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Man Of Two Planets
Borto Claibrook-Merjolaine, born and raised on Circe, the planet with a mind, is the only man of his generation to become a warrior. As he learns combat skills on the neighbouring planet of First Home his mentor, Hal, detects a dark creature hidden deep inside Borto’s personality. Coming from Circe’s own shadow, the being adds extra strength to Borto’s normal Circean abilities.
Also living on First Home, Borto’s sister, Tethyn, realises that she must go to find the source of a great danger which is threatening both Circe and First Home. Another planet farther away in the galaxy has learned about First Home and is preparing an invasion force.
Against the wishes of her beloved man Lewis, First Peer of the High Forest family, Tethyn asks his greatest adversary, Darland Courvenier, to take her to meet a man from the enemy planet so that Circe can learn about the advancing peril and make plans to defeat it.
Circe is also in danger from First Home. Darland and his close friend and lieutenant, Vaire, have begun to realise that Circe is a very special planet, possessing strange powers, and they want to know the secrets that she holds. Vaire goes to Circe to discover what he can about her, at the same time drawing Tethyn’s best friend, Rayanna, the woman he has come to deeply desire, unwillingly closer to him.
Borto also returns to Circe as part of a private deputation, invited there to help strengthen the bonds which already exist between Circe and the High Forest family.
While he is there he must use his new warrior skills to become Circe’s champion. An arms dealer from another planet has hidden contraband weapons on the planet and she is becoming infected with the negative force that they carry. As he helps to remove the weapons, Borto’s growing warrior powers are revealed and people begin to look at him differently.
Also living on First Home, Borto’s sister, Tethyn, realises that she must go to find the source of a great danger which is threatening both Circe and First Home. Another planet farther away in the galaxy has learned about First Home and is preparing an invasion force.
Against the wishes of her beloved man Lewis, First Peer of the High Forest family, Tethyn asks his greatest adversary, Darland Courvenier, to take her to meet a man from the enemy planet so that Circe can learn about the advancing peril and make plans to defeat it.
Circe is also in danger from First Home. Darland and his close friend and lieutenant, Vaire, have begun to realise that Circe is a very special planet, possessing strange powers, and they want to know the secrets that she holds. Vaire goes to Circe to discover what he can about her, at the same time drawing Tethyn’s best friend, Rayanna, the woman he has come to deeply desire, unwillingly closer to him.
Borto also returns to Circe as part of a private deputation, invited there to help strengthen the bonds which already exist between Circe and the High Forest family.
While he is there he must use his new warrior skills to become Circe’s champion. An arms dealer from another planet has hidden contraband weapons on the planet and she is becoming infected with the negative force that they carry. As he helps to remove the weapons, Borto’s growing warrior powers are revealed and people begin to look at him differently.
ebook
First published August 15, 2015
About the author
Judith Rook
8 books66 followersJudith Rook was born and raised in rural Yorkshire in the UK. The nearest city was Bradford, the great centre for wool processing, but she remembers fields running up to moorland much more clearly than mill chimneys.
Judith's early writing was done in old accountants’ ledgers which had blank sheets interleaved with the ruled pages. She wrote on the ruled pages as well. Not thinking of becoming a writer, Judith wrote whatever she felt like writing: stories, poems, reflections. Then life intervened and her imagination went underground. For some time, she worked in education and wrote articles and reviews about music.
After a few years, Judith began to write fiction. Recording ideas that had been bottled up for a long time, she thought that she had become an author. When rejection notices came in she joined two writing groups, developed her technical skills and learned how to write stories for other people.
Judith is an avid reader. Sci-fi is her favourite genre, then come the great classics, followed closely by fantasy. However, her taste is reasonably universal and perhaps one day she will try her hand at thrillers or crime stories. Judith greatly admires good crime writers.
As a young woman Judith emigrated to Western Australia where she lives now with a cat and a computer. From time to time she stirs herself to rally around important social issues and has been known to take to the streets in support, so long as there are good cafés along the way.
Periodically Judith turns to short stories. She finds that the challenges of short story writing refresh and strengthen the techniques which she uses in her novels.
