Prestimion Trilogy

3 primary works Complete

Sorcerers of Majipoor

by Robert Silverberg

Published 7 March 1997

The fifth novel in the Majipoor Cycle. The aged Pontifex Prankipin is near death and the Coronal Lord Confalume will now succeed as Pontifex. It is no secret that the next Coronal should be Prince Prestimion of Muldemar. But Korsibar has a new quarry - the Starburst Crown.

Lord Prestimion

by Robert Silverberg

Published 1 February 1999

The latest volume in the bestselling fantasy saga that began with Lord Valentine's Castle: the eagerly awaited new novel in the Majipoor sequence, one of the most famous and fully realized worlds of modern fantasy.

The Majipoor books have been Silverberg's most successful books by far, beginning some years ago with LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE, which has since sold well over 100,000 copies.

This is the new novel in that series, a sequel to THE SORCERERS OF MAJIPOOR, sumptuous fantasy set in a world with four moons in the sky, a Desert of Stolen Dreams, a deadly Labyrinth which is the Register of Souls, rootless trees, flesh-eating flowers, four-armed Skandors, scary Ghayrogs, tiny Vroons - and a whole new breed of monsters created during the Civil War finally won by Prestimion in the last book. He won the war, and in doing so lost the woman he loved, Thismet.

Now Coronal of Majipoor, Prestimion's first mistake is to use a sorcerer's device to obliterate the Civil War universally from memory. Majipoor must be seen as the perfect world. The resulting mass psychosis that sweeps around the planet is slow to register in Prestimion's consciousness, and will almost be his undoing.

He concentrates instead on repairing the damage done to Majipoor by the war, and on finding suitable punishment for the adversary he spared on the battlefield, the Procurator of Ni-moya, Dantirya Sambail. When Sambail escapes with his sinister henchman Mandralisca before either can be brainwashed, the possibility of another civil war, however unthinkable, arises.

Thanks to his mother's worldwide control of minds from the Isle of Sleep and the allegiance of clever Prince Dekkeret, Prestimion will defeat Sambail and cure his people of psychosis, but only just...

The King of Dreams

by Robert Silverberg

Published 19 February 2001

The reader of earlier Majipoor books will thrill to this title: the Prestimion trilogy is set many years before the Valentine books, and the King of Dreams is an established, terrifying figure in those. Now eponymous, this is the story of his origins. Fifteen years have elapsed since the events recounted in Lord Prestimion. Prestimion has become Pontifex, and named Prince Dekkeret to succeed him as Coronal. As he prepares to take his place in the subterranean Laybyrinth where the Pontifex must dwell, the diabolical Mandralisca manipulates a declaration of independence for Zimroel from the five nephews of the treacherous Dantirya Sambail (see Majipoor Chronicles). Out of Zimroel comes a devastating mental broadcast that strikes randomly all over the world, inflicting terrible psychological pain. Prestimion's brother Teotas commits suicide. His wife Varail and their daughter are damaged. The complex, intriguing transformation of that sinister power in to a feature of a unified Majipoor involves bitter conflict between Pontifex and Coronel, and the unveiling to the world at large of Prestimion's secret hold over the memories of the everyone alive.
We know from the Valentine books that Prestimion's reign will initiate a Golden Age of prosperity and peace, but until the end of THE KING OF DREAMS, it is difficult to see how this comes about. Good storytelling, a magnificent setting, grand political vision.