R.M. BURGESS
Review Excerpts
-
A thought provoking, beautifully written book that pulls you in from the first chapter. I'll be pre-ordering the sequel when it becomes available.
J Wing, Iowa, on Amazon.com
-
From the first pages, I was hooked and intrigued by this fantasy world run by powerful super-women who rule as the invaders of an alien planet of ice and snow.
Fantasy Sci Fi Fan on Amazon.co.uk
-
Sparks really fly between the novel's hero and heroine, Greghar and Caitlin. The romantic tension between the two of them is an undercurrent that runs through the second half of the book.
John Atherton on GoodReads
Matthew Keith Reviews
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Empire of the Zon by RM Burgess
Science Fiction at its finest. An absolutely engrossing story, one that sinks you deep into the lives of the people who populate the world that's been created.
Every aspect of this incredibly imaginative story has been exquisitely detailed. With many books that attempt to create such an intricate framework, the failure lies in incomplete or conflicting details. This is not the case with The Empire of the Zon, and it is all just backdrop to an amazing plot.
RM Burgess has created a saga of epic proportions that easily rivals stories such as John Carter.
For originality, strength of voice, character development, and the level of detail that's been brought to life in this novel, I'm happy to award it 5 of 5 stars.
Posted by Matthew Keith Reviews at 3:02 PM
Fantascize.com Review
by Jake Vyper, October 20, 2013
R.M. Burgess's epic science-fantasy The Empire of the Zon is not something to be taken lightly. It's an 805-page ambitious craft inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin's Rocannon's World......Readers of epic fantasy like Martin's Song of Ice and Fire or Le Guin's epics would probably be absorbed in The Empire of the Zon.
http://www.fantascize.com/content.php?529-Book-Review-The-Empire-of-the-Zon-by-R-M-Burgess
The roots of New Eartha
-
Women now earn the majority of all college degrees. Knowledge work is increasingly feminized. Humanity’s attempts at promoting sustainability are falling short and the environment continues to degrade.
-
Imagine that in a few centuries, women become dominant and create the Zon Sisterhood, a totally female society.
-
Imagine that as the earth’s biosphere collapses, the Sisterhood dispatches emigrants in search of new life-bearing planets.
-
Imagine one group of a few thousand Zon arriving on a planet very like earth, where they encounter native peoples who live in patriarchal conditions akin to earth in the 1200s.
-
Imagine that over the course of a few more centuries, the technologically advanced Zon conquer this planet and rule over it, whilst sealing their society off from natives, that they contemptuously call ‘barbarians’.
-
This is the Empire of the Zon.
-
-
As a fresh insurrection brews in the barbarian kingdom of Utrea, Lady Caitlin d’Orr, a Zon military officer finds herself at the trial of Nitya, a young barbarian girl accused of being a witch and sentenced to death. Shocked to find her superiors unsympathetic to the plight of the girl, she disobeys orders and defies official Zon policy.
-
Pursued by the barbarians as well as the Zon, Caitlin flees attempting to conceal her identity in barbarian garb. She befriends Greghar, a barbarian warrior with secrets of his own.
-
Against the backdrop of strife and war, the fates of Caitlin and Greghar become increasingly intertwined with the titanic struggles raging around them. For treachery has raised its head from within the Zon Sisterhood itself. And as the barbarians gain early and unprecedented victories, the Zon are forced into a desperate struggle to try and maintain their grip on their adopted planet and their way of life…