Customer Reviews

Sun of Suns: Book One of Virga (Virga 1)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the third Schroeder book I've read (the other two being Ventus and Permanence), and this one is nothing like those books.

The most impressive aspect of this book has to be the sheer creativity of its world-building: the bizarre world of Virga--which seems to be equal parts Wild West, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Star Trek--is nevertheless utterly convincing (in part because of the even more bizarre Universe, only hinted at, in which Virga lies). Likewise, Schroeder doesn't forget the little details, such as what can, and does, happen when bullets don't hit their intended targets.

Of course, though, world-building alone can't carry a book, and, just as in Schroeder's earlier works, "Sun of Suns" doesn't disappoint. Schroeder constantly kept me guessing as to what the protagonist, Hayden Griffin, was going to do--and that includes even after Schroeder revealed the book's final surprise.

My only criticism, if it can be called that, is this book is relatively short: it is at most half the length of "Ventus." But, in a book as well-crafted as this one, knowing that a sequel awaits more than makes up for any such disappointment. I eagerly await Book Two of Virga.

Sun of Suns is the first book in his Virga trilogy. The next one, Queen of Candesce is out in hardcover. Schroeder has the amazing feat of having his books published in HC first, something not many SciFi authors can lay claim to. And this is only his fourth book, the others being Ventus, Permanence, and my favorite, Lady of Mazes. In just a few books, he has established himself as one of the preeminent authors in the field. He is one of my all-time favorite authors.

Sun of Suns is a fairly short book, 331 pgs in PB form, and set in one of the most innovative "worlds" I've yet to encounter, and that's saying a lot, coming from Schroeder - the master of world-building.

Virga is a planet - where the inhabitants live inside! As the back cover says (but not at the outset in the book - you have to figure it out) - Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and 'towns' that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for centrifugal gravity."

There are hundred of smaller suns inhabiting Virga, all originally powered off the main sun, Candesce. But to the inhabitants, it's all they've ever known - any other life outside Virga is "lost." Candesce is THE Sun of Suns, larger than all the rest, and providing sunlight for dozens of civilizations. It is the greatest source of heat, and creates the circulation cells of air that cause the nations to migrate slowly inward and outward. The winds drive the nations slowly around, but the stiff winds are normally exposed to the inhabitants only at the edges of the towns, or in the open air, where it could tear you off a "bike" if you were going too fast and not hanging on or tied on. Slipstream (a wandering nation) is a different sort of place. It has a large migrating asteroid that they mine, which is the source of their wealth - their sun is tethered to the asteroid, as are the towns, which are connected both inside and out via a series of ropes. Traffic between towns and within larger ones is done by bike, by hanging on to a rope and walking or pulling yourself along, depending on gravity, and by cable cars. Inside most of Virga and it's towns and nations is a mass of such ropes.

The towns inside this "planet" are mostly small ones, collectively connected into "nations." Small ones, like our protagonist's Aerie, large wandering ones like Slipstream, and even larger ones like Gehellen. The principalities are in "layers" - many close to the Sun of Suns, Candesce, others in the intermediate air, like Gehellen, and still others further out, like Aerie. In between these, are layers of winter - dark and cold, with choppy air due to jet-streams, which make living there hazardous, although pirates roam these areas.

In the lower, more populated areas, spiders weave dense webs, on which floating debris is caught, and eventually weaves itself into mats of grass, trees, and flowers. Birds, fish and insects fly in these areas, which make travel with the large flying boats difficult. Since there is no "vacuum" in the planet, crews can stand outside their ships, call to one another, or sweep aside debris. The only problem is that they have to fly blind - they can't see in the dark, except with lanterns, nor within cloud banks - they send ahead bike riders, who scout out the area for trouble-spots. But the Admiral has a plan to solve this...

The hero of the story is Hayden Griffen, described as a "very dangerous man." His parents, part of a resistance movement to rid themselves of the larger state of Slipstream (which, in it's wandering path, conquered Aerie and took over it's towns), decided to build their own sun, thus taking back their own world, so that when Slipstream finally moved on, as it naturally would, being a migrating state, they would have a sun to light it. But Slipstream gets wind of this, and comes with it's flying boats to "snuff out" the new sun, before it has a chance to shine, or to take it: a sun is a highly-sought after prize. His parents are killed in the ensuing fights and executions, and he is left alone. He ends up accidentally cast off from Aerie by a shock wave, when at the last moment, his mother lights the Sun so that Slipstream can't have it, and he is knocked out into the "winter," the dark, cold, outside edges of the planet (the inside of the balloon). It is there that he is press-ganged into the pirate trade, later escapes, and returns to Slipstream to avenge his father's death.

The book is an incredible journey through this planet, formed by outside influences, to protect the inhabitants from the world outside (can't give away too much!), but is still rather "backwards" in its technology. The only true technology is its main sun, Candesce. They have photographs, but not much else that is even remotely technical in nature. In some ways it's almost 18th century. But the outside world is so much more...

The story builds slowly, as the shape of the world is explored, and the characters built. The characters in Sun of Suns are fully-formed, not cardboard cut-outs, with warts and all. Even the Admiral is a man with conflicts, emotions and ambitions. While it did take me a while to get going, once I got about half-way through the book, it just took off. Much like Ventus is that respect, although shorter. Lady of Mazes was a barn-burner from the get-go. This one is slower paced, quieter, perhaps because it is part of the trilogy, and he needed to set-up the "scene" so to speak.

No-one can beat Schroeder for his world-building skills: his ability to create complete new worlds, with new rules, is amazing. There is nothing else like it out there that I am aware of.

