Amazon.co.uk Review
The vast populous world of Majipoor with its strange political hierarchies and myriad alien races is one of the more impressive creations of planetary romance; Robert Silverberg brings to its exoticism his sensitive and evocative prose and his sense of story as an end in itself. The
Majippor Chronicles is a collection of linked shorts, in which the boy Hissune, a minor character in
Lord Valentine's Castle, rummages in archives of recorded memories and acquires an education in the ways of this particular world. A self-willed woman becomes a recluse and befriends a crippled lizard-man; a great navigator discovers the price of crossing a great ocean; a murderer is pursued by dreams and his own demons; a defrauded young woman discovers the rich ironies possible in a complicated civilisation; two brothers receive an ambiguous prophecy that we know will come true. Individually, these are powerful moody stories, full of memorable people whom we come to know intensely even in a few pages, but together they help amplify our sense of the vast reach of Majipoor in history and geography--and the education of Hissune becomes more than a framing narrative, it becomes another tale of Majipoor in its own right. --
Roz Kaveney
Review
‘There are two things that abide: absolute awe at Silverberg’s capacity for creating images… he makes you see, believe, be there witnessing… and the overarching compassion that colours every word and all the souls in his enormous world’
Los Angeles Times
‘A grand tale by one of the great storytellers of the century’
Roger Zelazny
On Lord Valentine’s Castle:
‘Silverberg’s invention is prodigious… like a competent juggler, he maintains his rhythm and suspense to the end’
Times Literary Supplement
‘Spectacularly readable’
The Times