Judith's early writing was done in old accountants’ ledgers which had blank sheets interleaved with the ruled pages. She wrote on the ruled pages as well. Not thinking of becoming a writer, Judith wrote whatever she felt like writing: stories, poems, reflections. Then life intervened and her imagination went underground. For some time, she worked in education and wrote articles and reviews about music.
After a few years, Judith began to write fiction. Recording ideas that had been bottled up for a long time, she thought that she had become an author. When rejection notices came in she joined two writing groups, developed her technical skills and learned how to write stories for other people.
Judith is an avid reader. Sci-fi is her favourite genre, then come the great classics, followed closely by fantasy. However, her taste is reasonably universal and perhaps one day she will try her hand at thrillers or crime stories. Judith greatly admires good crime writers.
As a young woman Judith emigrated to Western Australia where she lives now with a cat and a computer. From time to time she stirs herself to rally around important social issues and has been known to take to the streets in support, so long as there are good cafés along the way.
Periodically Judith turns to short stories. She finds that the challenges of short story writing refresh and strengthen the techniques which she uses in her novels.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 23, 2018
Shakespearean Science Fantasy with a Content Warning
Man of Two Planets follows the human envoys of the sentient planet Circe, Tethyn, Rayanna, and Borto, as they struggle to fit into the rigidly hierarchal culture of First Home. The Circean humans live in harmony with their planet, and while they know how to defend themselves, it’s a skill they seem to rarely need. A peaceful, fair, and seemingly equality-minded people, the Circeans display less culture shock than one might expect as they navigate the strange and sometimes appalling customs of First Home high society.
Despite being a space-faring culture possessing highly sophisticated technology, the people of First Home adhere to strangely regressive and militaristic values. The planet is ruled by a handful of elite families descended from the original colonists who control the vast majority of the planet’s wealth. Formal manners play a major role in many scenes, to the point that chaperones are required when unattached adults of the opposite gender meet.
In fact, it became apparent early on in the story that women on First Home are considered essentially property of their male guardians. Unfortunately this is not just in the abstract or traditional sense; the wealthy families of First Home maintain fortified complexes and sizeable standing armies precisely because they fear the men of other families may attack or try to steal their women.
This cultured, formal society with its standing armies, bodyguards, chaperones, and ever-present fear of woman-stealing leads to a peculiar contradiction: in a society in which everyone is far too much of an honorable gentleman to step outside the bounds of propriety, who exactly goes around attacking women?
Unfortunately this question is answered relatively early on in the book, and that’s where the content warning comes in. Shortly before the 25% mark there is an on-screen sexual assault (one that is described rather than implied,) and it becomes clear as the story progresses that this is a not-uncommon tactic for the leaders of a rival house to ‘stake their claim’ to the assets of another family. Or just for fun, apparently.
Much of the conflict in Man of Two Planets takes place between the Haute Foret or High Forest family, to which Borto and the other Circean envoys are attached in one way or another, and the Courvenier family (to which the aforementioned rapist belongs.) There’s a certain amount of backstory that sets up why the Circeans and their High Forest allies have reason to fear and loathe the Courveniers, and particularly their leader and his right-hand man, Vaire.
The portions of the story I found most interesting, however, were those that explored life on Circe. From clouds of microscopic ‘wild’ machines called parthobots that can take any form, to the way the planet grows new forms of life and waits for her human “locators” to find them and set them free from the earth, the sentient planet seemed like a fascinating place.
Likewise, the story seemed to move more freely on Circe, less encumbered by the stiff and fearful formality of First Home. It was an arena where the protagonists almost had a fighting chance against their enemies, and so it seemed fitting that the book wrapped up this chapter of the heroes’ story and came to a conclusion there.
In all, Man of Two Planets was a difficult book to review. Circe reminded me a bit of Petaybee, Elizabeth Anne Scarborough’s sentient planet. The feuding First Home families with all their romantic and political machinations, combined with the constraints of their stiffly formal society, seemed almost Shakespearean at times.
(There’s a particular scene where the High Forest family’s leader and his friend sneak into a masked ball to dance with their sweethearts, and then find themselves caught between wanting to intervene in Courvenier’s evil machinations and wanting to evade the public censure of discovery at a ball they couldn’t respectably attend. That particular act struck me as so Shakespearean that Shakespeare himself would have been proud of it.)
