An Earthly Crown is the first part in the two-part The Sword of Heaven "novel," which is the sequel to Elliot's Jaran. I really liked Jaran, and I really like An Earthly Crown for the same reasons: it's chockablock full of intriguing sociological themes (culture clashes, gender roles, and the morality of war) and meaty melodrama. It's like a soap opera for your brain! ( )

Only read this if you really, really, loved Jaran and want to spend more time in that world, kind of like reading all the Twilight books. This does not have the magic of the first novel. The pace is beyond slow, we follow characters who mostly watch the action rather than being in the middle of it, and everything is included, whether it moves the book along or not. When one character, presumed dead, returns, we get four separate "I thought you were dead!" scenes as he meets people, one after the other. Four times? I figured it out the first time. Sometimes it feels like half the book is recitations of who is related to who.

If you enjoyed Jaran, either re-read it or just enjoy the glow. I'm returning the rest of the series to the library. ( )

I hate writing recaps of follow up books in a series. I never know what to give away about the previous book so I’ll just copy and paste the blurb from the author’s website :

In An Earthly Crown, the nomadic tribes of the jaran are uniting the settled cities of their homeland one by one. Their charismatic leader, Ilya Bakhtiian, has his loyal wife by his side, but there is something about her he doesn’t know: Tess Soerensen is a human. Back home, her brother, Charles, led an unsuccessful revolt against the all-powerful Chapalii empire. Charles’s insistence that Tess join him is as strong as Ilya’s reluctance to part with his beloved wife and neither considers that Tess may have her own plans for the future. As three fiercely independent spirits struggle for a solution, the fates of both the human race and the jaran hang in the balance.

Obviously the reader is returning to the ‘verse of Jaran and the story of Ilya Bakhatiian as he tries to unify the tribes and sweep across the land. And so we’re returning to Tess’s story as well. But in this book the reader gets a much wider, possibly more objective look at the characters of the first book.

Four years have passed since the end of Jaran and Tess’s brother has come looking for her, bringing with him a company of actors along with his advisors. So we get to see their culture shock arriving on this “backwards” planet. Hiding their technology and pretending to be from a country across the water called Erthe, rather than a different planet.

And it is a great read. I loved it. It is a complete page-turner. Just like with the first book as soon as I finished one chapter I found myself diving straight into the next.

And it builds wonderfully on the first. In Jaran the reader was in the middle of jaran culture, we knew why things were happening, most of the time. Sure Tess didn’t know everything, but she asked, she found out. She was the only outsider in their culture and she was trying to fit in. Now there are a whole host of outsiders living with the jarans. They aren’t part of that society, neither are they trying to fit in, they dont want to cause offense or upset, but they are separate from the tribes people. None of them are moored on the planet, they are exploring and uncovering it and so give a completely different interpretation of many things than Tess did.

I guess you could say that Jaran was somewhat of a personal story((with aliens and empire)) whereas An earthly crown shifts into the story of a world and a people. We also get the chance to explore more of Ilya’s back story, and his relationship with Vasil. And look at how gay men are thought of. And that aspect of Jaran culture will probably trouble readers most. It certainly troubles the humans from earth, as does the casual attitude to death and war. A lot of this book deals with war, as the army of the jarans sweep into action and conquer the cities one by one. There are battles, and death, of course, but also culture clashes as the conquered peoples have different manners and customs to the jaran, how can they work together.

All in all it is a great book and I’d highly recommend this series. And because Elliott has said that she intends this and Jaran #3 to be read as one book I’ve already begun His conquering sword. ( )

This second in the series of novels about the Jaran had a slower start and more complex development - being book 2 in a four parter, things are brewing, you might say, both on the ground and in the air. Elliott is doing an interesting thing, combining a nomadic horse/warrior culture that has developed into a very effective functioning unit poised, in a way not entirely dissimilar to Genghis Khan, to unify and alter a large continental area of this planet. But at the same time, off-worlders are intermingling, for better or worse, and there is no way, given the pressures that these off-worlders, Earth humans and the Chappalii are also under (Chapalii are a much older race that rules most of this part of the galaxy, benevolently, but totally which is, naturally, unacceptable to the Earthpeople.....), no way that the Rhui people, Jaran and others will be unaffected. The people on this planet, Rhui, were placed there by the Chappalii at some distant time (no less than 5000 probably not more than 20,000 years ago) from Earth for reasons obscure, so they are in fact human, although the Chappalii may have tinkered with them, making them subtly different....you have all sorts of romances and intrigues from the most earthly sort to the mystery of the Chappalii culture and aims. Sexual mores, gender roles all play an important role here too - Elliott is bold and interesting and sympathetic in her explorations of what it might be to be gay in a culture like the Jaran, the clash of an 'advanced' culture where all sorts of combinations are accepted. It's hard to judge this novel separately from the whole, but I'm still engrossed, and I don't have that lurking feeling I sometimes have that I'm being totally indulgent. **** ( )

It was fun going to Rhui and seeing a totally different culture, and to watch Ilya trying to explain to everyone how he married Tess without succeeding in Marking her as was proper.
It tends to be a long tangled tale, there will not really be anything that jumps up at you as different about the story...but the story is about the road to the end, not the glamour or shock you find there. ( )