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This is a collection of ten stories and novelettes that take place in the nine thousand year history of the planet Majipoor, since it was settled by humans from Earth. Before reading this I had read Lord Valentine's Castle. Majipoor Chronicles would be a good precursor to that novel, though I think it is listed as the second in the series. It helps us understand the culture of Majipoor. The final story is about Valentine, before his great adventure in Lord Valentine's Castle. I believe that all
This was unexpected. After reading Lord Valentine's Castle, which I was a big fan of, I bought the rest of the series and jumped into this book, the second volume. It is a collection of unconnected stories, with a flimsy framing device, set on Majipoor, exploring locales, eccentric inhabitants, races, creatures, politics, and various adventures. A few of the stories were entertaining, a few of them were silly, and several were inconclusive.The first story, about a woman living with an alien in t...
This book is essentially an anthology, caught together into a rough continuity as the education of Hissune, later Coronal in his own right. The premise of an archive of experiences (memory recording?) in the Labyrinth is one of the oddities of Majipoor. In many ways the world is regressed from the (presumed) Galactic Federation with which it has intermittent contact (for more on this, consult Valentine Pontifex). The technologies used by the Majipooreans seem to be understood by few: there are s...
This is a collection of short stories set upon the fictional world of Majipoor. I picked this book up a while ago because I'd read some of Robert Silverberg's short stories before (in sci-fi/fantasy anthologies) but have only just gotten around to reading this book now. I thoroughly enjoyed the book; all the stories were great and well-written. My favourites were 'Thesme and the Ghayrog' (because of the lizard-like alien. I love lizards) and 'In the Fifth Year of the Voyage' (because of the sea-...
Robert Silverberg returned to his magnificent creation Majipoor in his 1982 collection of loosely connected short stories Majipoor Chronicles.Using as a connecting instrument archived research done by Hisune, a minor character in Silverberg’s 1980 introduction to Majipoor Lord Valentine's Castle, the author has collected a series of vignettes that further expand and illustrate the great detail and scope of Majipoor.From human-alien relations (and this is a Robert Silverberg novel so there is sex...
It's not usual for me to give a sci-fi book a 4-star rating but this is a good one for sure. By one of the all-time masters of the genre of course. My only question: Why no flying machines? Also, the final twist at the end was very predictable.
This review is for all three primary books in the Lord Valentine series. Reading the Valentine trilogy was a trip down nostalgia lane. I read the series in early high school and remembered it being one of my favorites. And honestly, i wasn’t disappointed.Book one, Lord Valentine’s Castle is easily the best. It has such a delightful vibrant aura to it. The tone is just right for discovering a strange new world with new species. It’s also one of the earliest blends of fantasy with science fiction,...
Loved the structure of this.It's a collection of short stories set in the world of Majipoor that we came to love in the first book. Throughout the stories of various people, we explore the world and their people a bit more, in ways that we never could have by seeing the story just through Valentine's eyes. It was the right decision: most people's favorite part of these books is the world of Majipoor, and this goes hard on giving us more of that.The stories are connected in that they are basicall...
Majipoor Chronicles is a collection of stories experienced by young Hissune from age 14 to 18. "Experienced" in that they are not really stories being told to him; he lives in these stories via their various protagonists' minds and memories. Science fiction!The book is an excellent encapsulation of Majipoor. From the changes of mind and heart within "Thesme and the Ghayrog" and "The Soul-Painter and the Shapeshifter" to the detailing of dream life in "Crime and Punishment" and "Among the Dream-S...
Classified as the second volume in the Lord Valentine series, this work really is a step back from the rather thrilling adventures of the opening novel, Lord Valentine's Castle since it does not presume to advance that story to any significant degree. With the high fantasy genre, one of the writer's main tasks is rather (or not so) humbly referred to as 'world building'. In this book, I feel that Silverberg simply put his narrative on the shelf and succumbed to the temptation to flesh out the wo...
Ten stories -- five new to this volume and five previously published -- set on the world or Majipoor, Robert Silverberg's majestic creation of human and aliens living on planet of vast proportions. The bookend story continues the tale begun in Lord Valentine's Castle, with the POV shifted to the young street-rat Hisune as his horizons expand with a self-education in the mind-tapes of the culture's archives.
3.5 starsORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.In the first novel of the Majipoor series, Lord Valentine’s Castle, Valentine was aided in the labyrinth by Hissune, a clever and hard-working young street urchin. When Valentine was restored to his position as coronal, he elevated Hissune to a government job in the labyrinth. This was certainly a big step up for Hissune, but he soon discovers that government work is pretty dull. To alleviate the boredom, he talks his way into the Registry of Soul...
"The Geography of the Soul"Robert Silverberg's big science fiction novel Lord Valentine's Castle (1980) depicts the attempts of the unlawfully deposed Valentine to regain his rightful position as Coronal of Majipoor, one of the four "powers" of the planet, journeying and juggling across the exotic landscapes and through the sprawling cities and among the 20-30 billion human and alien inhabitants of the huge world. The conceit of Silverberg's second Majipoor book, Majipoor Chronicles (1982), is t...
Robert Silverberg’s world creation is awesome, and so is his writing, but his stories sometimes feel thin. Similarly to Ursula Leguin’s earthsea, book 2 of Majipoor makes the protagonist from book one more of a side character/cameo appearance. Valentine appears at the end of the book seemingly to set up the next installment in the series. The book is a collection of short stories tethered together by a now young adult Hissune’s doings and curiosities in the labyrinth. I really liked the underlyi...
An excellent novel set on the world of Majipoor - a giant planet settled by humanity's descendants. I would heartily recommend this series (this particular book is the second book of eight) to anyone with a love of SF or fantasy. I must, however, comment upon the quality of the e-book itself - it is a dreadful example of editing or proofreading as, during the process of making my way through the book, I submitted 130 separate corrections ranging from outright typos and incorrect or absent punctu...
Majipoor Chronicles is essentially a grouping of short stories set on and during various time periods of the lush and large world Robert Silverberg created. Some of the stories were previously published. They are all loosely connected by the character of Hissune, who we first met in LVC as a sassy street urchin (are there any other kinds in literature?) who meets Lord Valentine in the Labyrinth. Silverberg has (conveniently) created a Register of Souls, that contains "memory readings" that one
How can anyone not like Science Fiction? The imaginings of sci-fi writers have provoked great thinkers to invent some of the most amazing things we now take for granted that, at one time, would have been thought to be magic. I've been a fan of the genre since forever, but somehow hadn't read anything by the master, Robert Silverberg. How wonderful to find this paperback in the resort library in Cozumel in Feb. This book is the second in a 3 part series (I've not read the other two) that takes pl...
This collection of short stories is set in the same world as Lord Valentine's Castle, which had appeared previously. I didn't much like either book, but this one had the advantage of being a collection of individual pieces, not a single narrative.
I really like Majipoor Chronicles, although it is perhaps a bit disingenuous to call it a "novel". At it's heart, Majipoor Chronicles is a collection of short fiction--although it is loosely connected by the narration of Hissune's discovery of each tale told and the book can be thought of as telling the story of his education to governance. Each "chapter" is a separate tale that Hissune finds in the great Register of Souls, chronicling choice moments in the history of the planet.I actually liked...
Re-Read this book which I first read in my 20s. A series of short stories that have interesting slants on situations.Two of my favourites as experienced by Hissune a 14 year old apprentice and latter staff member on Lord Valentine's staffThe Burning time ... an examination of power and responsibility from the point of view of a Captain viewing his superior, A classical take would be the lines in Shakespeare's Henry V when the King is contemplating sleep and the ease with which a peasant soldier