Amazon.com: Customer reviews: In Conquest Born

Top positive review

Great book, poor publishing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 4, 2006

I have read and re-read this book many times since it was first published. I find it to be one the all-time best SF books - and one of the few newer ones that can rank with Golden Age classics like Childhood's End and The Demolished Man. I have read most of Friedman's other books as well, and although they range from good (Madness Season) to excellent (Wilding, Coldfire Trilogy), she suffers from what I always think of as Orson Welles Syndrome: never quite being able to match up to that first brilliant work. If you like space opera, if you enjoy getting a visceral kick out of language that sometimes is almost cinematic in its impact ("He stands like a statue, perfect in arrogance." Was there ever a better SF first line?), then you will like this book. You can buy it with confidence. Unfortunately, this new edition takes a powerful book and drops the ball numerous times due to poor editing. While I never found any typos in my original copy (which I still have), this new "collectors" edition has a lot. It's really sad that the publishers couldn't seem to muster up enough passion or energy to go beyond a standard computer spell-check and get an actual person to proof the galleys. There are a lot of times when a needless typo will cause you to stop and re-read the sentence, taking you completely out of the story. I also didn't like the ad copy on the book, which seemed to promise additional story material, when in fact all that was new was a foreward and a sort of index to characters and cultures that really doesn't add anything to the book. All in all, I give the writer's work a full five, with a "Bravo!" thrown in for good measure, and the publishers barely a three for the sloppy job they did on their end.

10 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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Laura

Eh, not terrible, but not great

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 23, 2012

I just finished C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy, and was blown away. I haven't read such a good series in a long time. I thought I'd become too jaded or that my expectations were too high and I wasn't able to enjoy a series as much as I used to, but the Coldfire trilogy proved me wrrong, and I was happy to be wrong. So I went looking for other books by C.S. Friedman, and saw In Conquest Born had high reviews. Maybe my expectations were once again too high after the Coldfire trilogy, but I found this story sorely lacking in many ways.

The characters - I cared absolutely nothing for any of them. It wasn't so much that they were detestable. The Hunter from the COldfire trilogy certainly wasn't a good person, but he had some redeeming qualities that made him a facinating character even though I didn't always LIKE him. The characters in In Conquest Born are flat, without complexity, and have no redeeming quality, I feel, and were therefore of no interest. In addition, I never felt like I really got to know them, never felt like I was experiencing through their eyes. I felt like I was "told" things about these characters rather than "shown". Also, much of the beginning of the book was told through letters, communications both calls and telepathically, which is a very detacted way to introduce characters, and was used as a rather obvious vehical to deliver pages and pages of cultural and political explinations, which got really old and annoying for me after a few pages.

The plot was also rather obvious and simple, and very predictable I found. I found myself putting the audiobook on "fast" spead to get through the slow, tedious parts and to something interesting. Some plot developments were a bit of a stretch, a few times out of character for the characers and while the author tried hard to justify such developments and make them plausible, it seems to me is comes across as "trying too hard" on the part of the author, which I thought made it more obvious how unlikely such developments were. I felt like these plot developments were forced contrary to character's and natural plot flow to make the story go in a certain direction. Nothing wrong with that, but if it doesn't make sense, it really is jarring to me.

I really enjoyed the lengthy descriptions in the Coldfire trilogy, of unusual characters and a facinating world. But in In Conquest Born, I found the same lengthy descriptions unnecessary and uniteresting, usually giving way too much detail to rather mundane settings and people. The two worlds and cultures seemed like stereotypical opposites with few truly unique aspects. However, i didn't find them wholely uninteresting either. I found the telepathic evolution and human evolution in general an interesting topic but neither was ever really flushed out. The whole book felt like a scale with the few shining interesting bits canceled out by equally boring, uninteresting bits.

Overall, I did not find In Conquest Born a terrible read, it was worth listening too, and I'm not disappointed that I spent a credit on Audible on it, but it wasn't great. I was bored much of the story. I didn't think it worth 5 stars. I'd give it 2.5 stars if I could, because I am exactly in the middle in my regard for this book.

3 people found this helpful

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From the United States

Christopher Chardon

Great book, poor publishing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 4, 2006

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10 people found this helpful

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Aaron

This is one of the best sci-fi novels of all time

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 10, 2016

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This is one of the best sci-fi novels of all time. In Conquest Born is CS Friedman's first book! Honestly, I don't even know where to begin to describe this book. As a book review, this is lazy, but I want to let the author describe it. From her website:[...]

