Prince of Storms

By Kay Kenyon

Finally in control of the Ascendancy, Titus Quinn has styled himself Regent of the Entire. But his command is fragile. He rules an empire with a technology beyond human understanding; spies lurk in the ancient Magisterium; the Tarig overlords are hamstrung but still malevolent. Worse, his daughter Sen Ni opposes him for control, believing the Earth and its Rose universe must die to sustain the failing Entire. She is aided by one of the mystical pilots of the River Nigh, the space-time transport system. This navitar, alone among all others, can alter future events. He retires into a crystal chamber in the Nigh to weave reality and pit his enemies against each other.

Taking advantage of these chaotic times, the great foe of the Long War, the Jinda ceb Horat, create a settlement in the Entire. Masters of supreme technology, they maintain a lofty distance from the Entire’s struggle. They agree, however, that the Tarig must return to the fiery Heart of their origins. With the banishment immanent, some Tarig lords rebel, fleeing to hound the edges of Quinn’s reign.

Meanwhile, Quinn’s wife Anzi becomes a hostage and penitent among the Jinda ceb, undergoing alterations that expose their secrets, but may estrange her from her husband. As Quinn moves toward a confrontation with the dark navitar, he learns that the stakes of the conflict go far beyond the Rose versus the Entire--extending to a breathtaking dominance. The navitar commands forces that lie at the heart of the Entire’s geo-cosmology, and will use them to alter the calculus of power. As the navitar’s plan approaches consummation, Quinn, Sen Ni, and Anzi are swept up in forces that will leave them forever changed.

In this rousing finale to Kenyon’s celebrated quartet, Titus Quinn meets an inevitable destiny, forced at last to make the unthinkable choice for or against the dictates of his heart, for or against the beloved land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 9, 2010
• ISBN: 9781591028543

Kay Kenyon

Kay Kenyon is the author of fourteen science fiction and fantasy novels as well as numerous short stories. Her work has been shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick and the John W. Campbell Memorial Awards, the Endeavour Award, and twice for the American Library Association Reading List Awards. Her series The Entire and the Rose was hailed by The Washington Post as “a splendid fantasy quest as compelling as anything by Stephen R. Donaldson, Philip Jose Farmer, or yes, J.R.R. Tolkien.” Her novels include Bright of the Sky, A World Too Near, City Without End, Prince of Storms, Maximum Ice (a 2002 Philip K. Dick Award nominee), and The Braided World. Bright of the Sky was among Publishers Weekly’s top 150 books of 2007. She is a founding member of the Write on the River conference in Wenatchee, Washington, where she lives with her husband.

Reviews for Prince of Storms

[epersonae_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took me a while to get into this one; I'm not sure how much was the break between volumes, how much was the feeling of resolution at the end of volume three, and how much was the sheer complicatedness of the story. But once I did get into it, I couldn't put it down! Compelling and complex story, with interesting growth in all the main characters. I would have wished for a bit more in our world, but other than that it was fantastic.

[jvstin_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Prince of Storms is the fourth and final book in Kay Kenyon's The Rose and the Entire Quintet. Starting with Bright of the Sky,progressing through A World Too Near, and City without End, the Series has followed the travails of Titus Quinn. Quinn, a pilot whose accidental visit to the alternate universe of the Entire is used by the Minerva Corporaton to send him again, has grown from searching for his lost wife and daughter, to toppling the Tarig overlords of the Entire itself, and setting himself against his daughter.Now, in the fourth volume of the series, the themes and stories of the Entire and the Rose quartet come to a head as the different visions of the future of the Entire, and the Rose (our universe) clash together. Quinn's desire to keep Earth and the Entire safe is set against his daughter Sen Ni (Sydney)'s desire to have the Entire survive at any and all costs. And then there is Geng De, the Navitar friend to Sydney who has a decidedly different view of what should happen to the Entire. And finally, there are the Jinda Ceb. Former eternal enemy of the Tarig, now that the Tarig are overthrown, and they are part of the Entire, what is THEIR vision of the future of the two universes?In Prince of Storms, these larger issues are resolved, as well, and as always, set against the personal stories of Quinn, his daughter Sen Ni, his (first) wife Johanna, his Entire wife, Ji Anzi, and many others. Kenyon's big canvas and big questions are grand and epic, but her characters inhabit this complex pair of worlds. I have to admit, the ending to this novel, and the fates of the characters are understandable, fitting, and logical, given the sequence of events. What they are decidedly not, however, are predictable given the start of the series. This is not a simple quartet where the hero simply journeys across the landscape, picks up companions, overthrows the dark lord, and rules happily ever after. Kenyon's writing, narrative and story are far more nuanced than that.As always, one should not start here with this book, and I don't even think its realistically possible to fully enjoy this book without having read its predecessors. If you want wide canvas science fiction that is very much in the mold of planetary romance and epic fantasy, and with more than a dash of characters that will propel you through this landscape, I cannot recommend Kay Kenyon's The Rose and the Entire Quartet enough.I have heard that Kenyon is going to turn from SF to more straightline fantasy for her next work. Thanks to the strength of writing and the enjoyment of reading the Rose and Entire Quartet, this reader will certainly follow her into those realms as well. Read the Rose and the Entire Quartet, and find out for yourself why.

