Majipoor Chronicles

By: Robert Silverberg

Narrated by: J. Paul Boehmer, Cassandra Campbell, Emily Janice Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, Arte Johnson, Don Leslie, Scott Peterson

Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

The best-selling fantasy saga that began with Lord Valentine's Castle continues in Majipoor Chronicles, as the young street urchin Hissune gets his due for helping Lord Valentine regain his throne. As a reward, he is sent into the depths of the Labyrinth, a massive library of memory cubes in which the entire history of Majipoor is preserved.

As Hissune prepares for a summons to return to Castle Mount, he relives the lives of Majipoor's most famous and notorious inhabitants, learning more about the people and his new land than anyone else in the kingdom. As he becomes one with its many peoples - dukes and generals, thieves and murderers, Ghayrogs and Metamorphs - he discovers wonder, terror, longing, and love and learns wisdom that will shape his destiny.

Listen to Lord Valentine's Castle.

©1982 Agberg, Ltd/Robert Silverberg (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"If you like tales with an exotic Arabian Nights piquancy, this book belongs in your hands." ( Washington Post Book World)

My first

Book from this univers. Maybe it is better to start with the Lord Valentine book to understand the reign. Not sure if that will include the history, but that may have been hard to write a history which is like 4 times the length of what we can guess from our history.

Very cool stories!

I enjoyed all of the stories. All of them combined added a lot of depth to the world & history of Majipoor!

Not What I Was Looking For

While it wasn’t bad by any means, this just wasn’t what I was looking for. However, I still love Mr. Silverberg’s writing and will continue with the Majipoor series.

"The Geography of the Soul"

Robert Silverberg's big science fiction novel Lord Valentine's Castle (1980) depicts the attempts of the unlawfully deposed Valentine to regain his rightful position as Coronal of Majipoor, one of the four "powers" of the planet, journeying and juggling across the exotic landscapes and through the sprawling cities and among the 20-30 billion human and alien inhabitants of the huge world. The conceit of Silverberg's second Majipoor novel, Majipoor Chronicles (1982), is that Hissune, the street boy who first recognized Valentine, has been working for four years in the vast bureaucratic Labyrinth doing things like preparing "an inventory of the archives of the tax-collectors" when, itching to experience new places and people, he bluffs his way into the Register of Souls, which stores millions of memory-readings made by millions of Majipoorans from millions of places and times. Each time Hissune experiences a memory, Silverberg writes a short story from the point of view of the person in question. The Hissune framing passages work with the stories to demonstrate how the various experiences (only a glimpse of a millionth millionth part of Majipooran life) give the bright and sensitive lad an education in human nature ("the geography of the soul") and hence help him to mature. Silverberg is also demonstrating the entertaining, transporting, mind and heart expanding nature of science fiction.

The ten stories in the collection come from different points in Majipoor's 14,000 year human history and represent different modes and moods: romance, war, exploration, bildungsroman, origin, crime, comedy, tragedy, etc.

"Thesme and the Ghayrog" is an affecting story about a self-absorbed young woman who falls awkwardly in love with a reptilian alien Ghayrog.
"The Time of the Burning" grimly channels US history (e.g., the Vietnam War and Native American genocide) as it demonstrates that heroes do not always match the images made by time and adoration.
"In the Fifth Year of the Voyage" is an absorbing tale of a ship of adventurers trying to cross the great ocean of Majipoor when they encounter a colony of metal-eating algae.
"Calintane Explains" details the nature of three of the four powers of Majipoor (the Pontifex, the Coronal, and the Lady) and almost does something daring regarding gender, though Silverberg winks too much.
"The Desert of Stolen Dreams" recounts the origin of the fourth power of Majipoor, the King of Dreams, who flays the souls of criminals with nightmares.
In "The Soul Painter and the Shapeshifter" Silverberg again poignantly explores cross-species love, as a famous artist realizes that perfection is stagnation, heads for the jungle, and meets an indigenous Metamorph.
"Crime and Punishment" presents the attempts of an impromptu murderer to escape the punishments of the King of Dreams by changing locales and identities.
"Among the Dream-Speakers" features the self-doubt before the last test of a dream-speaker in training.
"A Thief in Ni-Moya" is an amusing Cinderella tale detailing the benefits of being conned out of your life savings and family shop.
"Voriax and Valentine," the last story and the closest in time to the events in Lord Valentine's Castle, explores a loving but fraught relationship between two brothers.

