This novel is unique as it is both a play on the beauty and the beast fairytale as well an allegory on quantum scattering theory. I don't dislike Kamoj or Vryl just the book does not work entirely. ( )

Some ok ideas but really does not spend enough time actually examining the slavery and rape and other consent issues that arise in the plot. Nope. ( )

Don't read this one out of order although you might think, looking at the blurb, that you could.... unlike Kelric in The Last Hawk however, this brother of his, Havryl, who is no warrior or intellectual, but has lived his life as a farmer, ends up on Balumil where the remaining Ruby military has dumped him out of the hands of the Allieds....(see what I mean? You need the context). His arrival on Balumil destabilizes the political infrastructure there when he grabs the gorgeous but affianced governor away from her fiance who is rat-mad about that, you bet, but really, he isn't all that nice to her so.... Due to off-world politics, some later action happens off-planet on Lyshriol where Vyrl grew up. Both planets share some similarities - a genetically altered population for a planet that has to be 'sculpted' (not fully terraformed) to enable the people to survive there. Kamoj's people were particularly engineered for docility and for skill with 'current' - (engineering) but they have lost their skills and are gradually declining as the planet is too harsh even sculpted for them to make it without some reliable machinery to provide warmth and light, for example during their very very long winters. What is particularly fun about this one is that Asaro wrote it using the 'dance' of particle physics as her inspiration. In a postscript Asaro offers one of the neatest explanations of that dance that I've ever encountered, I got it while reading it, although retention will be another matter. The Quantum Rose is not the best of the series as it is a wee bit labored here and there, and Vyrl and Jax the two men who are in love with Kamoj are not quite as convincing as, say, my beloved hunk, Kelric, but I read it as absorbedly as ever. I also note she has left room for a return to Balumil - lots of potential for more development of both the planet and the characters. ****

I see looking at the rest of the reviews for QR - it really is a good idea to read in order. She has set up a very complex 'verse and falling into the middle of it just isn't fun. ( )

I was a little confused at first because I've never read any books by this author and this book is set in a specific world that she has created. When I first started reading it, it had all the marks of a Scifi/Fantasy book, but on further reading, I realized that the book was a romance. Not a problem for me, I like romances. Because I was unfamiliar with the world that the characters inhabited, I was a little slow on figuring out certain situations, but I eventually caught on. It wasn't the quickest of reads, but I did finish the book because I wanted to find out what happens to the characters, which is a plus for any book I read. It's not on my "must read again" list, but it was an enjoyable, if sometimes confusing, read. ( )

A book of the "Saga of the Skolian Empire" series, 'The Quantim Rose' is a book that probably requires a rudimentary background knowledge of the series to understand the full story. Overall, at it's core, it's a story of a romance between two worlds and cultures that go horribly wrong; which, our two protagonists struggle to overcome to change things for the better. Fans of Star Trek's "The Prime Directive" might find this of interest when the spirit of that rule is not followed in this book.
As interesting as that description sounds, 'The Quantum Rose', suffers from the fact that it's a book that's dealing with multiple plots at the same time that sometimes doesn't transition too well from one to the next.
Others also might find parts of this book disturbing, since it involves scenes of kidnapping, coercion, and rape.
Overall, another interesting chapter in the history of the Skolian Empire, though not quite up to the level of the other books in this series. ( )