[sunhesjan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's sad to see this series come to an end. But after wondering through half the book how Kenyon was going to work (dare I say *weave*) all these complicated motives and relationships together, I felt really satisfied with the way she brought it all to a close -- with one little loose end dangling. I can definitely recommend "The Entire & the Rose" as one of the most imaginative SF series in recent years, with a memorable universe, interesting sentients, and characters that can annoy the hell out of you but still evolve and redeem themselves. I was especially pleased with Anzi's character development; she was always my favorite and it was so frustrating to see her feisty spirit get eclipsed by the cult of Titus in the third book (this was of course on purpose...) For me, Titus was from the very beginning a difficult person to like, but that was also Kenyon's intent; readers who feel as I did will probably agree that in the end he finally did and said the right thing.

[jasonpettus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)Fans of course are already familiar with one of the biggest frustrations that comes with genre work -- and that's when a person will become interested in a series of related books but only when the series is already halfway over, forcing the person to have to go back and read all the previous titles in order to even begin to understand the one that most recently came out. And that just goes double for book critics like me who will often receive free copies of such titles out of the blue, many of them frankly modest sellers only that could really benefit from some extra publicity; for example, science-fiction publisher Pyr is notorious for constantly sending me "part 6 of the 'Destroyer of Worlds' tetralogy" or whatever, with neither them having the resources to mail the previous five novels nor with me having the time to read them in the first place. But the good news is that in our modern times, more and more online resources exist to help us understand these sometimes insanely complicated backstories, without having to literally sit and read all the previous volumes in a given series; between Amazon, Goodreads, Wikipedia and official publisher/author websites, it can in fact sometimes be ridiculously easy to get up to speed, which allows us to simply start with the volume we just happen to have at that moment, for whatever reason we ended up with that one instead of the first title in the series.For example, take two such books I recently received from Pyr, the first of which, Kay Kenyon's Prince of Storms (part four of "The Entire and The Rose" series), seems especially intimidating to just jump into feet-first; because in reality, it's actually one of those quasi-fantasy tales you sometimes see within the world of SF, ones that rely on such futuristic tropes as spaceships and laser guns but in actuality have much more in common with the work of JRR Tolkien -- elaborate races, grand mythologies, feudal political systems, unpronounceable names -- all set in a very earthy type of environment that barely evokes the common sterile images of most science-fiction (with of course the best-known of all these being Frank Herbert's "Dune" series, from which all other quasi-fantasy SF series seem to heavily borrow, a far-future science-based tale to be sure, but that might as well have hobbits and rings of power for all the Toklienesque elements found within it).Thankfully, though, a couple of days* spent reading the entire series' background information online, as well as the hundreds of user reviews now posted of the first three volumes, presents us with a world that's not too terribly difficult to understand: it turns out that in Kenyon's universe, there's actually a parallel dimension of existence known as "The Entire," with Earth (known to them as "The Rose") simply a smaller and newer offshoot, a place bordered by magically vertical rivers of energy that one can "sail" across to get from one place to another, folding the space-time continuum along the way in order to make the journey faster (yes, just like in "Dune"), but with the specially trained pilots essentially assured of going insane after a lifetime of doing so (yes, just like in "Dune"). Much like Stephen Donaldson's quasi-fantasy series from the 1970s and '80s, then, "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever," Kenyon's "Entire and Rose" series is mostly centered around an Earthling named Titus Quinn, who travels back to this alternate universe after visiting there a first time and forgetting the experience; what the first three books mostly consist of is Quinn slowly remembering all the details of this universe (including the elite "Tarig" race who have ruled the Entire for thousands of years, the intellectually equal "Jinda ceb Horat" that they are in a constant state of war with, the Chinese-like "Chalin" humanoid race created to be the Tarigs' servants, and a lot more), not to mention the growing alienation between himself and his abandoned daughter Sydney, raised by a race of telepathic riding beasts known as the Inyx, lied to by the Tarig concerning her father's true motivations, who has decided instead