(Found, 18 yrs on...) An even MORE challenging book hunt..

[Amabar]

But hopefully still possible.

Here's the lowdown (caution, semi-mature content: violent images):

A series of 3+ books (I think it is 4, but I'm only certain of 3) of Science Fiction. Setting for all books is Sol (Space, Earth, Mars, Venus, Pluto, Couple of jupiters moons, and more.) and the plot skips between various characters.

Main characters, first is an Earth native that is heir to leader of that planet. Either emperor, or king, something like that. Male, youngish age. Protected from a coup d'etat of his parents by members of his household. Smuggled off earth, he meanders through a few planets before returning to earth. About 1/3 of the way through the series, he encounters an eccentric pirate that cuts his eye-lids off. He then is stranded on pluto, and stays with an exiled pirate. He gets off pluto after a grueling trek across its surface, meets up with resistance forces loyal to him, and proceeds to take back earth.

Next Character, initiator of the coup d'etat. A councilor of some sort from mars, this character has a robotic body with his brain in a pan in the head. The body is shaped like a praying mantis, and he is always portrayed as being very wet with oil. On occasion takes oil baths etc. This character is the "evil overlord" of the series, and has the upper hand for most of the series. He is assisted rather reluctantly by a scientist that keeps up his body, and creates things for him. This scientist is the brother of the pirate that the main character unfortunately encounters. He had the same treatment that the main character got, but to a much greater degree. His eyelids, lips, nose, and ears were removed in a similar fashion. He gets an assistant for his lab partway through the series that becomes an imporant sub-character. It is a little girl, who's the daughter of a scientist from mars. The girl is incredibly smart, and eventually kicks some ass towards the end of the series, utilizing teleportation, and invisiblity devices (and more).

The eccentric space pirate is another main character. He flys a MASSIVE ship, that never really has any competition during the series. It's visited a couple times by the main characters. I seem to remember him being in search of something. He floats around in a mobile flying chair, and uses mechanical snips to maim his crew and people that he encounters. Apparently he doesnt like having people look better than him. He has a boy that helps him to get around, and feeds him information. The boy is his favorite snipping target.

Other random points in the plot that I remember:

When the main character escapes his families death to the councilor coup d'etat he stows away in a capsule on a spaceship, and gets jettisoned out into space.

When the main character returns to earth (one time) the councilor uses biological weapons on the earth, to kill anyone there.

On mars, there was some sort of massacre, or extremely decisive battle, that left the population nearly non-existent. It is a wasteland of still functional technology and infrastructure, including a skyscraper of immense height, with a glass floor.

I remember more, but its probably so disjointed that it wouldnt help.

*BANG* Go! And good luck!

 

[dwndrgn]

I've no idea on this one. But I'm going to move it over to the general Books section so more people will be able to see it and possibly have an answer for you.

 

[Amabar]

Thanks, hopefully someone will be able to peg it.

 

[lazygun]

Hope someone solves this as it's annoying me.....,sure I've read a story where a character gets his eye-lids removed.

 

[Amabar]

One thing's for sure, as soon as I figure out what series this is, I'll NEVER forget again! Hahaha. Quite the adventure I've had so far, looking for this series.

 

[hedgeknight]

Is it William McCarthy's Queendom of Sol series?
See this link for more info:
http://www.wilmccarthy.com/queendom.htm

-g-

 

[lazygun]

Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant series has Pirates and is based around the Sol System.Only read the last two of the series myself(I think..?),so not sure this is what you're after,Amabar?.

 

[Amabar]

Good guesses, but still not quite it. Challenging isn't it? Remember, the key points of the story are the Cyborg, Mantis shaped, councilor, and a large inter-solar coup d'etat. Quite a bit of military style fighting, strategizing, movements. I dunno what other clues I can give! = (

 

[lazygun]

A character or species name,anything in particular you recall of the Military stuff(tactics/weapons)?...

 

[Amabar]

Hrm. Well, towards the end is when most of the fighting occurs. There is some form of gathering of the people that support the main character on earth. Thats when the cyborg councillor uses biological weapons. Later, the girl that is apprenticed to the scientist uses various devices that she's created to help movements of the same force on mars, teleportation, invisible base of operations etc. I cant really remember much more than that.

See, if I had names, then that'd be easy wouldnt it! = ) Sorry I cant remember any names.

 

[lazygun]

I'll stop with the questions,..next post will be the Answer.

..hopefully.

 

[Amabar]

Nothing yet..

(yes, this is a shameless bump! Muahaha!)

 

[Amabar]

I'm going to re-bump this, with some other descriptions that I wrote for another site (still with no success). Maybe 5 years and more people with internet has brought the answer to the top.

