It didn't – but I did feel a warm sense of contentment while reading it. Skyfall is one of those books that I feel should have made me giddy. Who can turn down a polite invitation to a castle? Then there's a weather problem, and a siege, and the next thing you know, time has passed and things have happened. He offers to return her to her port, and offers a very polite invitation to his castle as an alternative. I thought this part would be annoying but actually it's sort of cute – he swoops her up onto his horse and charges away with her in true kid-nappy barbarian fashion, but realizes within only a few minutes that Roca is genuinely irked by being ran away with. She is literally swept off her feet by local leader Eldrinson. After hitching a ride with a cranky starship captain (a great character who promptly flew away and vanished from the book, leaving me bereft) she finds herself stranded on the planet Skyfall.

The book opens with Roca, a leader in the Skolian Empire, desperate to get to a hearing so that she can vote against a war that her son, Kurj, is eager to start. It's from her famous Skolian Saga, but it is a prequel. If I sound bitter, don't worry, it's just the envy of her many accomplishments seeping from my pores as I type.Īnyway, I chose to start my education in the works of Catherine Asaro with Skyfall.

In her spare time, she knits intricately patterned fireproof scarves for firefighters from the wool she shears from her own herd of unicorns.

She certainly seems like a nifty person – more accurately, she sounds like a very improbable romance heroine.Īmong other things, she's a former professional dancer, has a Masters in Physics and a PhD in Chemical Physics from Harvard, she's won two Nebula Awards for her fiction, and she just composed a bunch of music for a CD that accompanies her latest book. Many readers of Smart Bitches have mentioned Catherine Asaro as science fiction romance author to check out.

The Phoenix Code by Catherine Asaro