Customer Reviews

World's End

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's impossible for me to review this book without putting it the context of its classic predecessor. Probably I would not rate it so highly as a stand-alone book.

The fate of police inspector BZ Gundhalinu brought bittersweetness to end of THE SNOW QUEEN. If you care about the character, by all means read WORLD'S END. (Don't settle for the fractured summary found in THE SUMMER QUEEN.)

While reading THE SNOW QUEEN, I initially decided that I liked the officious technocrat Gundhalinu because of his unwavering support of his beleaguered commanding officer, Jerusha PalaThion. That BZ would expand his supporting role, undergo an intense personal upheaval, and emerge as a romantic renegade came as a delightful surprise. Even so, at the end of THE SNOW QUEEN, I assumed that BZ was an unfortunate bit of flotsam in the sibyl machinery's Greater Plan, and that the doors on his story had closed as tightly as the gate to Tiamat. I was happy to discover that Joan D. Vinge felt his journey worth continuing in WORLD'S END.

We catch up with Gundhalinu a few years later, burying himself in his police duties on the planet Four. Having experienced love on Tiamat did nothing to break the shackles of his Patrician background. BZ is still every bit the snob--defining nearly everyone--especially himself--according to the rigid terms of his hierarchical culture. And that culture judges him a coward and a failure.

More ghosts of the unresolved past surface when BZ's brothers, having squandered their aristocratic family's estates and good name, come to Four to seek their fortune in the notorious wilderness known as "World's End". They are presumed lost, and BZ embarks on what he assumes is a futile quest to set something right--to locate his brothers and perhaps regain his family's honor.

The quest is a Heart of Darkness-type journey, in which the increasingly surrealistic landscape reflects Gundhalinu's state of mind. A mysterious force in World's End creates disturbing anomalies in the harsh environment. As time passes, BZ succumbs to its maddening influence and loses his will to suppress his personal demons. At a shocking turning point, those demons are suddenly swept away as the demanding, insane consciousness behind World's End's anomalies invades BZ's mind. From then on he struggles to regain control and solve the mystery of this time- and space-defying wilderness.

The story is effectively told in the first person, through BZ's irregular journal entries. One can squirm experiencing the tumble towards insanity and the effort to return from the brink. The book is short, which saves it from becoming a wallow. But in spite of its brevity, it feels complete. A long, exhausting journey has taken place. Although the tone is unrelentingly grim, take heart! There is hope, enlightenment and rebirth at the end of the tunnel.

World's End is a wonderful book that adds depth to the character BZ and I loved the way BZ descended into madness. It reminded me of the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." This book was not as complex or descriptive as the Summer Queen or the Snow Queen, but I could clearly see this desolate world. I enjoyed the Summer Queen more after reading World's End. When I first read the Summer Queen I had no idea what had happened to BZ on World's End, so some parts in the Summer Queen confused me.

I thought this book is well worth reading and adds more to the Summer Queen.

If you're bound and determined to continue with Vinge's tales of Tiamat, the Hegemony and the Water of Life by reading Summer Queen, you'll need this little ditty to understand how Gundhalinu became a sibyl and re-discovered the singularity drive.

My low rating isn't from lack of quality, but because--in my opinion--the contents of this book belong in Summer Queen.

Having read this one and Summer Queen, I can only presume that World's End comes from editorial cuttings of Summer Queen: most of the action in this novel is concurrent with the beginning of Summer Queen. Further, you get snippets of "cross-pollination" between the two novels: adding depth to World's End and detracting from Summer Queen. If you hadn't read World's end before Summer Queen, you'd know there was a lot missing in certain scenes; Worlds End fills in the gaps.

On its own, World's end clearly assumes you know a thing or two about the world introduced to us in Snow Queen: the Hegemony and Gundhalinu's people, especially their sense of pride and honor. Told in the narrative from Gundhalinu's POV, Vinge does a fine job of echoing BZ's state of mind.

For the same reason, however, readers will need to re-read the last section of the book (several times!!!) when BZ finds his brothers because his near-psychotic reaction to the sibyl virus is almost too well presented.

I read this as a break from Snow Queen (which I'm almost finished as I write this). I thought this would be in the same vein as Snow Queen and Summer Queen but the story and style is completely different.

