Introduction by Mary Lou Mendum to The Price of Peace

            Back in May of 2009, I was browsing through the new releases at my local independent bookstore in search of new reading matter when I picked up a copy of Catherine Asaro’s novel Diamond Star.  I had looked at her previous Skolian Empire novel, The Ruby Dice, the year before, but had passed it by because it was very obviously an installment in a longer series.  Diamond Star, however, looked likely to be understandable even by somebody who had not read the previous books, so I decided to give it a try. 

            I finished the book in four days and immediately started tracking down the previous installments of the saga.  I enjoyed the other books greatly, but Diamond Star has remained my favorite.  What’s not to enjoy about a rock star who’s a prince in disguise, against a background of three warring interstellar empires with drastically different, mutually incomprehensible cultures? 

            Diamond Star is a tightly crafted book that resolves Prince Del’s story nicely.  However, it left a few burning issues unsettled.  At the end of the book, most of the members of Del’s band still don’t know who he is.  He plans to buy an estate, marry his lover, and live quietly on Earth, but how this might be accomplished was left open.  Would Earth’s government let him be, or would he be drawn into the diplomacy and politics that he’d shunned previously?  When the next book Carnelians was published in 2011, these issues were left unresolved because they didn’t impact the plot of that book, but an interesting tidbit was dropped regarding a three-way peace treaty that had been signed about a year after Diamond Star’s end, as part of which Del’s hit protest song was made to disappear. 

            As I often do with a book I particularly like, I had sketched out scene fragments resolving some of these questions.  I mentioned them to one of my fellow Sime~Gen gamers from the Borderlands scenario, Lexie Pakulak.  Lexie, it turned out, was also a fan of the Skolian Empire books, and she began nagging me to turn my fragments into something coherent enough to share.  I started sending her chapters, which required more chapters, until I had finally answered not only my questions but hers as well. 

            The resulting fanfiction isn’t quite a novel, despite its length.  It wanders a little, exploring nooks and crannies that a well-crafted novel would leave undisturbed because they aren’t necessarily directly related to the plot.  It was also deliberately designed like The Princess Bride to maximize the “good parts”; both Lexie and I were at points in our lives when we really needed a good laugh.

            I hope the resulting story will give you some laughs as well.  If you enjoy it, let me know.  If you are already familiar with Asaro’s books, my hope is that my story will make the wait for the next installment, Undercity, a bit easier.  And if you haven’t discovered Catherine Asaro’s Skolian Empire books yet, you have a treat in store for you.

 Mary Lou Mendum

July 2014

COMMENTS can be addressed to Mary Lou as @ML MENDUM (all small letters) on the Sime~Gen Group on Facebook. 
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After you join the Group, type in the empty field at the top @Ml Mendum and enter your comment. There are many in this Group who will be interested. 

Index to The Price of Peace by Mary Lou Mendum

Skolian Empire Fan Fiction Index