Science Fiction Novels, at least 3 of them in the series, probably 4.

Setting for the series is the Sol solar system, specifically: Venus, Earth, Mars, Moons around Jupiter, Space around Saturn, Pluto. Potentially more, but that's all I remember specifically.

Character descriptions:
Main Character: "Prince" of the empire of Earth, destined to inherit rulership of the home planet of humans. A male, starting at as a young man, and progressing to a full grown man, a capable and determined military leader for Earth, and a true Emperor/King type. At one point had his eyelids cut off by Main Villain 2, then later regrown using medical treatments available to the freedom fighters for earth.

Main Villain 1: An Ambassador of Mars that was surgically merged with a cybernetic body. Basically brain planted into a robot in the form of a mantis, or insect. Often takes baths in oil, has a sniveling sidekick that he abuses, and a brilliant scientist that he extorts to work for him.

Disfigured Scientist: The brother of Main Villain 2. He has had most of his face disfigured by Main Villain 2 a long time ago. His lips, eyelids, nose, ears(?) removed. Possibly further mutilation, but I can't remember the full extent of it. This man is a brilliant scientist, and designed the cybernetic body for Main Villain 1, and later a smaller version for a cyborg "child" for Main Villain 1, which is not used, or if so only for a short time.

Main Villain 2: A very infamous space pirate, brother of the Disfigured Scientist. Uses a floating chair for most day to day moving about. Utilizes very sharp and well oiled metal shears to mutilate people by removing facial features, fingers, toes, ears. Not often killing, but marking them. Much of his crew fears his almost completely random decisions to remove parts of them. Commands a huge vessel in a triangular shape.

Main Villain Apprentice: A small boy, much disfigured, and continued further throughout the series. For some reason still completely loyal to Main Villain 2, no matter what. Wears a visor that constantly streams information from the net which the boy parses for Main Villain 2, giving him updates on what is going on. Without that feed of information, the boy becomes input starved and starts to panic, thus he cannot remove the visor.

Scientist Apprentice: A girl that is apprenticed to the Disfigured Scientist, also extremely brilliant, and the daughter of another scientist slain in the martian revolution. She looks up to the disfigured scientist, but is morally good, and is extremely independent and capable for one so young. Everything she does is dripping with sheer genius.

Marooned Pirate: An old pirate lord, exiled by Main Villain 2 to pluto when Main Villain 2 took control of most of the pirates in the solar system. Later finds Main Character and befriends him, escaping pluto and helping to free earth with the freedom fighters for earth.

There are dozens of other smaller characters, some of them I can recall, most not very noteworthy, so I'll just mention them during summary, where I recall them.

Summary (sort of):
I realize that I will not be using proper literary form, or even anything marginally resembling such. Most of the reason is because I want to provide as much detail as I can remember, while still fitting the whole story into a reasonable span of pages.

There are two main plots at the beginning of the first book, and I can't remember which order they're described in, but they happen very close together.

The first is set in a conference room on Mars, where the Main Villain 1 has called all the heads of state to a meeting. He locks the doors, and martian marines drop into the room and kill everyone. Main Villain 1 assumes control of all of Mars, and starts the Martian Revolution.

The second is set on earth, the Main Character is being groomed by an older teacher/advisor, to be the next emperor. There are to be political visitors from Mars to see his parents. The visitors along with some various other factions stage a coup d'etat, and kill the ruling familiy on earth, and all the government officials they can reach. The Main Character is saved by his older teacher/advisor, by an escape route in the house/mansion(?), and stowing away in a cargo freighter that makes it into space. The cargo freighter is subsequently shot to pieces and the cargo containers are free floating.

In the cargo container, the Main Character feels he will die of dehydration, or freezing, or both. As things become desperate, the cargo container the Main Character is in is picked up by a small group of scavengers. The scavengers are a sub sub sub component of Main Villain 2's intra-solar pirate cartel. They free the Main Character, not initially recognizing him as the heir to Earth. There are several side missions in which they slowly start to open the Main Characters eyes to the realities of life, especially in space. Soon enough, the pirates find out that he is the heir to Earth, and decide their safest course of action would be to turn him over to Main Villain 2. The pirates trick the Main Character, taking him to space around Saturn, where Main Villain 2 keeps his very large ship. They take him onto the ship, where he is taken by guards.

The Main Character is brought before Main Villain 2, where the side kick for Main Villain 2 is introduced, and some conversation occurs between the Main Character and Main Villain 2. Main Villain 2 decides that the Main Character is too dangerous to have around yet, but far too important to kill. So Main Villain 2 uses his metal shears to cut off the Main Characters eyelids. Bandaging him up, they fly him to Pluto so that he can be exiled safely until needed.

