AudiobookOkay, this book is awful. I'm very bored by the story. This supposedly superhuman is so not - he's weak and frail from the food and water!. The romance(s?) are strange. I can guess what's going to happen. And the world being ruled by people who can play dice well is - I can't even think of the word - it's worse than weird but really close to stupid. If you come up with it, let me know. Can't/won't finish it.

Notes:Currently on Audible + (Publication Order)

Meh.A generous 2.5 mostly because I like the handling of Quis.The story is slow, drags in many places & has uncomfortably dated toxic romance tropes.

Blurb: The Last Hawk tells the tale of the lost heir to the Empire. Fleeing the heat of battle in a wounded spacecraft, Kelric crash-lands on a proscribed planet where a matriarchy rules through the medium of a complex game. The women in power help to heal him, but destroy his ship and determine that he can never leave - for his knowledge of their world, if revealed to the Empire, would cause the rapid fall of their civilization. And so his rescue turns into an imprisonment of years, decades, a

I liked this book, a lot, but also thought it dragged, a lot. I didn't realize until sitting down to write this review that it was #3 in a series, but I am not sure it makes a difference. So many, MANY names of characters and places and titles, it was a bit dizzying. Kelric (also called Kelrickson, also called Sevtar) was, overall, a sympathetic character, but also a little too convenient. Conveniently weak/injured, conveniently strong and powerful, conveniently attractive to the female leaders

It’s been awhile since I’ve picked up anything by Asaro, and now I’m wondering why that’s the case. I’m still reeling from finishing this book. I read it in less than a day, and I’m not the world’s quickest reader. I like to soak. Well, that was impossible this time.The Last Hawk is another installment in Asaro’s Skolian Empire series. It’s the story of Kelric, one of the three heirs to the Imperialate throne. He crashes on a relatively unknown world- Coba- where the ISC is an unwanted presence....

After the jarring universe jump from book #1 to book #2, I was prepared to drop into yet another separate/parallel storyline in book #3 in the Skolian universe. And Kelric's adventures on Coba might be my favorite isolated storyline in this branch of the series. Just like the Chora in Jane Kindred's The House of Arkhangel’sk books, the Quis in the Last Hawk made me want to learn to play along. Of course, the point of the Quis seems to be that it's more complex than I can imagine, and it makes me...

In the end, I was just glad that this book was over. Even though it is #3 in a series - I bought it in the days before Audible thought to include this information in its catalogue - it started out strong and I was quite enjoying it. From about halfway through it descended from its stranger in a strange land theme into an episodic "...her bosom heaved at the sight of his thrustful loins..." type of pulp fiction and the story became more difficult to follow. I don't think it mattered so much that

Although I usually like Asaro's books, I agree with some of the others reviewer's comments about how irritating it becomes to read about how irresistible Kelric is to every single female he seems to encounter.It reminded be how I felt when reading the Twilight series... if I had to hear about how wonderful Edward's cold, hard chest was, I began to feel nauseous.The story itself didn't engage me either, although the main saving grace is highlighting women's role in modern society by turning the t...

Okay, I am an unabashed Asaro fan. There is little she writes about the Skolian empire that I don't love. This was my first by her that I had read and now I often find myself looking for her work everywhere I go. Kelric won my heart within the first few pages. The world Asaro created was unique from any others I had read about and she crafted it so well I actually felt pulled into it during the reading of this story. This was one of the finest written books I'd read in the last 2 months and I wa...

I am not reading any of Asaro's books in order so I'm never quite sure where I am in the timeline when I pick up a book of the Skolian Empire.This one is more of a romance than a science fiction book for the most part. From the moment that Kelric Valdoria crashes on the matriarchal run planet of Coba, to the moment he escapes, it is more about the women who want to own him than about anything else. The dice game of Quis is an interesting part of the story, mostly in respect to how it effects soc...

Author introduces in this book another lost heir to Skolian empire (mhmh third book in the series with same starting point :). This time interesting game is thriving everything and it is fascinating to see how our hero learns and masters it. In this book women are really sexists pigs, but they also try to see men more than reproducing organs although some scenes are really vivid and reflect problem in out current social situation.

