what do you call a space opera that's rock instead of opera? hmm...
I fell a little in love with Del, and also really enjoyed some of the side characters. the song lyrics were catchy and I'm intrigued to hear what they'd sound like performed. this book tugged at my heart strings and got me a little choked up at times. it also made me grin pretty fiercely at all of Del's triumphs. now I guess I'll have to read some of Asaro's other books. ;) ( )

Oh, Catherina Asaro, what have ye done.

I love the Skolian Saga because Asaro writes interesting space opera with actual science(!) in it and does a great job describing some of the physics going on with interesting space tricks. I like most of the characters in the universe, and I also like that she has a romance angle through the stories.

This book, judging by its cover (I know , I know) and the blurb about it, looked like it might not be so great. It's about one of the Ruby Dynasty scions, Del-Kurj Valdoria, son of Roca and Eldrinson. He gets left behind on earth when the rest of the family is rescued (he's on another continent), and he decides to hang out and go at a music career.

This book is incredibly slow and boring. There are entire swaths of the book I can't really remember and don't care about. I listened to it on audio book and if I missed several minutes because I got distracted, I didn't even bother to go back.

I hung in there for occasional Ruby family stuff, because even though Asaro's novels in the Skolian universe are largely stand-alone, there is information about the background war and politics of the empire that are good to stay up on.

This book feels like it was written, not by a physicist/author with a string of awesome books under her belt, by a groupie who dreams about a famous life - and it's full of references to the drinking/boozing/sexin' culture of the famous rocker with a side of commentary about what they think of the kind of people that populate the entertainment industry (producers, labels, mostly behaving badly and trying to choke the individuality and genius of the art and what not).

Del-Kurj plays like a young, self-centered idiot, going through this great learning process that just falls really, really flat (with a side of family conflict because no one! understands! him! or supports his genius, or whatever. Boring.)

I'm still looking forward to any books in the Skolian Saga that Asaro writes, assuming they're nothing like this book. If I had read this first in the series, I would have never continued with it, and if the next book is anything like this, I'll quit. ( )

Oh, Catherina Asaro, what have ye done.

I love the Skolian Saga because Asaro writes interesting space opera with actual science(!) in it and does a great job describing some of the physics going on with interesting space tricks. I like most of the characters in the universe, and I also like that she has a romance angle through the stories.

This book, judging by its cover (I know , I know) and the blurb about it, looked like it might not be so great. It's about one of the Ruby Dynasty scions, Del-Kurj Valdoria, son of Roca and Eldrinson. He gets left behind on earth when the rest of the family is rescued (he's on another continent), and he decides to hang out and go at a music career.

This book is incredibly slow and boring. There are entire swaths of the book I can't really remember and don't care about. I listened to it on audio book and if I missed several minutes because I got distracted, I didn't even bother to go back.

I hung in there for occasional Ruby family stuff, because even though Asaro's novels in the Skolian universe are largely stand-alone, there is information about the background war and politics of the empire that are good to stay up on.

This book feels like it was written, not by a physicist/author with a string of awesome books under her belt, by a groupie who dreams about a famous life - and it's full of references to the drinking/boozing/sexin' culture of the famous rocker with a side of commentary about what they think of the kind of people that populate the entertainment industry (producers, labels, mostly behaving badly and trying to choke the individuality and genius of the art and what not).

Del-Kurj plays like a young, self-centered idiot, going through this great learning process that just falls really, really flat (with a side of family conflict because no one! understands! him! or supports his genius, or whatever. Boring.)

I'm still looking forward to any books in the Skolian Saga that Asaro writes, assuming they're nothing like this book. If I had read this first in the series, I would have never continued with it, and if the next book is anything like this, I'll quit. ( )

With a lot of the Skolian Empire books, you can see the interactions between books, the way Asaro has woven the stories together - bits of Spherical Harmonic are seen from a different angle in Ascendant Sun, or Moon's Shadow. Not so with Diamond Star. It takes place within a couple of years of the Radiance War, after most of the Ruby Dynasty has been removed from Earth, and while they play a minor part towards the end, including the hidden nephew, this story disappears into the history without a ripple.

It's almost as if the author went down her list and thought, 'Oh, here's a Ruby I haven't written about'.

I have to admit, It's very well put together, enough so that I burned through it in one sitting, and I'm definitely going to look into getting the CD, but it doesn't add anything to the wider story. There's no resonance, as it were. ( )

Since the moment I picked up this book, I did nothing but read it (and unfortunately go to work, eat, and sleep), took me 4 days. So it must have been good. This book thankfully stood on it's own so it was okay that I didn't remember much about all her other books, though there were characters I really wished I remembered how their story went. For the first 3 quarters of the book I found it less sci-fi'ish than I had hoped, yeah it took place in Asaro's future world, but there were no space ships or politics and other greatness that I had come to expect. The last hundred pages though had all that and more. I was disappointed by the romance aspect of the book, it fell flat, and the progression of it just left me going WTF?! The book felt like it was written completely and then the editor or someone was like 'I think this book needs a relationship' so one is inserted practically as an afterthought.While the book could have had a better central relationship and more fleshing out of the non-main characters, it was a great book that I couldn't put down and I haven't found a book that did that to me in years. ( )