The Galaxy Game in SpecFic Buddy Reads

Mar 20, 2016 Lindsay rated it really liked it

A young man finds his place in a rapidly changing galactic society.

Rafi Delarua is the nephew of Grace from The Best of All Possible Worlds (he appeared briefly in that book). He's a powerful coercive telepath, like his father was, but he's nothing like his father. At the beginning of the book he's a resident of the Lyceum, a combination school/prison/hospital for kids with psionic powers. The predominantly anti-psi Cygnan society place people there whose powers are either dangerous or difficult A young man finds his place in a rapidly changing galactic society.

Rafi Delarua is the nephew of Grace from The Best of All Possible Worlds (he appeared briefly in that book). He's a powerful coercive telepath, like his father was, but he's nothing like his father. At the beginning of the book he's a resident of the Lyceum, a combination school/prison/hospital for kids with psionic powers. The predominantly anti-psi Cygnan society place people there whose powers are either dangerous or difficult to classify. Rafi doesn't use his powers so the people who run the Lyceum don't trust him and take measures to control him. There's also Ntenman, Rafi's best friend and Serendipity, a native Cygnan telepath whose story we follow.

At the same time there are larger forces striving for control and manipulation, including one of the Sadiran survivor colonies which is going to some effort to snap up all pure-bred female Sadiri for what seems to be a life of captivity and coerced breeding. The Sadiri situation is covered in the first book; basically the Sadiri society was patriarchal and few Sadiri females ever left the planet, so when the population of Sadir was destroyed it left a massive gender imbalance with the survivors. There are also issues with the Zhivan trade cartels who are moving to dominate interstellar travel and trade, and taking covert (and eventually extremely overt) action against one of the other major populations.

Only it's all more complicated than that.

This is a completely different sort of book to the first one. The first one was an exploration of a vast and diverse planetary society paired with an exploration of self between two people falling slowly in love. This one shares the exploration element, but does a deep exploration of several of the planets and cultures of this galactic society. It's also basically a coming of age story for the Rafi and Ntenman and to a lesser extent, Serendipity, but that's all treated with a very light hand against such a rich political and cultural background. The societies, particularly that of Punartam, feel really alien.

Ultimately, lots more happens with this one than the first, but I liked the character of Grace Delarua much more than the characters in this one. I didn't like any of the three main characters of this one, with Rafi coming across as a bit thick, Ntenman as venal and Serendipity as shallow. But then again, I don't think the author much likes them either, because she pretty much abandons them in the last quarter of the book where suddenly we get lots of other PoV characters.

I loved the creativity of the rich setting, but the characters weren't great and I thought the execution fell fairly flat in the end. But this is such a cool effort of world-building, I have to rate it up on that alone. ...more

16 likes · Like · see review

Mar 19, 2016 Robyn rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016

A quiet 4 stars. I spent a lot of this book mildly confused but also happy to be back into the elaborate universe Lord has constructed. The book lacked the compelling characters of the previous, but retained the fascinating social structures.

10 likes · Like · see review