Then there’s the appalling situation the story’s women find themselves in, one where the only safe place for them is locked in a gilded cage of their male protectors’ making. As the story progresses, it’s shown that inner darkness is not a domain unique to the men of the Courvenier family. Underneath all the fine manners, women are never truly safe around First Home’s men.
Borto’s awareness of his inner darkness– that which makes him an unusually promising warrior for a Circean– makes him perhaps the most human and relatable of all the book’s male protagonists. He recognizes his dark impulses for that they are: not a natural part of being a strong and powerful man, but something repulsive and shameful which his loved ones should never be exposed to. It’s too bad such a sense of conscience isn’t more common.
Man of Two Planets follows the human envoys of the sentient planet Circe, Tethyn, Rayanna, and Borto, as they struggle to fit into the rigidly hierarchal culture of First Home. The Circean humans live in harmony with their planet, and while they know how to defend themselves, it’s a skill they seem to rarely need. A peaceful, fair, and seemingly equality-minded people, the Circeans display less culture shock than one might expect as they navigate the strange and sometimes appalling customs of First Home high society.
Despite being a space-faring culture possessing highly sophisticated technology, the people of First Home adhere to strangely regressive and militaristic values. The planet is ruled by a handful of elite families descended from the original colonists who control the vast majority of the planet’s wealth. Formal manners play a major role in many scenes, to the point that chaperones are required when unattached adults of the opposite gender meet.
In fact, it became apparent early on in the story that women on First Home are considered essentially property of their male guardians. Unfortunately this is not just in the abstract or traditional sense; the wealthy families of First Home maintain fortified complexes and sizeable standing armies precisely because they fear the men of other families may attack or try to steal their women.
This cultured, formal society with its standing armies, bodyguards, chaperones, and ever-present fear of woman-stealing leads to a peculiar contradiction: in a society in which everyone is far too much of an honorable gentleman to step outside the bounds of propriety, who exactly goes around attacking women?
Unfortunately this question is answered relatively early on in the book, and that’s where the content warning comes in. Shortly before the 25% mark there is an on-screen sexual assault (one that is described rather than implied,) and it becomes clear as the story progresses that this is a not-uncommon tactic for the leaders of a rival house to ‘stake their claim’ to the assets of another family. Or just for fun, apparently.
Much of the conflict in Man of Two Planets takes place between the Haute Foret or High Forest family, to which Borto and the other Circean envoys are attached in one way or another, and the Courvenier family (to which the aforementioned rapist belongs.) There’s a certain amount of backstory that sets up why the Circeans and their High Forest allies have reason to fear and loathe the Courveniers, and particularly their leader and his right-hand man, Vaire.
The portions of the story I found most interesting, however, were those that explored life on Circe. From clouds of microscopic ‘wild’ machines called parthobots that can take any form, to the way the planet grows new forms of life and waits for her human “locators” to find them and set them free from the earth, the sentient planet seemed like a fascinating place.
Likewise, the story seemed to move more freely on Circe, less encumbered by the stiff and fearful formality of First Home. It was an arena where the protagonists almost had a fighting chance against their enemies, and so it seemed fitting that the book wrapped up this chapter of the heroes’ story and came to a conclusion there.
In all, Man of Two Planets was a difficult book to review. Circe reminded me a bit of Petaybee, Elizabeth Anne Scarborough’s sentient planet. The feuding First Home families with all their romantic and political machinations, combined with the constraints of their stiffly formal society, seemed almost Shakespearean at times.
(There’s a particular scene where the High Forest family’s leader and his friend sneak into a masked ball to dance with their sweethearts, and then find themselves caught between wanting to intervene in Courvenier’s evil machinations and wanting to evade the public censure of discovery at a ball they couldn’t respectably attend. That particular act struck me as so Shakespearean that Shakespeare himself would have been proud of it.)
Then there’s the appalling situation the story’s women find themselves in, one where the only safe place for them is locked in a gilded cage of their male protectors’ making. As the story progresses, it’s shown that inner darkness is not a domain unique to the men of the Courvenier family. Underneath all the fine manners, women are never truly safe around First Home’s men.
