Downloading The Pearl #03 - Mistress of the Pearl

From Publishers Weekly

Fans of bestseller Lustbader will welcome the third hefty installment in his Pearl fantasy series (after 2002's The Veil of a Thousand Tears), with its wildly complex plot, breathless action and jaw-breaking nomenclature (Khagggun, Mesagggun, etc.), though newcomers might wish they had a roadmap. On the planet Kundala, the conquering V'ornn are having trouble subduing the natives, who have a champion in the woman Riane, aka "the Dar Sala-at, the fabled savior, destined to lead the Kundalan uprising against their alien V'ornn oppressors." Meanwhile, Annon, a dead V'ornn whose consciousness survives within Riane, shows that some V'ornn are worthy of the reader's sympathy. Riane's friend Eleana, who loved Annon, finds herself strangely attracted to Riane. The Kundalans' ultimate salvation, however, rests in securing the mystical Pearl. Tolkien's rings (reflected in the Pearl's "banestones") and the pseudo-Islamicism of Herbert's Dune are among the author's many obvious literary influences, while in a display of tongue-in-cheek humor three V'ornn admirals act a bit like the Three Stooges. Lustbader keeps scene-setting to a minimum ("Sapphire evening spread its wings over the great steppe") amid all the fighting and skullduggery. A surprise twist at the end serves as a springboard to a fourth volume.
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From Booklist

Van Lustbader continues grappling with questions of technological morality in volume 3 of the Pearl. The Ring of the Five Dragons (2001) and The Veil of a Thousand Tears (2002) introduced two races in conflict: the invading V'ornn and the peaceful and spiritual Kundalan, oppressed by the V'ornn for more than a century. The V'ornn exploit Kundala for its resources, but the rarely seen V'ornn rulers, the Gyrgon technomages, have a more ghastly agenda: to genetically reengineer the DNA of mixed Kundalan-V'ornn offspring to produce exceptionally powerful warriors who are part creature, part machine. The reengineering process is far from perfected, and most of the resultant children die hideous, bloody deaths or go mad. Riane, the prophesied Dar-Sala-at, and her companions continue their desperate search for the sacred Pearl, with which she can save Kundala and free her people from the V'ornn. Now she faces the most forbidding task thus far, to wrest control of the banestones from the evil Sauromicians, soulless magicians whose black-magical knowledge is vast and who, having found the ninth and last banestone, will wield all the known power in Kundala. Van Lustbader's engaging novel builds powerfully upon its predecessors, thanks to characters of uncommon depth and complexity, lots of perplexing dilemmas for them to wrestle with, and plenty of exciting swordplay and gore. Paula Luedtke
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