to "go native" and become his enemy, and who now goes by the more Entire-appropriate name of "Sen Ni."Whew! And that of course bring us to an unfortunate problem with such complicated quasi-fantasy series, when you try to simply pick them up in the middle; because when I sat down to actually read Prince of Storms, I realized that although I had done a good job at understanding all the major events and characters fueling this uber-storyline, I still had barely any clue about the dozens of minor characters holding the whole thing together. And of course this can be much less serious an issue based on what kind of SF series it is (but more on that in a bit); but it's a notoriously difficult situation with quasi-fantasy tales, in that such tales include just so many made-up names that are so hard to remember, and so many Shakespearean complications regarding families and clans and races and alliances and the like. And now combine this with the fact that I myself don't particularly care for fantasy tales to begin with, mostly because I can't stand the overdone preciousness of the writing that seems to inevitably come with such books, the overly complicated mythology and the infuriating habit among such writers to never use contractions. ("I do not know why the word 'don't' does not exist in our language, Flinthy the Wise! I do not know why!") So at the end, then, despite all the work put in to get myself up to speed, I still found Prince of Storms only middling at best, a thoroughly genreriffic tale that will only be enjoyed by hardcore genre fans; although in its defense, I should mention that existing fantasy fans go nuts for these books online, with many of them declaring "The Entire and the Rose" one of the best quasi-fantasy tales ever written. You know already whether you're one of these people or not; if you are, it will be worth checking this out no matter what I in particular have to say.And that brings us to the second book under examination today, Mike Resnick's Starship: Flagship, part five of his "Starship" series -- and like I said, this one has a backstory that's much easier to pick up on, because the "Starship" series is ultimately a nice simple space opera (you know, like "Star Wars"), and by their very nature space operas tend to be not that difficult to understand. Ultimately it's the story of one Wilson Cole, charismatic and popular captain within the military of the sprawling Galactic Republic, who eventually goes rogue over his growing dissatisfaction with the bureaucracy-saddled Republic and its gradual turn to evil; each book in the series, then, is a nearly standalone tale concerning the adventures of Cole and his ragtag crew within the battleship Theodore Roosevelt (or "Teddy R" as it's affectionately known), each title reflecting the state of that ship's relationship with the Republic in any given year -- so Starship: Mutiny is about the year they break away from the Republic, Starship: Pirate is about the year they decide to be privateers, etc. Flagship, then, is the last book in the series, the one where Cole decides to topple the Republic for good, once and for all.And indeed, Resnick's book seems to suffer nearly the opposite problem of Kenyon's, in that it's so simple to nearly be insulting at points; you know, one of those corny shoot-em-ups designed primarily for teenage boys and the Comic Book Guys they eventually turn into, full of cheesy one-note characters whose one notes are then infinitely hammered home over and over, like a two-by-four to the back of the head (and seriously, Resnick, I get it, okay? Valkyrie really likes killing people, I f-cking get it already). As I've said many times before, such simplicity isn't necessarily that bad just unto itself -- after all, it's these exact kinds of books that make up the vast bulk of all genre novels that are published in any given year, the kind that fetishistically deliver every little touch that a SF fan is looking for and not an ounce more, with Resnick's 33 Hugo nominations and five wins proving that he's doing something right -- just that it's hardcore genre fans who will be the only ones to truly enjoy a book like this, a title that can very easily be skipped over by those who are merely casual fans of science-fiction.Still, as I've hopefully shown today, it's easier than ever these days to become one of these fans if you're so inclined, and surprisingly easy to get caught up on multipart series without necessarily having to read the entire series in question. The next time you yourself come across a title that seems intriguing, but tells the middle stories of a long-running saga, I encourage you to keep all these things in mind.Out of 10: Prince of Storms: 7.3, or 8.8 for fans of quasi-fantasyStarship: Flagship: 7.6, or 8.1 for fans of space opera*And yes, in both cases, it really did take me two entire days to read through the hundreds of user reviews now found online of these series' previous books, at places like Amazon and Goodreads. At first this may seem like an excessive amount of research just to get caught up on the developments of a middling science-fiction series; better, though, to compare this to the amount of time it would take to read all the actual books in that series.