Just Finished Reading: The Empress of Earth by Melissa Scott


The way to Earth has been lost for centuries. To find it is the dream of all space pilots – especially Silence Leigh. Contracted by the newly installed leader of the human Hegemony to do so and aided by recently acquired ancient texts Silence and her crew begin the dangerous journey to the legendary origin of Mankind. The prize is not only the kudos of being the first to open communication with the lost home world but the power that comes with being at the centre of things again, a power that members of the royal household will scheme to attain and a power that Silence can use to enhance her position as the only known female Mage.


This is a rather strange mixture of SF and Fantasy. In many ways a fairly standard space-opera it also blends in the Tarot, Platonic Forms and Geomancy (Earth magic). Star pilots navigate by Signs and Symbols in a space beyond the physical realm called Purgatory. Moving in and out of such a realm is the job of Mages who can use their skills to see and move towards Forms and, once there, re-emerge into normal space hundreds of light-years away from their start point. It was certainly a different and interesting idea. The book itself took a bit getting into – probably because it was the third book in a trilogy and I hadn’t read (and haven’t got) the first two. Scott did provide enough of the back story to piece things together after a while so after about 50-60 pages things settled down a bit. Over all this was a reasonable read with interesting enough characters and a fair stab at a future human culture based on magical ‘technology’ and knowledge to get me through the 340 or so pages.