Somtow Sucharitkul - aka SP Somtow is another of those authors I've been reading and collecting since my mid teens. From the first few chapters of Vampire Junction when I was 15 years old, I have loved his writing.
In recent years I've been scouring the interwebzes for his back catalogue which includes the Chronicles of the High Inquest series of novels. This is number 4 in the series and, until this year, was the final book. However, Somtow has just published book 5 this year, so I decided to finish this one so I can read the new one sooner rather than later.
Unusually, for a book I really enjoyed, I'm not going to encourage anyone to go out and read this. Only do that if you've read the first three in the series.
Things have become complex by this stage in the story and I can't imagine much of it would make sense without reading books 1 to 3 first. If you've read books 1 to 3 already, what are you waiting for.
This is a mind bending series of books. Somtow isn't telling a story on an epic scale. This is cosmic scale storytelling. Book 1 - The Light on the Sound is a nice gentle introduction to the universe of Inquestors and their control over the Dispersal of Man, their games of Makrugh, and travelling through vast star systems using delphinoid starships to cruise theough the overcosm.
The Inquestors have ruled over the Dispersal of Man for twenty thousand years. They're god-like beings, although they all started as human. Their games of tactical one-upmanship can destroy entire worlds. By the time book 4 begins, the revolution is well under way. Allegiances shift and warp in the course of this book and it's well-nigh impossible to summarise the plot effectively, other that, in this one, as advertised on that rather gorgeous cover, their empire will finally crumble.
Somtow's prose in this book is the best it's been for the series. Even in the first book it was good and these are some of Somtow's earliest works. There are images that will truly stick with me - for example, a character whose madness has split his personality into a million pieces physically as well as mentally at one point is seen with all his separate beings superimposed one on top of the other, all sharing the same green eyes. The last few chapters of this book contain some of the best of his writing that I've seen.
There are sequences that, despite being abstract in the extreme, still manage to create genuine tension. That takes huge skill to accomplish.
Some writers build worlds in their books. In this series, Somtow has created an entire universe with all it's own physical laws and limitations. We have starships powered by huge whale like creatures - Remembering when this was written, this may be the first example in science fiction of this type of transport. We have living suns that bathe their humans in ecstacy, planets with think-hives that suplly the Inquestors with their knowledge. The imagination on display is immense.
Don't go looking for hard science fiction. You won't find complex descriptions of how things work. We're told what they are, and that they work,and that's sufficient. It worked for Bradbury's science fiction, and it works here. I'm glad of it too. If the best thing an author has to tell you about is pages of complex mechanics, it's not something I personally want to read. It's a spaceship, it goes to the stars. That's what it's supposed to do.
It's impossible to predict where this series is going because of the sheer cosmic scale of the events. As a grand finale, this book works brilliantly (Of course now we have book 5 just released, but I've had a sneak peak at the opening and there's no cheating going on to reopen the story). This could well be my favourite multi-volume sci-fi epic.
My only regret is leaving as long as I did between reading books three and four. One of the only disadvantages of owning as many books as I do, sometimes getting back to a series is interrupted.
The books in sequence are The Light on The Sound, The Throne of Madness, Utopia Hunters and this one. I have original 80s copies with the fabulously gaudy covers. Somtow has recently republished all 4 with new covers.
Links to buy thems are here.
Book 5 is called The Homeworld of the Heart
https://www.amazon.com/Light-Sound.../dp/B087YTPKH9/
https://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-High.../dp/1940999464/
https://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-High.../dp/0980014921/
https://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-High.../dp/B07B2L3SJB
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