AUTHORS NOTES
I began working on the background material for this novel in high school. With starmaps tucked into the backs of my notebooks and short stories masquerading as note-taking, I was thus able to spend of my school time focused on something far more important than education: world-building. Over time the original concept evolved into something more complex and ambitious, and a collection of interconnected stories began to emerge. In 1978 I was encouraged by a friend “with connections” to develop them into a novel and try to sell it. Alas, I was in grad school by then, which left little free time for writing. It was not until 1983 that I finally organized the “project from hell” into a novel proper and turned it in to DAW books. They bought it immediately, and the rest, as they say, is history.
In Conquest Born is, at its heart, a Cold War tragedy: two peoples so long committed to war, so molded by an endless cultural conflict, that “peace” is no longer in their vocabulary. A millenial war punctuated by unstable truces has become the centerpiece of both civilizations, to the detriment of both cultures. Against this background two leaders arise, challenging all that their peoples have become, locked together in a vendetta that borders on sexual obsession.
It’s a story that gained in depth and complexity every year I worked on it, and while very little of the material in the completed novel came from those early years — most was written the summer before I turned it in — the characters, the universe, and the underlying themes resonated in a way you can only get when you have spent 12 years polishing your concepts.
Don Wollheim accepted the MS for DAW books ‘as is’, declaring he “would not change a word”, but his rapid decline in health meant that his daughter Betsy Wollheim had to take over the business and thus my manuscript.
In a scene which I immortalized in the introduction to the Anniversary edition of the novel, she and I bonded over food (better than a contract for New York Jews) and then proceeded to discuss my manuscript. Hesitantly, she broached to me the idea that maybe the story was a bit more fragmented than a novel should be, and maybe I should add a bit more detail to a few spots. I responded by throwing out about 30% of my work and rewriting the whole novel…which she spent the next 15 years feeling guilty about… guilt being yet another important component of New York Jewish relationships.
What resulted was an infinitely better novel than my original work could ever have been, which won Betsy a place in my personal pantheon of “Editor-Goddesses”, as well as a permanent card in my rolodex of Best Friends Ever. For the 15th anniversy edition I finally was able to add a much-needed glossary, which I just hadn’t had the time to write the first time around.
In 1991, Rick Umbaugh (who had delivered In Conquest Born to DAW and thus kick-started my writing career) reminded me that one page on the original manuscript had never made it into print. When I had sent the manuscript to him back in ’83, I had apparently scrawled a note to him across the top page with a Sharpie:
I WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN!
Rick, bless his evil soul, had left that page in place when he delivered the package to DAW. And so (I found out a decade later) the first words of mine that Donald Wollheim ever saw was my vow to never write another book.
Fortunately for me, no one took it seriously.
Fortunately for Rick, I didn’t find out about it until he had moved faaaaaaar away.

One person found this helpful

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Laura

Eh, not terrible, but not great

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 23, 2012

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3 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Read this book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 29, 2000

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Looking through the reviews, it seems like many people find the main characters - I hesitate to tag either with protagonist or antagonist - to be immoral, vicious scumbags.
They are.
But it's hard to imagine the Braxins, a culture that values a good emnity more than friendship - and scorns friendship - turning out a pleasant person. And it's hard to imagine an Azean who could stand against the best the Braxins have to offer being anything nice.
Actually, there is a nice Braxin. Don't worry, he's persuaded to change. He wasn't that nice either. Never mind.
It's unfortunate that Braxin, with its 42 speech modes, doesn't translate fully into English. A speech that has a way to explicitly express what we have to use unreliable tones to express would be interesting to read. Trying to pick out the third level of speech left unstated by word or speech mode would be even better. Listening to two masters of the speech duel would be something I would like to have the capability to read in it's original language.
Did I mention the book is brilliant? From the front of each chapter, which provides a quote from the founders of the Braxins (one of the main races), to the chapters themselves, it reads quickly and well, never getting bogged down in details, but filling in enough to give you a very strong sense of two cultures, and the some of the sub-cultures within them. For better and for worse. Proud accomplishment is tempered by difficulty and unexpected consequence.
Finally, after 700+ pages, the story is closed, without a clear winner. But closed nevertheless.
It is illustrative that the book comes with Anzha - the Azean -on the front cover in one edition (pictured above) and Zatar - the Braxin - on the front cover in the other edition. I picked up a copy with Zatar on the front cover, and read it with him as protagonist. Then, I saw Anzha on the front cover of another copy of the book, and I was rocked. Two protagonists. Reading it looking from the other side yields just as much depth. Either one is a good central focus.
Two bits from within the book illustrate the book itself:
1 - A poet is comissioned to speak a poem for a diverse group of people. Having tried and discarded themes, the poet picks a large overarching theme that no one can admit to really believing, but does, and listens enraptured while the poet tells the story, because of her mastry of the language.
2 - There is a thing called the k'airth-v'sa - literaly 'mate of the private war' where two people are bound in a vendetta that strengthens them as they seek to eliminate their weaknesses and exploit their opponent's.
Lastly, a quote from the front of a chapter:
"A man who will not resort to violence must find his own ways to manipulate men" - Harkur
Nice philosophy.

