Author: Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Narrator: Kevin T. Collins
Publication: Audible Studios (Sept.4, 2012)
Length: 15 hours and 35 minutes
Description: 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.
My Thoughts: I enjoyed listening to CRYSTAL DRAGON. It is one of the Liaden books that I don't reread very often. I find the sections that have to do with the formation of the dramliz and their conspiracy to defeat the Iloheen hard to understand and hard to connect with. Once the story switches to Cantra and Jela and to Tor An yos'Galan, I enjoy the story much more.
This continues the story begun in CRYSTAL SOLDIER and concerns itself with trying to find the mathematician Liad dea'Syl who might have the math that will let some humans survive the war begun by the Iloheen - called the sheriekas by the humans.
Cantra and Jela have to infiltrate an assemblage of scholars which requires Cantra to forger herself and assume the personality of a traveling math scholar. they find a situation filled with treachery and self-interest. It is also the location where they meet Tor An who has come to report that the Ring Stars have disappeared. Since that is where his whole family lives, Tor An is devastated and wants someone else to also care. He finds the military uninterested in one more loss of planets and concerned with withdrawing into the inner worlds in hopes of surviving.
Jela has long been associated with one part of the military that sees what is happening and is still trying to do something to stop the enemy's invasion.
This is also the story where the planned evacuation of Solcintra occurs and tells about the contract with the houses of Solcintra and the formation of Clan Korval. It introduces some family lines that still continue into the rest of the books including the dea'Gauss.
I liked the action in the story. I liked the characters especially Jela. I liked that he becomes the Founder of the Clan despite falling in rear guard action that lets Cantra, the tree, and his unborn child escape. I really liked Cantra who is both smart and honorable and who keeps her promise to Jela to guard his tree.
The narration was well done and really pulled me in and kept me listening even to the confusing parts.
I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.
I'm also a fan of the Liaden books. I'll have to check out the audios -- I bet they would be good books for long distance drives.
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