At the same time this is happening, the Martian Revolution occurs. I can't remember if the following falls into that time period or into a later one:

The Martian marines are clearing out cities of resistance, part of which is the father of the girl, Scientist Apprentice. She hadn't yet become Disfigured Scientist's apprentice, but she was still super smart. She evades the Marines, who kill her father, and using components found while running and hiding, creates a beam weapon that is very effective in killing the Marines. Somehow she is captured, I'm not sure exactly the timing of this because she DOES form a Martian resistance, but it's much later after she's escaped from Main Villain 1, and Disfigured Scientist is dead. More on that later.

The Main Character is crashed and marooned on Pluto, with little chance for survival in constant super cold temperatures. He's found by Marooned Pirate, who nurses him back to health, and helps him to cope with no longer having eyelids. Over time Marooned Pirate starts to trust Main Character, and tells him of his plan to escape Pluto, which involves a dangerous and long trek across Pluto's surface. They set out on a sled of some sort, and come across a chasm. They have to climb down the chasm, then they encounter some sort of difficulty at the bottom. Then they climb back up the far side and continue on, eventually reaching a supply ship docking station. They hitch a ride on the supply ship, or commandeer it, and successfully escape Pluto.

Meanwhile, Disfigured Scientist working for Main Villain 1, comes up with new technology to make the Martian Revolution successful, and develops a biological weapon to use on Earth. Much of earths population is killed, and they are enslaved by Mars. The freedom fighters for earth are formed, and steal/attain resources to mount a very successful campaign to retake their world. They have some space presence, which Main Character and Marooned Pirate are able to contact. The Main Character is recognized as the heir to Earth, and using modern medical treatments his eyelids are regrown, and he and Marooned Pirate are smuggled back to Earth, to take command of the freedom fighters for earth.

Disfigured Scientist and Scientist Apprentice come up with a plan to foil Main Villain 1, who keeps a close eye on them being valuable assets to his technological superiority. Completing the coup, the scientists escape from Main Villain 1 (here is where the baby cyborg for Main Villain 1 comes into play). The Scientist Apprentice and the Disfigured Scientist become separated, she making it back to a deserted city, he dying in the desert, with final thoughts of his brother, Main Villain 2, and how he was disfigured so long ago.

Scientist Apprentice then uses her brilliance to create several devices that cause the Martian resistance to become extremely successful. One is a handheld weapon of some sort, another is a cloaking field, and perhaps a force field of some sort. Yet another is some sort of on-planet teleportation device for groups of people/objects (I think). She creates bastions for Martian resistance that can't be found by the Martian revolution. At some point one of the characters visits a very tall tower that is also deserted, but has a glass floor. Some helicopters, or drop ships of some type are fought, Martian resistance is successful, mostly.

Back on Earth, the Main Character is successfully freeing Earth from the grip of mars, and it starts to come out that Main Villain 2 has some sort of plan that I can't remember. It's decided that moves need to be made to stop him.

I have to gloss over a LOT of story here, because I simply don't remember it. Eventually Main Villain 2, Main Character, and perhaps Scientist Apprentice all meet on a moon of Jupiter. Main Villain 2 has organized a very deep core mine into a special garden-like place deep inside of one of the moons. There's some drama on the elevator down, a confrontation in the garden-like place, and then I can't remember how it ends.

A random other clue is that the Main Villain 1 is often referred to with the color descriptor of 'cerulean' for the color of the metal he inhabits.

Here is to hoping that someone somewhere out there knows the answer.

 

[Amabar]

Oh, and one final potentially helpful bit of information: All of the books of this series were in a public library by 2001, thus published prior to that.

 

[Parson]

I have no clue Amabar, but you truly get props for persistence.

 

[The Judge]

No idea, either, but we have a dedicated Book Search section, so I'll move this over in the hope it catches someone's attention.

 

[Menion]

5 years searching? dear god, I bow down to your patience. I cannot find a single trace of it, and have contated people I know that read SF to see if they know. I'm interested in reading this series.
Good luck!

 

[Amabar]

Thank you for the comments. Honestly, I haven't been searching for it constantly, just now and then. This will probably be one of my last efforts though, at some point one has to simply move on, eh?

 

[Amabar]

It seems that this may end up being a lost cause . A true shame as I really wish that I could experience this series again.

 

[soulsinging]

I think you should write and publish this story, becos it sounds intriguing as heck and impossible to find... then when the real author sues you, you'll have found out!