The Radiant Seas

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The Radiant Seas is a novel from the Saga of the Skolian empire series of books by Catherine Asaro. The book continues where Primary Inversion ended and centers on the story of the devastating interstellar Radiance War.

We follow the lifes of several Ruby Dynasty members (especially Sauscony, Kurj and Althor) and also of main political figures from the Eubian Concord (emperor Ur Qox and his wife Viquara) during a period of nearly 18 years.

Kurj has to deal not only with the shocking sudden death of Soz, whom he imagined as his successor, but also with the political intrigues of the Eubian emperor Ur Qox, who draws the Allieds on his side, using lies and dirty tricks. When Ur tries to take Kurj prisoner, this leads to the destruction of a part of his fleet and to the death of both Ur and Kurj, leaving their two empires presumably heirless.

Soz's brother Althor inherits her position of the imperial heir after her apparent death. When he learns that his sister is alive, he promises his father Eldrinson to keep the secret for himself. But later he is captured by the Eubians during a space battle and unwillingly reveals this information after a brutal torture. The widowed empress Viquara sees an opportunity to provide the Eubian Concord with an heir without loosing her political power.

Sauscony (Soz) quit her job as a Jagernaut and faked her death, giving up her position of an imperial heir in order to live with her secretly married husband Jaibriol Qox, a heir to the Eubian Concord, on an unknown planet which they called Prizma. They have four children and live a simple and happy life, knowing that they can possibly never come back home, as this could endanger not only them and the children but also both their empires.

Then Jaibriol is kidnapped by Viquara's soldiers and forced to act as a "puppet emperor" with Viquara and her new husband Quaelen wielding the power from behind the throne. Soz hides her children on Earth in the custody of a family friend Seth Rockworth and returns to Skolia to assume her rightful position as the new Imperator. In order to get her husband back and save her people from the power hungry rulers of Eube, she launches an attack that will get into history as the Radiance War.