At the Earth's Core
The keystone hollow-earth adventure, launching a seven-book series (Tarzan eventually visits).
Book Entry · Science Fiction
Lord Valentine's Castle
by Robert Silverberg · 1980 · Majipoor, book 1
What is Lord Valentine's Castle about?
A young man called Valentine wakes outside the city of Pidruid with pockets full of money and a mind empty of past, and contentedly joins a troupe of travelling jugglers — until dreams (a regulated public utility on Majipoor, policed by the Lady of the Isle and the King of Dreams) inform him he is the planet's deposed Coronal, body-swapped and discarded. The continent-spanning journey to reclaim Castle Mount rolls through one of SF's most generously imagined worlds: twenty billion people, six species, dream-courts and juggling described with such love the reader emerges half-trained.
Why it matters
Locus Award winner and Silverberg's triumphant return from retirement; Majipoor became one of the genre's great long-running settings, the bridge between planetary romance and big-canvas fantasy.
Where does it sit in the series?
Silverberg's giant, gentle planet of twenty billion souls, four ruling powers and a dream-haunted politics — planetary romance at its most luxuriant.
In the Guide from Majipoor:
- Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)
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