Soarer's Choice: The Sixth Book of the Corean Chronicles
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Praise for "Soarer's Choice"""
"A thunderous, satisfying climax. . . .Modesitt's panoramic, battle-filled final installment ranks among his best work." -"Publishers Weekly", starred review""
" "
"The characters have become more fascinating with each novel; moreover, this one includes even more action than either of its predecessors . . . which contributes mightily to brining the adventures of Dainyl, Alector of Corus, and Mykel, an officer in the native military corps, to a stunning conclusion while leaving enough unanswered questions for many more Corean stories." -"Booklist", starred review
"I especially enjoy the way Modesitt writes characters. The details that he shares create believable characters, that are both powerful and flawed." -"SFRevu.com"
"A thunderous, satisfying climax. . . .Modesitt's panoramic, battle-filled final installment ranks among his best work." -"Publishers Weekly", starred review""
" "
"The characters have become more fascinating with each novel; moreover, this one includes even more action than either of its predecessors . . . which contributes mightily to brining the adventures of Dainyl, Alector of Corus, and Mykel, an officer in the native military corps, to a stunning conclusion while leaving enough unanswered questions for many more Corean stories." -"Booklist", starred review
"I especially enjoy the way Modesitt writes characters. The details that he shares create believable characters, that are both powerful and flawed." -"SFRevu.com"
Product Description
The civilization of the Alectors, which has farmed and developed all life on Corus to produce sustaining life force for their vampiric civilization, must move wholesale from one planet to another every few thousand years as it exhausts the life force of another world. This time, two worlds have been prepared, and the time is at hand for the great move. And Corus is the looking like the loser, to be abandoned by the civilizing forces of the government of Alectors, but used as a dumping ground for malcontents and others who don't make the cut to move on to a richer new world. This neither bodes well for the future of human civilization, nor for the honest Alector's such as Dainyl, trying to hold everything together, as all systems are failing. But the mysterious Ancients, the Soarers, are a force to be reckoned with, and they may hold a powerful and destructive trump card.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This book as the last of three is oddly the best. The grammar and the way it is written is better and it provides a better plot line. Saying this though the end leaves lots of questions and most likely will leave you thinking 'is that it?'. I have seen better and worse. Not bad.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The 'story' seems to be just so much military posing: arranging battle lines etc etc. Not having read any previous books in the series, it took quite a while to get the hang of what was happening. Gave up a quarter of the way thu...
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
14 reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
So-so finale, strong intrigues hurt by weak plot resolution
24 Nov 2006
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Soarer's Choice is an acceptable but not great finale to the Corean Chronicles. Modesitt weaves an interesting tale of political intrigues with his characters but doesn't do a particularly satisfying job of tying that to the world he's created, meaning plot development and resolution leaves something to be desired. I take a star off for the overall plot and a half star for shunting one of his lead protagonists to a secondary role, but I'll round it up to 4 stars as the intrigues were interesting enough the first read through to keep me up past my bedtime.
The basic problem of writing a prequel is that the reader already knows the ending, which means if you're not careful as a writer you end up spending the majority of your plot on things that either don't matter or just seem contrived to get you to the beginning of the next book. (Think the Star Wars prequels: you suffer 8 hours of hell to finally get to the great last 30 minutes, and even then parts of it feel contrived.) Modesitt's actually been both very good (the first few Recluce books) and very bad (the Cyador novels) at walking this line.
Soarer's Choice falls somewhere in between. In this case, the prequel's problem is that at the start of the book we know that something was done to the life-sucking, planet-invading alectors by the ancients, but we're not sure about who, how, when, and what resulted, just that those questions have to be answered by the end of the book. (The why at least is nicely answered over the last couple of books.) The resolution of all these questions would have made a very meaty, intriguing plot.
