Book Review: The Weight of the World by Tom Toner
The second novel in Tom Toner’s Amaranthine Spectrum sequence, The Weight of the World continues the story of the descendants of humanity across local space 125 centuries into the future with a continued exploration of its range of characters set across an era of change and uncertainty for the immortal masters of the Firmament and their would-be supplanters alike. What The Weight of the World brings for a reader of the original book, The Promise of the Child, is the continued development of the plotlines whose tapestry began in that first book. There is Lycaste, of course, now far from the simple home, the Eden, really, that he had been driven from in the events of the first novel. Here, he continues his perambulating journey, a pawn of forces that seem determined to use him as he simply, still, like Odysseus wants to return home. But duties, promises, responsibilities and the vicissitudes of conflict drive Lycaste forward. Too, other characters met in the first novel show up here. The knight Ghaldezuel, for instance, continues his lonely, rambling quest across the worlds. Sotriis and Jatropha, two of the immortal Amaranthines whose lives seem as fragile as their own world, and others, continue to make their way in this time of tumult.
