Crystal Dragon

Liaden Universe Books of Before, Book 2

By: Sharon Lee, Steve Miller

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

You can't go home again...

What do you do when home is a conspiracy that's been discovered and destroyed? When home is a planet in a star system that's gone missing? When home means working for the destroyers of galaxies? When home is a spaceship that's calling out to the enemy? Cantra 'yos Phelium isn't a quitter, but she has more than a little problem: the Enemy has accelerated its attacks and how do you fight an Enemy whose major form of attack is the de-crystallization of everything around itself? A smuggler with a rogue soldier for a co-pilot, and a tree with an attitude for crew, Cantra's the only one who can get close to the man who holds equations that might, that just might - thwart the Enemy. All she has to do is help a young pilot from a missing world, juggle a slippery promise she never quite made to a pair of wizards, and then forget who she is along with everything, and everyone, she's ever known.

©2005 Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Very sadistic!

I'm pretty open-minded about most things.… But this book was top-heavy sadomasochistic material. Was it really necessary? I'm gonna past on listening to the third book...if there is one.

Weird

This is my least favorite of the Liaden universe series. Rool Tiazen and his lady - just different, and confusing if you haven't read the previous book (Crystal Soldier). Though this book takes place before the others, it was written later, and I think it is easier to understand if you have read the others first. In other words, read in order of publication, not chronological order. The narrator is excellent! Great job!

The Liad universe gets itself born. :)

Having escaped the enemy for the moment, Cantra, Jela, and the Tree have to make some big decisions--the first of which is whether they're sticking together while Jela keeps his promise to Rool Tiazen and his lady, to get and distribute Liad dea'Syl's equations that hold the only hope of defeating or escaping the Sheriekas. Once they're all committed, things start to go a little haywire. Liad is inside a scholars' tower, Osabei, on Landomist. It's an inner world, and has harsh laws about the genetically engineered, like Jela. Getting in to Osabei is going to take Cantra taking on a whole new identity--and believing it, right down to the core. Jela knows why they're there; Cantra doesn't even know who they really are.

And the Sheriekas are still after them, and there's an enemy from Cantra's past inside, and then Tor An yos'Galen young Trader pilot whose home star system has just been destroyed by the Sheriekas, shows up looking for an old friend of his grandmother...

As they gather their allies and their enemies close in, Jela, Cantra, and Tor An all learn unsettling things about themselves, their own pasts, and what they're really willing to do. The Tree, too, is learning, sharing its ideas via images, and engaging in unauthorized biopharmacology without prior discussion.

The Great Migration is about to happen, if they can live long enough, and get enough of the human species moving.

This is another enjoyable Liaden adventure, and some of the fun in this one is recognizing people and things that will be important in the history of the chronologically later books and stories.

Recommended.

I bought this book.

Grand start for Liaden series

This is a grand book, with fascinating characters and delightful dialog. It is well read and the reader checked with the authors on pronunciation of alien words, so it flows nicely and un-annoyingly. It does require Crystal Soldier be read (listened to :) first. And from there I believe you will have to continue in the series to see what happens next, unless you are made of stone. I shan't give away plot. Science fiction /fantasy ( and this is a great blend) should speak for itself.

Great story well done

This is a series worth multiple reads and listens. Over the past 2 decades and more I continue to enjoy the story as it continues to unfold.