Over all, I would give it 7.5/10, or maybe higher after reading the others in the trilogy - to see if it's just a third of a book, or is a stand-alone, in which case it suffers, to me - too much time needed to set it up, and I'm not a pirate, ship-battle type - no Master and Commander for me. But I always enjoy a Schroeder book, simply because he can write - no matter what the subject, he finds ways to make it interesting to all readers, and his concepts can be mind-blowing, like in Lady of Mazes.

So pick up a copy - I doubt you'll be disappointed. I stripped out some of the "spoilers" and reviews from my original review at: http://thehouseai.wordpress.com

This book was fun, fun, fun. If you like action-packed adventure SF, I bet you will like this. As a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki's movies, such as "Castle in the Sky" and "Howl's Moving Castle," which feature dashing heroes in 19th century costume flying through the clouds on wondrous airships, I found much appeal in this story and can't wait for the next chapter. Another thing that this novel and Miyazaki's anime films have in common that I really liked: Their heroes find that even their worst enemies are simply human beings, not monsters. There are few true villains in this story; even Venera Fanning, a nominal villainess, has a gritty determination you have to admire.

If you like your SF rigorously hard-boiled, i.e. the universe laid out must be extremely plausible when measured against the physics and biology of our universe, you may be a tad incredulous of Virga (where do all these wooden airships get their lumber, when the floating forests of the Virga Dyson sphere seem to be few and far between?). If you're that sort of reader, you may be annoyed by some of the later story elements involving the technology that makes Virga possible, which relies heavily on Clark's Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.")

Also, in deference to the reviewer who found the language clunky: As a published non-fiction author, I don't agree. I didn't find any bugs in the language ointment of this book, and I usually notice.

The concept described in the book is fanastic; however the writing went from serviceable to poor. The idea, of a planet sized balloon filled with air, in which floating city-states build cylinders that people live in which are rotated to create gravity, was amazing enough for me to overlook the shoddy writing and weak, one-note characters for most of the book. Finally though, these flaws became too pronounced and I did not finish it.

Great idea; wonderful fleshing-out of a unique world. However, I think the swashbuckling action aspect of the novel interferes with a full appreciation of the world. As the action comes on fast and furious I found myself feeling less and less connected to the characters and less fascinated by the world. There's a bit of sensory overload as new cities and new sights are thrust on the reader with little development and no time to appreciate them. The characters, who at the start are intriguing and seem to have complex motivations, become reduced by all the action to cardboard cut-outs swinging swords and riding jet bikes.

From the very first page to the very last, there was never a dull moment. This book was exciting, fun, and definitely outside of the box. Not just one or two new concepts, but dozens of them. World building at it's finest. Highly recommended.

The setting of this book is amazingly detailed. The concept is simply fantastic, and may well be worth the price of entry. But the book itself is very poorly written, the characters are poorly portrayed, and I have issues with the short length in relation to the price. More follows:

The most glaring problem with the writing is that there are several times throughout the book where a sentence simply will not make sense, due to poor word choice, abrupt endings, or a haphazard mishmash of tenses that leads me to believe that this book is either a poor translation of a non-English manuscript or the author is not a native English speaker.

The treatment of the book's characters is lamentable: we are often told what the characters think and feel, as opposed to having the author describe these feeling for the reader, which leads to an awkward and jarring disconnect from the characters. The main character forms awkwardly described fond feelings for characters who he has never met (example: Gridde). In addition, any mention of the main character's past feels very forced, as if it were added for fluff. This fluff doesn't move the story along, and its forced feeling unfortunately negates the sense of fleshing out the main character.

And at only 300 small pages at a hardback's font size, this book is very light on content. I devoured the book in an evening, while a good fantasy novel might take me a week or more to finish. I feel a little cheated, as if the author wrote a novelette and is selling it at full fantasy novel price.

I loved the science challenge of figuring out how everything worked in the made-gravity of spinning towns inside a giant, free-falling gas balloon. That kept the intellectual curiosity going, while the engaging characters and their adventures in a very steampunk (but believably so) future entertain and engross. A great escape for all parts of the mind and emotions.

Sun of Suns is the first book of the Virga trilogy (at least so far). The book itself is excellent. Virga is the most original setting for a novel since Ringworld, and in many ways is even more novel and stunning. I won't bother with the synopsis that is already well covered. But the story is an extraordinarily creative synthesis of steampunk, space opera, and post-singularity SF. I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could - the half off just for ending too soon. Not as big a problem now that all three books are out.

Karl Schroeder's "Sun of Suns," billed as "The First Book of Virga," is set precisely there, about which more below. The book itself is a lighthearted space opera cum revenge tale, in which young Hayden Griffin, a citizen of the nation of Aerie, sets out to murder Admiral Chason Fanning of the nation of Slipstream, the man Hayden thinks is responsible for the deaths of his parents.

Infiltrating the Fanning household, he secures a job as servant to the Admiral's wife, Venera, who has an agenda of her own. Then, he waits for his chance. After the setup, the novel takes off when the Admiral's fleet is sent on a mission of great import. Along the way the lucky reader will encounter aristocrats, librarians, pirates, treasure, all accompanied by shot and shell--and swordplay. Yet, despite all the space opera trappings, Mr. Schroeder's characters aren't made of cardboard--they're quite believable and you'll probably find yourself caring for them.

As if this weren't enough--and maybe it would have been--the book also has its unique selling proposition: Virga is an artificial world set inside a balloon-like structure (don't ask!), which has been stuffed, as the cover copy tells us, with "air, water, and the elements of life." And indeed, so skillfully has the author constructed his Virga, you'll probably find yourself thinking that yes, maybe something like that could be built.