Lord Prestimion (Prestimion Trilogy)
Robert Silverberg has been one of SF's most prolific and popular writers since the mid-1950s. His science-fantasy stories set on the huge, exotic world called Majipoor began withLord Valentine's Castle(1980), which theEncyclopedia of Science Fictioncalls "polished but rather languid." InLord Prestimion, the hero Prestimion takes the throne as Coronal, coruler of Majipoor, a millennium before Lord Valentine's reign. His crowning follows the long, ruinous civil war to overthrow a usurping Coronal, a war now literally forgotten: Prestimion's sorcerers have imposed amnesia on the people of Majipoor in hope of preventing any further uprising. Such a memory wipe reeks of wrongness and seems to have caused the infectious plague of insanity. Meanwhile, one very bad man, who is a leading rebel and warmonger, recovers his memories and escapes to make new mischief. After various colorful, almost dream-like travelogues, the situation is saved--a little too easily?--by telepathic gadgetry. (The device in question and several crossover characters appear in the 1982 story-cycleMajipoor 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 just another day in the life of a Majipoor civil servant.--David Langford, Amazon.co.uk--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.