11 people found this helpful

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The Library of Babel

Grand Space Opera, Poorly Punctuated

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 16, 2015

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'In Conquest Born' by C. S. Friedman is an excellent piece of science-fiction. I am a big fan of space opera, and I honestly can't think of another example that set the bar for the genre so well since before this novel came out in 1987 (okay, yes, Star Wars, I'll give you that one), and not many since. Two vast interstellar polities, the Azean Star Empire and the Braxin Holding, have been at war for thousands of years. One is a multi-species, progressive federation of planets, the other composed entirely of humans, in a warlike, feudal society. The two have been fighting for so long that the conflict has grown to define their respective cultures, until Anzha of the Azeans and Zatar the Magnificent finally meet face-to-face, an event which helps illuminate this story as one dealing with epic, galactic-sized events, while at the same time as being a character study of two brilliant, flawed, obsessive individuals. If one is defined more by the quality of one's enemies than one's friends, then Anzha Iyu Mitethe and Zatar of the Braxana, the co-protagonists, are defined pretty well indeed in my opinion. The tip of the sword for their respective interstellar empires, Zatar and Anzha engage in a rivalry that ultimately changes the structure of a conflict that's lasted for generations; yet at the same time, both are misfits among their own people, ultimately discovering that their respective arch-nemesis is the one who understands him or her best, or even at all.

Make no mistake, 'In Conquest Born' is a masterpiece, by a young and hungry author eager to share the novel's dark but fascinating universe with the reader. Lacking the maturity of some of her later works but exploding with audacity and ambition, this novel is the kind of read that just yanked me out of my own self and into the story. In a literary climate so saturated with irony that most of us don't even notice it, the raw sincerity and commitment to her material that Friedman conveys was like a bucket of ice water over my head. Many of the ideas in this novel were so far ahead of their time that most science fiction still hasn't caught up yet (for the one or two people who may actually read this review, I'd be happy to discuss finer points in the comments section).

Okay, so, obviously I liked it. Why 3 stars? The 2001 fifteenth anniversary collector's special collector's super plus limited edition is so riddled with typographical errors it actually interrupted my experience of reading it as, say, I tried to parse whether or not a comma was supposed to be there. It was like the movie that was playing in my head had skipped a reel or someone bumped the projector. To give this novel a higher score, to me, would be like rewarding the shoddy proofreaders that allowed this printing to hit the bookshelves. At the risk of sounding more carried away than I already do, it feels like kind of a crime what they did to this book I liked.

Sorry if I sound like back cover copy, I swear I'm a real person and not a spam-bot or paid bulk reviewer. Honest!

7 people found this helpful

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Robert Boggs

Not an easy book to finish

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 19, 2020

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I love the author's Coldfire and Magister trilogies, so I was eager to try one of her other books. I bought this one several years ago, but gave up on it after a few chapters because I just hated it. Every chapter feels disjointed, and the beginning of the book doesn't focus on individual characters enough to know them (there are too many POV characters in general, honestly).

I finally came back to the book in 2020, started over and finished it, but it was never a very pleasant experience. There were grand concepts and nice ideas, but I rarely related to the book much. Each chapter is written like a separate story, and so there were some tales I enjoyed and many I did not. The more enjoyable chapters are enough to raise my rating of the book above one or two stars, however. And a few chapters of the book toward the end have some much more interesting character-centric moments.

Part of the reason I had so much trouble finishing this book, though, is a matter of personal taste. One of my biggest pet peeves in a story is when the author begins the book describing a character's activities but not naming them until significantly later in the chapter or even later in the book. My usual gripe: "If I'm in this character's head, why the heck don't I know who I am?" In this book, it feels like almost every single chapter does this. It happens over and over again, where the POV character isn't identified either at all or for several pages, though if it hasn't been a week since you last read the book you might remember who it's supposed to be. It's like if you were watching a TV show, and for the first three-quarters of every scene at least a few of the characters appeared only as silhouettes with disguised voices for no apparent reason.

4 people found this helpful

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Joel Sanet

Entertaining but frustrating

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 22, 2006

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Storywise, I found this book to be quite entertaining, a far future space opera in which humans have speciated and no one knows which planet is the Source World. C.S. Friedman created several interesting cultures, the main ones being the Azean Empire which has had telepaths for thousands of years and the Braxin Holding which is ruled by the Braxana, a race of cruel and ruthless superwarriors who despise anyone with ESP. Although the Braxana once had women warriors, in the current era the culture is male-dominant. The thought of being dominated by a female is abhorrent to them. The two empires have been at war off and on for thousands of years. There are highly detailed cultural and historical backgrounds for both posthuman races, something I always find enjoyable. Friedman's style is lively and her characters colorful.

