I got off to a late start but here it is. I thought it would be fun to share mem­o­rable char­ac­ters that I’ve run across in my read­ing. In my 18+ years of read­ing for plea­sure, I have a few books/scenes/characters I’d like to share with you.

In 18+ years, some char­ac­ters have stamped them­selves indeli­bly into my brain and have con­tin­ued to stand out for what­ever rea­son. I’m sure as read­ers you have characters/scenes/books that you reread often. I plan to spot­light a few books/characters/scenes (every Tues­day till I’m done) that have stayed with me long after turn­ing that last page. First up is a char­ac­ter from the futur­is­tic fan­tasy, space-operatic series writ­ten by the won­der­ful Cather­ine Asaro fea­tur­ing tor­tured hero, Kurj Sko­lia. Some minor spoil­ers are revealed in this series so if you don’t want to read any details then please stop read­ing here.

Char­ac­ter Name: IMPERATOR KURJ SKOLIA aka KURJ
Author/Creator: Cather­ine Asaro
Series: There are 13 books in the Ruby Dynasty series
Cat­e­gory: SF/F + strong roman­tic thread in most of them
Con­flict: The Sko­lia Imper­i­late com­bat­ing with the enemy Eubian Con­cord (or Aris­tos).
Books With This Char­ac­ter In It: Pri­mary Inver­sion, The Radi­ant Seas

Back­ground: Kurj is a for­mer Jager­naut, now mil­i­tary leader of the Impe­r­ial Space Com­mand and first born son of Roca Sko­lia. He is also con­sid­ered Rhon (which means he is an empath). At seven feet tall, he is half-man and half machine. Kurj is an intim­i­dat­ing indi­vid­ual who is feared by many who are under his com­mand. He’s author­i­ta­tive and dic­ta­to­r­ial. Under­neath all that power lies a tor­tured man, strug­gling with his inner demons. He’s a man who is qui­etly reserved and lonely. A man liv­ing his life with­out inner peace. Kurj Sko­lia from the Ruby Dynasty series is one of my favorite mem­o­rable characters.

Quote: This scene is one that I’ve reread many times. It’s taken from The Radi­ant Seas. Kurj is speak­ing with his mother about the past and it’s a soul search­ing tense filled talk between mother and son. Kurj had found out that the grand­fa­ther he always loved and admired his whole life, was actually…his father via in vitro fer­til­iza­tion. It’s a sor­did and explain­able tale that involves the lack of empaths and need for more empaths dur­ing this pre­car­i­ous time of war.

This news of his her­itage left Kurj a bro­ken man due to the events that hap­pened later that led up to his father’s death. The author pro­vides plenty of back story for her char­ac­ters. As a young kid, Kurj would often find him­self fight­ing with the men in his mother’s life (apart of the back story). Obvi­ously this had an impact on him and shaped him into the man he turned out to be: hard and ruthless.

“The past never goes away.” He tilted his head. “Have you ever com­pared an organic mem­ory with one you’ve stored in a node file? It is amaz­ing the dis­tor­tions time cre­ates. Give a man long enough and he can con­vince him­self of his inno­cence in anything.”

Roca came over and sat next to him, within the shadow field. “You should take more care with your words.”

He stared at her, his fist clench­ing. “Even now, what is your first impulse? Put your­self in dan­ger to pro­tect me, lest some­one over­hear my words and use them against me. You didn’t leave Darr when he beat you. Only when he turned on me.” A long buried anger crack­led in his voice. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that know­ing he hurt you was killing me?”

Her voice caught. “I’m sorry.”

He had to make a con­scious effort not to grit his teeth. “When I was a Jager­naut, every time I killed an Aristo in bat­tle, in my mind I was killing Darr.”

Qui­etly she said, “I’m sorry, Kurj. I made the best choices I knew how.”

He looked at the stone floor. Cracks made a web of lines across it, but only a few wisps of grass had taken root. “I can’t han­dle your lov­ing me.”

“Why?”

“Because if you hated me, it wouldn’t mat­ter what I did to you.”

Roca swal­lowed. “And what would you do?“

It con­tin­ues on… for sev­eral pages. If inter­ested in read­ing this series, the first book is Pri­mary Inver­sion (1996) and the direct sequel is The Radi­ant Seas. Cather­ine Asaro also wrote plenty of novel­las cen­tered around the Sko­lian Empire (Ruby Dynasty) and she also has sev­eral stand-alones like The Phoenix Code (do you enjoy cyborg love sto­ries?) and The Veiled Web and Catch The Light­ning (a good intro to her work) and the Quan­tum Rose (fea­tures another tor­tured hero who is an alco­holic). Those nov­els I just men­tioned have strong roman­tic sub­plots in them. Hope­fully, many of you will check out her books. You can actu­ally down­load and read “Pri­mary Inver­sion” for free from the Baen Free Library.

The Ruby Dynasty Series in Order of Pub­li­ca­tion. Note: The author often does not write in chrono­log­i­cal order. Usu­ally she skips for­ward or back­ward within the series time line. Hope you will give her a try.

Pri­mary Inver­sion* (1995)
Catch the Light­ning* (1996)
The Last Hawk (1997)
The Radi­ant Seas* (1998) direct sequel to Pri­mary Inver­sion
Ascen­dant Sun (2000)
The Quan­tum Rose* (2000)
Spher­i­cal Har­monic (2001)
The Moon’s Shadow (2003)
Sky­fall* (2003)
Schism (2004)
The Final Key (2005)
The Ruby Dice (2008)
Dia­mond Star (2009)

Tip: A few of her ebooks are DRM-free and cheap at the Baen Web­site.
*denotes the book(s) I have read in the series