Borto’s awareness of his inner darkness– that which makes him an unusually promising warrior for a Circean– makes him perhaps the most human and relatable of all the book’s male protagonists. He recognizes his dark impulses for that they are: not a natural part of being a strong and powerful man, but something repulsive and shameful which his loved ones should never be exposed to. It’s too bad such a sense of conscience isn’t more common.
November 24, 2018
I’m writing this with the caveat that I didn’t read book 1 but was affirmed that I didn’t need to. Even so, with some much-needed exposition, I wasn’t too confused for most of the book, particularly due to the many examples of characters and cultures and details behind how things worked. It follows Tethyn, the strong-willed protagonist from book 1, and her brother Borto, a rare warrior from Circe with a dark inner conflict. Though he does little “warring,” his culture shock of coming from a sentient planet connected to its people to a planet of feuding houses with the honor culture of an Islamic State takes center stage.
The setting of First Home and Circe and their cultures seem to play a character in themselves with many of its idiosyncrasies being much of the world building and inconveniences of the plot. First Home, with its different houses like that of Dune but in close proximity to show them play off each other like, however, with the Romeo and Juliet setup comes conflict being in the realm of screwing with the females of rival houses, giving rise to many of the stringent rules. I was given a warning for “some explicit sex” but “a rape scene” probably should have been a part of the caveat.
Although much of my worries coming into this book were unfounded, I still found this book not up my alley. Call me naive, given how this is acted on between real cultures, the tribalism of the houses “othering” each other to point that they didn’t see the women as people but pieces in a game foreshadowed by the Courvenier family and Vaire. As for how it ended, it seems the story will continue on for another entry.
The setting of First Home and Circe and their cultures seem to play a character in themselves with many of its idiosyncrasies being much of the world building and inconveniences of the plot. First Home, with its different houses like that of Dune but in close proximity to show them play off each other like, however, with the Romeo and Juliet setup comes conflict being in the realm of screwing with the females of rival houses, giving rise to many of the stringent rules. I was given a warning for “some explicit sex” but “a rape scene” probably should have been a part of the caveat.
Although much of my worries coming into this book were unfounded, I still found this book not up my alley. Call me naive, given how this is acted on between real cultures, the tribalism of the houses “othering” each other to point that they didn’t see the women as people but pieces in a game foreshadowed by the Courvenier family and Vaire. As for how it ended, it seems the story will continue on for another entry.
June 3, 2017
'Borto Claibrook-Merjolaine, born and raised on Circe, the planet with a mind, is the only man of his generation to become a warrior. As he learns combat skills on the neighboring planet of First Home his mentor, Hal, detects a dark creature hidden deep inside Borto’s personality. Coming from Circe’s own shadow, the being adds extra strength to Borto’s normal Circean abilities.'
Man of Two Planets is a very imaginable sci-fi adventure that not only boasts a living planet, but is populated with interesting well-developed characters who stay with you long after the book is finished. Borto and his sister, Tethyn are great characters and even the villainous Vaire, although a disgusting pig, is immensely watchable.
I only have one complaint. Ms. Rook obviously put a lot a care and effort into constructing the intricate planetary hierarchy and courtship rituals of First Home and the living planet of Circe. In my opinion a bit too much. It really bogs down the story until you acclimate yourself. However, I have to say that the imagery she invokes remind me of the old sci-fi masters Heinlein, and Asimov. All in all it is an enjoyable story and well worth reading.
Man of Two Planets is a very imaginable sci-fi adventure that not only boasts a living planet, but is populated with interesting well-developed characters who stay with you long after the book is finished. Borto and his sister, Tethyn are great characters and even the villainous Vaire, although a disgusting pig, is immensely watchable.
I only have one complaint. Ms. Rook obviously put a lot a care and effort into constructing the intricate planetary hierarchy and courtship rituals of First Home and the living planet of Circe. In my opinion a bit too much. It really bogs down the story until you acclimate yourself. However, I have to say that the imagery she invokes remind me of the old sci-fi masters Heinlein, and Asimov. All in all it is an enjoyable story and well worth reading.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews