“The White Tyger,” by Paul Park (Tor, 304 pages, $25.95)
The third book in Paul Park’s four-part fantasy of an alternate Roumania brings the heroine Miranda Popescu into the hands of her chief enemy, the Baroness Ceausescu. The American world Miranda thought she grew up in proved to be a fantasy created by her aunt to keep her safe. Her best friends from America, Andromeda and Peter, were previously Roumanian soldiers pledged to protect her.
Miranda has been separated from her friends in space and time. In Roumania she knows a lot is expected of her as she begins to use a little of the legacy of magic left by her aunt.
The Baroness has everything going her way. Her son has returned from his captivity in Germany although she makes no effort to see him. The German occupiers look to her as their authority in Bucharest. She has a gun left to Miranda by her aunt, a weapon that can unleash the power of other worlds.
She lives as the star of the opera she is writing about herself, “The White Tyger,” the savior of Roumania. At moments she knows her prisoner Miranda is the real white tyger but she soon goes back to living out her delusions. She has enough political and magical power to impose her delusions on a whole country.
Her nightly performances seek to re-create those as an unclothed teenager that brought her fame and the attention of the powerful aristocrat and sorcerer she would marry. Baroness Ceasescu’s grand ambitions bump into her life of lies and murder.
Paul Park’s rich writing makes the Baroness a complicated tragic figure who can seduce us into almost forgiving her despicable behavior. Her story allows “The White Tyger” to stand on its own as a fine novel about the rise and fall of an ambitious woman. The story of Miranda and her friends is better served by starting with the excellent earlier volumes, “A Princess of Roumania” and “The Tourmaline.”
“Horizons,” by Mary Rosenblum (Tor, 316 pages, $24.95)
Mary Rosenblum was one of the hot new writers of the ’90s, and “Horizons” is her first science fiction novel in more than 10 years (she has been publishing mystery novels under the name Mary Freeman). She returns to science fiction with an exciting political thriller of a revolt in space.
Ahni Huang goes to the space platform New York Up to avenge her brother’s death. As the daughter of the most powerful man in Taiwan, that is what is expected of her. There she finds her brother alive, conspiring against her.
Escaping assailants, Ahni finds a dynamic culture where a new species of humanity is developing. The space platforms have been suspected of illegal tampering with human genes, but evolution has taken a different course in space and adapted humanity is developing faster than anyone had thought possible.
Rosenblum’s space colony is a complex society. She shows many aspects of it along with its relations with Earth and the asteroid miners they both depend on.
Fred Cleaver is a freelancer who writes a monthly column on new science fiction.