Imagine you land on a world. Imagine the inhabitants of that world destroy your ship, poison you, imprison and enslave you, and force you into a marriage with one of their leaders. Imagine calling the rape that follows "making love". Imagine and insane universe where that "marriage" is legally binding in your home system. Imagine a trial for "murders" made while attempting to escape this slavery.That's this trash in a nut-shell.

Ugh. OK, but not really good. There is a marking time aspect to the book - a filler for the series? And sometimes the book's varied conceits (oooo a world dominated by women and the men are helpless sex objects) is just overdone. Also far far overdone is the authors infuriating use of "gentle" as a verb. "Her face gentled." It really detracts.

This might be the least interesting thing I wasted my time reading since I was dumb enough to read Twilight.I wont elucidate the many things I didnt care for - suffice it to say I found the characters boring, 1 dimensional, and I just wasnt able to find half a red damn to give about any of them.

I finished this one last night... stayed up too late reading but it was worth it! The only reason I didn't give this book a 10 is that it ended too soon! Now I'll have to find other books in the Skolian Empire series...http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/9...

re-read 2/9/2005re-read 5/26/2014Kelric -- poor Kelric. I wish I had a mind for maths the way he does!

http://fantasycafe.blogspot.com/2009/...

The first Skolian book I read and I've kept coming back. I really like the world building and of course Kelric is a very likable character.

I found the first few chapters of this book on the publisher's website and decided I just had to read this author! I'm glad I did!!

One of the better books in the Skolian series.

The culture(s) created in this novel are fascinating! I've read this book several times and always enjoy it immensely.

1.5 stars, but I've rounded down to 1 because although the writing was good, the story made it the most uninteresting Skolian Saga book I've read so far. I wasn't interested in the world for once. So much attention was on the dice game and how the world used it for matters from politics to physics... but I had no real reason to care about it because of course Kelric was the best at it ever (#MarySue). His romances were basically steeped in Stockholm Syndrome which made them decidedly unsexy. May...

Hmpf. There were parts I liked and parts I couldn’t wait to be over. The initial plot was a annoying because it was basically the same as book 2: a wayward space fighter pilot / member of royalty gets stranded on a more primitive planet and falls in love with women that happen to have the supposedly exceedingly rare genes to make more members of royalty. The romance stuff is not my bag. The dice game the society played in lieu of war and normal politics was pretty interesting. It was also enjoya...

I liked The Last Hawk, it was certainly better than the previous book I read in the series (Catch The Lightening).The story was a bit more explicit than previous books so be warned if this offends, but I didn't think it was too bad.The story is very planet based where a pilot is marooned on the planet without space travel except via an off world space port which he cannot get to. So if you like a lot of space battles this probablyisn't for you, but it does have plenty of action and intrege.Overa...

Primary Inversion was good. This is a travesty. Let's start with the start. Kelric crash lands on a planet that's interdicted by his Skolian Empire. It has an automated base, but his ship doesn't contact the base. Then the people want the interdiction, don't want him finding out, but don't kill him or stabilize his injuries, keep him in a coma, and send him to the base before he learns anything.Instead, all the women want him and the plot gets more stupid as it progresses. Also, the gender polit...

The story was engaging and exciting. Since I came into the middle of a series (Skolian Empire), there were gaps that would have added context, but I could still follow the story since it was 'self-contained'.Makes me want to read the rest of the series (prior to this one) and especially 'what happened'.The author is an excellent story-teller, who mixes emotional content with science in a balanced way.

My son T and I disagree about the impact of this book to the story of the Skolian Empire. As I read it quite a few years ago the first time, I’m trying to figure out my less positive response to it after listening to the audio version. It’s set apart from the rest of the world of Skolia, but the main character Kelric, does finally return. It is a good story of matriarchy and it’s defects as well as plusses.

This was a very long book but it was very well done. The underlying plots and how they are affected by the quis game, the quis game itself were amazing.However, I was bored to tears and at 40% through I nearly died when I saw I wasn't at the end yet and skipped ahead to the end. To find out that we still don't know whether Kelric gets back to his homeworld or not. UGH

A great read, interesting plot, good character development, lots of twists and turns. A great stand alone story. But, as part of a series, doesn't seem to do anything to further the series. In fact, more or less a rewrite of the previous story in the series.