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A review by continuity23
Crystal dragon by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee
3.0
(Note: this review addresses both Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon, as I read them together)
Lovely as it is to finally meet Jela and Cantra yos’Phelium, the rather unconventional founders of Liad’s most unconventional clan, I was not overly thrilled by these books. The essence of Lee and Miller’s storytelling in their later books is a rather impressionistic skitter of scenes that outline episodes from a life rather than, strictly speaking, “telling a story”. It works reasonably well for the early romances, and manages despite a few bobbles, to work for the Agent of Change sequence as well, carrying through on the basis of splendid characterization what it occasionally lacks in plot. The trouble is, the connections between the rest of the Agent of Change books and the Great Migration duology are simply too complex and tenuous to survive the fragmented storytelling. Taken simply as an independent duology, this works quite well—Cantra and Jela are as entertaining as their later descendants imply, and the Tree takes a more active part than it gets in the later books. Taken as the prequel to on of my most-loved series, it’s a crashing failure, leaving me with an awful lot of name-checks (ahh, Solcintra. Liad. Dea’Guass…Lute and Moonhawk??) and profoundly unsatisfied as to the relationship between the universe of Cantra and the universe of Val Con and his contemporaries. If the authors know the answer, they aren’t telling, but it ends up feeling like two entirely dissimilar series linked by all too many names.
Lovely as it is to finally meet Jela and Cantra yos’Phelium, the rather unconventional founders of Liad’s most unconventional clan, I was not overly thrilled by these books. The essence of Lee and Miller’s storytelling in their later books is a rather impressionistic skitter of scenes that outline episodes from a life rather than, strictly speaking, “telling a story”. It works reasonably well for the early romances, and manages despite a few bobbles, to work for the Agent of Change sequence as well, carrying through on the basis of splendid characterization what it occasionally lacks in plot. The trouble is, the connections between the rest of the Agent of Change books and the Great Migration duology are simply too complex and tenuous to survive the fragmented storytelling. Taken simply as an independent duology, this works quite well—Cantra and Jela are as entertaining as their later descendants imply, and the Tree takes a more active part than it gets in the later books. Taken as the prequel to on of my most-loved series, it’s a crashing failure, leaving me with an awful lot of name-checks (ahh, Solcintra. Liad. Dea’Guass…Lute and Moonhawk??) and profoundly unsatisfied as to the relationship between the universe of Cantra and the universe of Val Con and his contemporaries. If the authors know the answer, they aren’t telling, but it ends up feeling like two entirely dissimilar series linked by all too many names.