review:

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 Langford

Review:

‘Silverberg’s invention is prodigious... like a competent juggler, he maintains his rhythm and suspense to the end’
TLS

‘Spectacularly readable’
The Times

‘Marvel upon marvel... Majipoor Chronicles is a beautiful book’
Los Angeles Times

‘If you like tales with an exotic Arabian Nights piquancy, this book belongs in your hands’
Washington Post Book World

‘Majipoor is probably the finest creation of Silverberg’s powerful imagination and certainly one of the most fully realized worlds of modern fantasy’
Booklist

‘Lord Valentine’s Castle is a surefire page-turner, a brilliant concept of the imagination’
Chicago Sun-Times

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