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highpriestessofeluaI'm reading an very nice series called "Saga of the Skolian Empire" (by Catherine Asaro) that quickly became one of my favorites.
The premise: Around 4000 BCE aliens kidnapped humans from Earth and put them on a distant planet, abandoning them with some of their ships and computer libraries. Within a few centuries, the humans learned the alien technology and created an interstellar civilization called the "Ruby Empire". For reasons not entirely clear, the Ruby Empire eventually collapsed and most of its planets reverted to a primitive technological phase. Thousands of years after that, in the 19th century, the descendants of the Ruby Empire rediscovered space flight and established two interstellar civilizations: the Skolian Imperialate and the Eubian Concord. Earth also attained interstellar flight in the 21st century and established the Allied Worlds of Earth, at some point making contact with its two older and more powerful "siblings".
Skolia an Eube are bitter enemies. Skolia is ruled by some sort of constitutional monarchy, the monarchs of which (the "Ruby Dynasty") have rare genes that make them powerful "psions": empaths and telepaths. This allows them to use ancient Ruby Empire technology that the Skolians don't fully understand to create an interstellar web of instant communication. This gives them a military edge against Eube that is otherwise more powerful. Eube is ruled by a tiny elite called the "Aristo" and headed by a hereditary Emperor. The Aristo are "anti-empaths": they perceive suffering of other people (especially psions) as pleasure, which makes most of them evil sadists that constantly torture their psionic sex-slaves (the "providers") for their own enjoyment. All the other people in Eube are literally slaves of the Aristo.
The style: The series is SciFi with strong elements of romance, a genre I wish there was more of. There are no naughty scenes unfortunatelly. The SciFi is grounded in some actual physics, but for me it's not terribly interesting (I have very high standards when it comes to hard scifi). There are occasional plot holes. Moreover, the entire premise has obvious anti-kink undertones and strongly overstates the relationship between affective empathy and morality. For me though, Asaro's incredible writing more than makes up for all of those shortcomings. The premise seems simplistic at first, but Asaro's characters turn out to be far from black and white, showing a lot of quite elegant nuance. The novels are at times exquisitely exciting, sad or joyful. Neither the action sequences, nor the dramatic political developments nor the romance are disappointing. Highly recommended!
The premise: Around 4000 BCE aliens kidnapped humans from Earth and put them on a distant planet, abandoning them with some of their ships and computer libraries. Within a few centuries, the humans learned the alien technology and created an interstellar civilization called the "Ruby Empire". For reasons not entirely clear, the Ruby Empire eventually collapsed and most of its planets reverted to a primitive technological phase. Thousands of years after that, in the 19th century, the descendants of the Ruby Empire rediscovered space flight and established two interstellar civilizations: the Skolian Imperialate and the Eubian Concord. Earth also attained interstellar flight in the 21st century and established the Allied Worlds of Earth, at some point making contact with its two older and more powerful "siblings".
Skolia an Eube are bitter enemies. Skolia is ruled by some sort of constitutional monarchy, the monarchs of which (the "Ruby Dynasty") have rare genes that make them powerful "psions": empaths and telepaths. This allows them to use ancient Ruby Empire technology that the Skolians don't fully understand to create an interstellar web of instant communication. This gives them a military edge against Eube that is otherwise more powerful. Eube is ruled by a tiny elite called the "Aristo" and headed by a hereditary Emperor. The Aristo are "anti-empaths": they perceive suffering of other people (especially psions) as pleasure, which makes most of them evil sadists that constantly torture their psionic sex-slaves (the "providers") for their own enjoyment. All the other people in Eube are literally slaves of the Aristo.
The style: The series is SciFi with strong elements of romance, a genre I wish there was more of. There are no naughty scenes unfortunatelly. The SciFi is grounded in some actual physics, but for me it's not terribly interesting (I have very high standards when it comes to hard scifi). There are occasional plot holes. Moreover, the entire premise has obvious anti-kink undertones and strongly overstates the relationship between affective empathy and morality. For me though, Asaro's incredible writing more than makes up for all of those shortcomings. The premise seems simplistic at first, but Asaro's characters turn out to be far from black and white, showing a lot of quite elegant nuance. The novels are at times exquisitely exciting, sad or joyful. Neither the action sequences, nor the dramatic political developments nor the romance are disappointing. Highly recommended!