Instead, we get a political drama surrounding the commander of the alector military forces, Dainyl, and a less-satisfying series of military battles with his native counterpart, Mykel. While Dainyl's ultimate moves are predictable for a Modesitt protagonist - when those above you don't get the problem (in this case keeping the alectors from killing the planet off for selfish personal gain), fix it yourself! - it's still one of Modesitt's better one-man-against-the-world stories in a while and worth the read. On the other hand, Mykel gets shunted off to a series of military battles that may be important to setting up the world of the sequels but have almost nothing to do with the impending ancient vs. alector struggle we know is coming. As a result, his plot line seems largely irrelevant. With character development stunted, even with vastly reduced stage time every time he shows up it feels like he's taking away from the main plot, not adding to it. The two plotlines barely interact, a shame given the effort Modesitt made in developing Mykel in the first two books.
The bigger problem, though, is that while we get answers to the what resulted and when questions we really don't get much of an answer to who and how. Dainyl's struggles end up being a very interesting story that is largely marginal to the bigger overall plot resolution, and Mykel's struggles add almost nothing. This would have been a far better book had both characters been a couple of the main answers to who, the plot focused on how, and Modesitt doing his normal great job with the moral questions that raises for both. Instead, the plot more or less just finishes and we're set up for the original three books.
Still, the Dainyl story is a good read and this is more worth buying than most fantasy books. With a different plot line, though, this could have been one of Modesitt's best, and that's a bit of a let down.
The basic problem of writing a prequel is that the reader already knows the ending, which means if you're not careful as a writer you end up spending the majority of your plot on things that either don't matter or just seem contrived to get you to the beginning of the next book. (Think the Star Wars prequels: you suffer 8 hours of hell to finally get to the great last 30 minutes, and even then parts of it feel contrived.) Modesitt's actually been both very good (the first few Recluce books) and very bad (the Cyador novels) at walking this line.
Soarer's Choice falls somewhere in between. In this case, the prequel's problem is that at the start of the book we know that something was done to the life-sucking, planet-invading alectors by the ancients, but we're not sure about who, how, when, and what resulted, just that those questions have to be answered by the end of the book. (The why at least is nicely answered over the last couple of books.) The resolution of all these questions would have made a very meaty, intriguing plot.
Instead, we get a political drama surrounding the commander of the alector military forces, Dainyl, and a less-satisfying series of military battles with his native counterpart, Mykel. While Dainyl's ultimate moves are predictable for a Modesitt protagonist - when those above you don't get the problem (in this case keeping the alectors from killing the planet off for selfish personal gain), fix it yourself! - it's still one of Modesitt's better one-man-against-the-world stories in a while and worth the read. On the other hand, Mykel gets shunted off to a series of military battles that may be important to setting up the world of the sequels but have almost nothing to do with the impending ancient vs. alector struggle we know is coming. As a result, his plot line seems largely irrelevant. With character development stunted, even with vastly reduced stage time every time he shows up it feels like he's taking away from the main plot, not adding to it. The two plotlines barely interact, a shame given the effort Modesitt made in developing Mykel in the first two books.
The bigger problem, though, is that while we get answers to the what resulted and when questions we really don't get much of an answer to who and how. Dainyl's struggles end up being a very interesting story that is largely marginal to the bigger overall plot resolution, and Mykel's struggles add almost nothing. This would have been a far better book had both characters been a couple of the main answers to who, the plot focused on how, and Modesitt doing his normal great job with the moral questions that raises for both. Instead, the plot more or less just finishes and we're set up for the original three books.
Still, the Dainyl story is a good read and this is more worth buying than most fantasy books. With a different plot line, though, this could have been one of Modesitt's best, and that's a bit of a let down.
Continues to tantalize
12 Jan 2008
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Modesitt continues this univers with a terrifig conclusion setting up the original three books. It is amazing how he develops th echaracters, melds the various plots and time lines and always keeps you wanting more.
Great Series Finale
12 Dec 2007
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The sixth book in a series I found this to be a satisfying ending. There were still some unanswered questions but, I enjoyed the book and the series as a whole.
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