Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)"Spherical Harmonic" is the seventh book in Catherine Asaro's somewhat non-linear Skolian Saga. Having dealt with many of the other major members of the Valdoria-Skolia-Selei family, Asaro now turns her attention to Dyhianna, the Ruby Pharoah and the woman that created the means by which the Skolian Imperialiate functions as it does: the psiberweb.
For those of you not familiar with Asaro's Skolian universe, in a nutshell, humans crawl their way into the stars in the twenty-second century to find out that, surprisingly enough, humans already occupy most, if not all, of the inhabited planets in the galaxy. Two warring Empires, the Skolians and the Eubians, have fought to control about three-quarters or so of the inhabited planets in the galaxy between them. The Skolians are, in theory, a democracy, although power is uneasily shared between the Skolian ruling family and an elected council. They run their Empire-Democracy through the means of a sort-of collective mental net in which sufficiently sensitive telepaths can communicate instantly with each other, providing an unparalleled means of coordination within the culture. The Eubians, on the other hand, are not only tyrannic and imperial, but they are obsessed with genetics and virtually all the ihabitants of their Empire are slaves. Earth, which finds itself the great Switzerland of the galaxy, finds itself often on the sidelines holding together an alliance that provides the pivot on which the galactic balance of pwer hangs.
All of her previous books have dealt with various members of the Skolian royal family, but Pharaoh Dyhianna has always been a rather shadowy background figure. This book deals with her (from a first-preson perspective) in the wake of the Radiance War that nearly destroyed both the Skolians and the Eubians. It shows Dyhianna in a very surprising light - a woman who is not always easy with her power or the galactic attention she recieves. She is fiercely intelligent, but also quite jealous of her and her family's privacy and power, Dyhianna's saga in "Spherical Harmonic" involves her finding herself (literally) after the end of the war and her impressive struggle to reunite her fractured family.
As with the best books in the Skolian Saga, this one focuses equally on politics, physics and family. Asaro in this book also avoids her sometime tendency (which, admittedly, occurs more with male than female protagonists) to discuss their romantic exploits in quite graphic detail. It is tender, exciting and surprising all in one go. I recommend the entire Skolian Saga, but I do not recommend starting here if you're not familiar with the series. Begin with "Primary Inversion" instead. If you are, definitely read it and if you've been put off by some of the other books in the series, this is book to return to the series with.
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