Marta RandallRecensioni

A number of good stories. I particularly enjoyed...
Mender of Sparrows by Ray Nayler
Aurora by Michael Cassutt
The Short Path to Light by William Ledbetter
Maryon's Gift by Paul McAuley
Blimpies by Rick Wilber

Like many collections of short stories, this is a little bit of mixed bag, but undoubtedly there were some very good stories here. The science fiction/fantasy elements were thought provoking but not allowed to dominate at the expense of plot or characterisation, both of which were well handled. But the foreground was often occupied by relationships - and changes in relationships - between the characters. Mar 2020½

I read this when it first came out and loved it then. Between then and now I lost my copy, and forgot the title and author's name! Having just discovered it again I can't wait for a reread. As I recall the heroine was strong, the story was well written, and the world nicely detailed. So glad I found it again!

I reviewed this novel on SF Mistressworks: https://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/dangerous-games-marta-randall/½

Reviewed on SF Mistressworks: http://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/islands-marta-randall/½

I want to use words like “tight” or “high-strung” or “angry” to describe this little palace intrigue fantasy about a Rider (a kind of enforcer) who hates her lord/master but has sworn to attend him; now he’s dying and refusing to pick a successor, so all the candidates are trying to get her on their side—but really those adjectives are about the Rider herself. She ends up traveling with a boy who hates her because Riders killed his parents. Lots of politics; more fucking and cursing than I expected from an early 1980s book, which is probably my mistake; overall I liked it and you might too if you like your heroines justifiably pissed and not willing to play nice.

It is difficult to say whether The Sword of Winter is more of a fantasy with science fiction elements, or a science fiction novel with fantasy elements. The technology is steam-level, with telegraphs. It’s a book that is strong on character interactions and political intrigue, with some fascinating worldbuilding elements. I first read this book back in junior high, and it has been one of my on again, off again favorites for years. It doesn’t seem to be in print, but it’s a relatively easy book to find.

The story revolves around Gambin a dying tyrant and his relationship with his personal messenger, a woman named Lyeth. Gambin has yet to name an heir, but wants Lyeth to support and work for his son. Lyeth would really much rather return to her guild and have nothing more to do with Jentesi province, because she despises Gambin and what he’s done to her guild.

Read the rest of this review at A Wicked Convergence of Circumstances

Marta Randall says more than once that the planet Hoep-Hanninah, on which this novel takes place, is a small planet with only one small continent; this seems a fitting setting for what might be called a small story, featuring but a handfull of characters. Toyon and Alin, the main characters, are a couple who came in hopes of exploring the ruins of a city in the desert, though no one else ever seems to believe that that is what they are. Quellen, a low-level employee of the company that has a monopoly on exports from the planet, and agrees to transport them because she thinks they are there for some "score", and hopes to be cut in for enough of a share to get off the planet she's thoroughly tired of. The governer, Rhodes, an amateur botanist who's been blackmailed by the company manager to look the other way, but hasn't even bothered to inquire what it is he's looking the other way from. And Leo Haecker, the company manager who really runs the planet, who plans for the two he is sure are GalFed agents to have a little "accident" on their trip to the ruins, as he is certain it is merely a ruse to find out what it is he has been up to.

It sounds like it could be something of an adventure novel, but is written in a style of shifting POVs and oblique, vague utterances that make it feel quite unlike one. It takes the trope of the "primitive, nomadic aliens who are not what they seem" in a somewhat different direction, but is not really all that different from a lot of novels like this written in the mid-70s.

From the back cover:

Toyon was a Terran, powerful in his own sector of the galaxy, but here on the planet of Hoep-Hanninah, he was a tourist who did not speak the language.

Toyon was a brilliant man, but to the apelike, expressionless natives of this planet, he was a threat.

Toyon had a dream he was determined to realize: to travel to the ruined city in the north and explore it. But the Hanninah were as determined to thwart him; for in the path of his expedition to the ruins lay the secret of their survival.

**********
Inside the front flap:

I am Toyon Sutak.
I am rich, the owner of a fleet of freighters. I regulate the flow of grain and gold from planet to planet. When I visit among my worlds, I am welcomed to cavalcades and crescendoes. Now I circle above a planet that holds my dreams -- a small planet, one ocean, one continent, and a lost city I have yearned to visit since my childhood -- Hoep Tashik.

I am Alin Kennerin.
I am Toyon's wife, competitor, lover, companion, enemy; but, most of all, I am myself. Empire-builder, pilot, painter, ethnologist. I plan to study the strange, simian inhabitants of this small planet. Perhaps this journey will bring Toyon and me together again. It has been so long since I trusted him.

( Duplicated from my Amazon review )