Silverberg writes vivid, often finely defamiliarizing SF:
-"Dulorn was far more beautiful and strange than she had been able to imagine. It seemed to shine with an inner light of its own, while the sunlight, refracted and shattered and deflected by the myriad angles and facets of the lofty baroque buildings, fell in gleaming showers to the streets."
-"He reached for her hand. It had six fingers, very long and narrow, without fingernails or visible joints."
-“Without warning the sun was in the sky like a trumpet blast, roasting the surrounding hills with shafts of hot light.”
-"Several moons were out."

He also writes many scenes revelatory of human nature:
-Thesme feeling upset when she fails to freak out her people with her alien lover;
-Eremoil briefly imagining telling the Coronal a different solution to the Metamorph problem;
-Captain Lavon realizing he's had enough exploration;
-Therion saying about his turbulent, strange paintings, "all my work is an attempt to recapture the happiest time in my life";
-Dekkeret questioning whether he needs to sear his guilt away in the desert sun;
-Haglione trying to understand that he's being forgiven;
-Inyanna laughing outside the estate of her "inheritance";
-Valentine trying to dismiss a disturbing prophecy.

The readers for the male protagonist stories are men, for the female ones women. All of them are fine. Stefan Rudneki reads two stories well with his deep, rich voice. Gabrielle de Cuir nearly over-reads her story, elongating long vowels for effect ("She became aWAAAARE of soft brEEEATHing beHIIIIND her"). Overall the readers enhance the stories.

From here in 2017, some flaws or creaky points appear in the 1982 book. In none of the stories does Silverberg depict a homosexual or alien memory; it seems a little tame to depict the Other always from the point of view of heterosexual humans. And although the conceit of memory-readings is neat, the stories are so well-crafted that it beggars belief that messy human beings could record their memories so literately. And why are none of them narrated in the first person? Finally, considering its 14,000+ year history, a remarkably small number of figures recur.

Silverberg's story telling is almost free of the cinematic page-turning violent action scenes so common in sf/fantasy these days. Instead, he maps "the geography of the soul": psychology, relationships, dreams, insights, love, transformation, culture, and the like. If you'd like a detailed, well-written, slow-paced trek through a well-realized exotic world full of exotic denizens (who essentially resemble us here and now), you'd probably like this book, though it'd be best to start with Lord Valentine's Castle.

I enjoy the multiple narrators

It's a beautiful crafted story. it's ingenious in construction, centered on a young person exploring the history of his world through the minds and experience of others. The multiple narrators give credence and reality to the lives of the characters explored by the main character of this chronicle. My only question is about the level of technology on Majipoor. Some is implied to be advanced, such as the Floater vehicles mentioned, but the world seems to have descended into a more primitive scheme

Some of the stories r interesting some r not

Silver berg elaborates In describing the worldof Majinpoor. Good narrators. Overall not the best experience.

My Review for Majipoor Chronicle

What did you love best about Majipoor Chronicles?

It's starts where the last book ends.I learned more of the background of Majipor and how it begins with Hissune had discovering the library in the depth of Labyrinth, and learns the history of Majipoor from the memory cubes.

What other book might you compare Majipoor Chronicles to and why?

I cant' recall any, because the Lord Valentines's Castle was the first book I willingly picked to read without it being require.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

Inyanna is my favorite charactor. The young shop keeper inherit her store from her mother and grandmother, wanting more of her life than operating a store in a small town.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Come and see the through the eyes of the people who lived in the history of Majipor's legends.

Any additional comments?

I would listen to it again.

Great collection of stories

This exceeds my memory of how good these stories are. Wonderful read. A classic for future generations.

Enjoyable read of seemingly unrelated stories.....

But the author has a definite plan to deepen our understanding of the realm today and also in histories past.

big fan loved it

loved the narrative, love the stories since I was a kid. Robert is a great author, very descriptive.