The book is told throught the eyes of BZ Gundhalinu, who was, admittedly, my favorite character in the other books, and the reader becomes deeply immersed in his thoughts and memories, which are fragmentary and not altogether sane.

The setting is fantastic and seems much more alien and alive than Carbuncle and Tiamat. The characters are far more three dimensional and believable than those in the other 'Snow Queen books', and BZ becomes far more sympathetic than any of Snow Queen's protagonists ever did (I found Moon a real pain to read about...). This book is also much more sci-fi than it's predecessors, which were more fantasy in my view.

The bok only gets four stars because some things it relies heavily on, such as sibyls and the Old Empire, aren't explained ebough if this is to be read as a stand alone, however if you have read Snow Queen or Summer Queen or posess a particularly fertile imagination you sould be fine with World's End. the ther reason for the slightly lower rating is that I thought that the background of Song, who is otherwise a fully realised character, could use more explaination. This is one of my favorite books and I would highly recommend it to anyone who lieks sci-fi books or books based on interior dialogue and highly character centric story lines.

Fans of the Snow Queen/Summer Queen be warned that it is mostly a diary-format, first person story of Inspector BZ's journey into World's End and his discovery of the Star Drive . A quick, enjoyable read that lets you into BZ's mind.. an extra treat from the SQ universe if you desire one after reading the SQ and the Summer Queen.

I will echo what I have read in the other seven reviews here. Worlds End is almost essential to understanding The Summer Queen to it's fullest extent. It can be skipped, sure, but I don't recommend it.

I'm afraid I read Ms. Vinge's books totally out of order, Summer first and then Snow and then Worlds End. So you can see how much I could have used the insight as to what was going on.

As far as World's End goes, I felt that it was great as a short.

BZ Gundalihnu is a failed suicide, a social outcast for the strictly heirarchal world in which he is from. Following his harrowing experience on Tiamat, and the unrequited love with it's new Queen, BZ is forced to leave along with the rest of the Hegemony. Though he tries to fit back in, he can't, his society is too steeped in their prejudices.

He is led by his misfortune and his squandering brothers to World's End a place that is literally crazy...even the earth and the sky follow no known physics. BZ comes across the land's leader, a woman of incredible power, who is positively insane. She wants him to remain with him, and infects him with the Sybil virus.

And yes BZ literally goes mad. But being a learned man, he figures out how to contact the Summer Queen, and with her help he gains on his sanity once more.

The molten lake at World's end is more than it seems, and it want's BZ's help to cure itself.

It is a breakthrough that will forever change BZ's life and the face of the Hegemoeny. It may even get him closer to his Summer Queen once more.

BZ Gundalihnu is a character I fell in love with from the very first time I read him. He is devout to his job, tortured inside, a good man to a fault. He oftens judges those around him just by their social stature. But for all his flaws he is endearing and charming. I always thought him older than he truly was just because of his demeanor.

Worlds End is definitely a good bookend to your collection if you can find it!

As the out of print sequel to the "Snow Queen" "World's End" it is an out of print, underappreciated little sci-fi novel that you can totally skip if you want and just read a shorter version of it's major events in the "Summer Queen" which is too bad, because this is one good book.

Readers of the snow queen will remember the lost star drive that once allowed people to cross space-something the galactic hegemony cannot retrieve and rebuild without. Well this book is that about that, insanity, being sane, duty, not doing your fu*king duty for once and finally forgiving yourself. There is also something wonderful in this book about chaos and what is really chaos and the desire to find order in crazy places. It's really veryu cool if you can wrap your mind around it. Starring in a very good first person narrative lieutenant BZ from "The Snow Queen" this is a short little shocking thriller that is in the end, quite inspirational. If you can find inspiration in this kind of sci-fi.

Four stars.

World's End has some overlap with The Summer Queen and is part of the
whole Snow Queen saga. It is about the lost hyperdrive, and BZ
Gundalinhu and his travel. Some time after the earlier book, he is
still doing his thing.

He goes to the planet World's End, and
gets infected with an alien virus. The book chronicles his journey and
state of mind as the disease affects him.

He comes out the other
end influenced by the odd nature of the planet. If you aren't super
keen on this level of detail for this character, you can just read the
Summer Queen instead where you will get bits of this, quickly.