That said, there is a lot that is wrong with the book, part of it the author's fault, part the publisher's. This was her first published novel, written over a period of 12 years, and it shows. For one thing this book has one of the largest plot holes I've ever come across. In Chapter 14 Zatar, the Braxana ruler, chases after an Azean ship that has been causing havoc to the Braxian war machine. The pilot seems to be able to make impossible maneuvers (no explanation) and seems to know where the next shot will come from (telepathy of course---telepathic communication apparently can be relayed across the galaxy much faster than the speed of light according to several scenes in the book). After a chase which few but a Braxana could survive, he catches up to the mysterious "swordship" and discovers that the unconscious pilot is not only female but has accouterments indicating that she is a telepath. Seething with hatred for her, he "syncs" her ship to his and heads back to the mothership. The pilot is not actually identified, but the only telepath involved with the war effort in the entire Azean Empire is the protagonist, Anzha Iyu. (The Azean Empire has had telepaths capable of transluminal communication for thousands of years, but no one thought to use them during their incessant wars until now. Figure that one out!) In the next chapter there is no mention of a telepath being held by the Braxana and Anzha Iyu is seen back on her own mothership as if nothing has happened. I read another 40 pages (to P. 262 out of 500) before quitting and there was no explanation to that point.

At times the writing seems a bit self-indulgent and her efforts to manipulate the plot in the direction she wants it to go are transparent. She will write things that contradict what was written earlier in the book in order to justify some plot point. The final straw for me was the scene in Chapter 15 where Zatar and Anzha face off at last after 250 pages. At age 6 Anzha became catatonic when she witnessed the horrifying death of her parents at the hands of none other than Zatar. When she is finally brought out of her catatonia by healing telepaths, they find that she has enormous telepathic potential at an age when telepathic power usually does not even manifest. Anzha is obsessed with revenge against Zatar. Zatar hates Anzha with a passion and wants to kill her. He calls a truce conference with the Azeans in order to have a chance to assassinate her, but his attempt fails. Because of her telepathic powers he is completely at her mercy, but he says to her, "I will kill you by my own hands, in my own time. In my own way." Then she says to him, "I will kill you by my own hands. In my own time. In my own way. None other will have you." Then she lets him go. Oh, man, give me a break! I can only swallow so much.

Actually, I think I might have continued reading if I weren't so annoyed by all the typos in this book. If DAW paid someone to proofread it, they should demand their money back! I have never, ever, ever seen a book with so many typos. "Undedying" instead of "underlying", a character named "Yiril" is twice called "Viril"(Is this a new character? No, it isn't.), commas where they don't belong so that you have to go back and reread the sentence. It goes on and on and on.

It takes a lot to make me give up on a long book that I've gotten over halfway through, but the further I went the more resistance I felt to reading further. The frustrations got to the point where they outweighed the good. The one star rating I gave it is overly harsh---it can be quite entertaining if you can forgive my criticisms---but there is no way it deserves the 4.5 star rating it currently has. This is my effort to move the rating in the proper direction.

11 people found this helpful

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MeepTheDragon

Deeply Rewarding

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 10, 2017

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As others have mentioned, this is not an easy book. Each chapter is a mini-story, creating a whole. It traverses times, characters, locations, and you must keep up. But it is very much worth the effort. I don't want to scare you away, it isn't a slog, it isn't painful at all. I just don't want you to go into it without having a clue. This is one of my top favorite books, ever. My old paper copy is falling apart from multiple readings. If you were able to read and enjoy Dune or Game of Thrones, or any other dense, rich story, you will find In Conquest Born to be as rewarding.

9 people found this helpful

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pbtommy

Great Space Opera

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 26, 2016

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Great science fiction from the 1970s to 1980s era. Not hard core science by my standards. Still, classic science fiction, in that given a set of possible/plausible circumstances how would a group of sentient people behave? Further, it's written in an epic style so if you like space opera it's for you. If you like what I've just described this is a book for you.

2 people found this helpful

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Grace O

Good, complex realization of a culture

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 5, 2016

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It is complex but sometimes I feel I am being hit over the head about gender inequality and exploitation. I bet that is because of the times when the book was written. A well-realized social fabric. It is especially good to see cracks in what a lesser author would have presented as a monolithic cutlure.

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5 star		58%
4 star		21%
3 star		13%
2 star		4%
1 star		4%

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