by Catherine Asaro
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Product Description
Separated for decades by circumstance and political machinations, the Ruby Dynasty, hereditary rulers of Skolia, struggle to bring together the tattered remnants of their family in the shadow of a disastrous interstellar war. Too many have died, others are presumed lost, yet Dyhianna, the Ruby Pharaoh, must move quickly if they are reassume their rightful place as rulers of the Skolian Empire.
Amazon.com Review
Catherine Asaro's Saga of the Skolian Empire has quietly become one of the most interesting, ambitious, and popular science-fiction series since Dune, captivating readers with its complex universe, its diverse cast of sympathetic characters, and its imaginative blend of hard SF, future history, military SF, space opera, family saga, and romance. Spherical Harmonics is the seventh book in the loosely organized series. A woman comes to consciousness on a world she doesn't recognize, and fades out again--literally. As nonexistence and awareness alternate, the woman regains her memory, realizing she is Dyhianna Selei, the Ruby Pharaoh, titular head of the Skolian Empire, who was destroyed in a star-spanning battle that ravaged both her empire and that of its enemy, the Aristos. Instead of dying, Dyhianna was transported to a distant world via the quantum-mechanical universe of Hilbert space--and now she is in danger of disappearing permanently into that nonphysical universe. And that isn't her only problem. Her husband has been physically and psychologically scarred by his captivity in Aristo hands. She may have to overthrow the elected government of her own Empire in order to resurrect it from the ashes of the Radiance War and defend it from the powerful Aristos. Spherical Harmonics follows (and sometimes overlaps) the events in The Radiant Seas, 031286714XThe Quantum Rose, and Ascendant Sun. Other books in the series include Primary Inversion, Catch the Lightning, and The Last Hawk. --Cynthia Ward
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Great read, but don't start here, 2008-02-20
I've been a fan since meeting Asaro at a BayCon in 1997 and purchasing her first two books. Since then, I've followed her Empire as it became increasingly complex and rich. Spherical Harmonic will be confusing as an introduction. Unlike Primary Inversion, The Last Hawk and The Quantum Rose; Spherical Harmonic doesn't stand alone. It brings great detail and development to the Ruby Pharaoh, but without the background of three or four of the earlier books, figuring out what is happening, much less why, is tough.
So, buy it, Primary Inversion and Catch The Lightning. You'll be back for more.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Deep, 2007-09-09
Catherine Asaro's intellect is way beyond mine. I recommend reading her essay at the back of the book before you read the novel. The novel will make more sense if you do that. The Skolian Empire novels are all inter-related and I recommend buying all of them and reading them in the order of publication. I read several of them over a span of about three weeks and it was really cool to see the same event in one book from one character's viewpoint and then see the same event in another book from another character's viewpoint. She intertwines her novels in a very entertaining way. Her characters are real and she mixes erotic scenes, space battles, and suspense in a way that makes her books very difficult to put down.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Much better than the reviews say, 2006-02-04
This is much better than you would believe from the reviews. We finally learn about Dyhianna Selei the Ruby Pharaoh, titular head of the Skolian Empire. Previous books pictured Dyhianna as a lonely genious who wasn't quite human. Distanced from the rest of humanity by her genious as well as her position as one of the rulers of the Skolian empire. In this book Dyhianna is a misunderstood woman who struggles to be understood but doesn't quite make it due to her unique thought processes. After all who will understand a person who thinks in arithmatic equations instead of words. To her the struggle for control of interstellar space between the Skolian empire and Eube is a puzzle which should be reduced to mathmatic equations. The answers she gets are cryptic; not really amiable to comprehension by us lesser mortals. However whatever her modes of thought she is quite human; she feels fear when escaping from torture the Eubian concorde; she loves her family and will do anything to recover her lost husband; she is fiercely loyal to her friends. I liked this book and recommend it to all Asaro fans. It should be a welcome addition to the Skolian saga; filling in blanks in the story such as the role of Dhyianna Seli, the Ruby Pharoah at the time of the Radiance War.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
 We get to know Pharoah Dhyianna at last, 2002-11-02
In many ways this is a fill-in-the-blanks book in the Skolian saga. This book concentrates on Dhyianna Seli, the Ruby Pharoah at the time of the Radiance War.Unlike many of the other books in this series, this one does not concentrate on a romance, including grand sex scenes. Instead this is a political outing, which describes what happened in a political sense at the end of the Radiance war (primary iverson & the radiant seas). Dhyianna comes across as being absolutely essential to the empire and her complaints of the control the skolian assembly has over her family has a sort of hollow ring given how much of what happens in the empire revolves around her individual skills. For some reason, in the other books you get the impression that the 'trader experiment' which produced the hightron race happened in the recent past, but in this book that event is redefinied as having taken place thousands of years ago (which makes more sense). This is not the most inspired book in the series, but it's a definate building block to be read for filling out the Skolian/Allied/Trader universe and the interesting mess that is the Ruby Dynasty.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Catching up with the Skolian Empire, without the sex, 2002-10-01
If you follow the Saga of the struggling Skolian Empire, this volume will fill in some gaps, on the same timeline as Ascendant Sun(keep it to hand while reading). The oft-in-the-background Pharaoh, Dehya attempts to catch up with events, friends and family. As a first person storyline, this time the narrator was unconvincing. Asaro managed this trick well twice with Kelric in earlier stories, so not sure what happened here.... Political earthquakes also rumble almost unnoticed...
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