Sort of a 'Corsican Brothers meets fencing off the commons' piece. The Darkovan setting is frankly superfluous. This could easily be set in any European principality during the late Middle Ages. Oh, there are specifically Darkovan details (like raising buildings using laran). But mostly it's the descriptions of Darkovan society in the years that are equivalent to Earth's medieval period that are interesting--especially when changes lead to freeholders being turned out without resources, sowing dissent. The characters involved are almost irrelevant--often I, at least, found myself looking over their shoulders at the social changes. Garrison Kiellor once suggested establishing a network of cameras showing live shots from places like Red Square or the Potala Palace. We've established something a little like this by default. That's the sort of thing this book reminds me of.One of the primary problems I have is the terrestrial fauna. I'll buy horses, sheep, hawks, and even dogs. It's likely that transplanted Earth-humans would feel a need for terrestrial domesticates, and would breed some during their genetic engineering periods. Some might even be escaped pets and zoo animals collected by chieri during their farfaring days. I'd even accept something serpentine--snakelike creatures are common on Earth, and may have developed on other worlds. Even amphibians. But BATS? Bats are very common placental mammals on Earth, and serve important ecological functions. But even if the original ship had been carrying frozen embryos, what would they have been carrying bats for? Insect control? Pollination? Seed dispersal? All legitimate, but the evidence is that the biologists on board were not that sophisticated. And how would they have revived and gestated the frozen embryos? Even ovulating creatures need some form of reproductive tract to form the egg into layable form.Rereading, 2014: The melange of time-periods on Earth represented in Darkovan costume in this story is a bit disorienting. But I'd forgotten that I'd wished I had more understanding of how people in the lowlands lived during the time of the amalgamation of the Domains under the Hasturs. In this book, the Towers are not semi-monastic retreats, and telepaths and other matrix workers are fully integrated into the society. A chance to examine the lives of ordinary people and the nobles in this period is appreciated--but FAR too short.
