The Sunless Review
Jun. 29th, 2009 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
So one of the big perks about being married to my wife is that she knows people who do book reviews. These people get Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs) so they can read the book and write a review before it comes out (so there's a blurb to put on the book). Some of these people even like me and give me those books after they're done with them.
Which is how I got an advance copy of The Sunless Countries by Karl Schroeder. This is the 4th book in his Virga series. I've really enjoyed the first three books and the writing continues to be very strong.
He starts with a mind-bogglingly wonderful premise -- a giant, hollow sphere of carbon nanotubes 5000 miles in diameter. Inside is a giant bubble of air, along with a few rocks, some water, and a giant fusion torch at the center. Everything is in free-fall so people live in rotating town wheels and since the major "star" at the center isn't powerful enough to light the whole thing, people have smaller fusion "suns" to light their patch of the world.
So you can have sky pirates and high adventure and it's all really neat, but Mr. Schroeder doesn't get lost in the world-building, he takes all of this stuff and lets it permeate the story he's really trying to tell. You can't escape the fact that these people live a different existence than we do and the situation in which they live colors a lot of their actions in the story, but at the same time, it isn't what the characters are focused on.
In this particular book, what's really being focused on is history and scholarship and fanaticism. Leal Maseth is a historian in Sere -- a wheeltown that's deliberately chosen to live in the sunless regions of Virga. But her position is in jeopardy when the Eternists (who believe that Virga has always existed and that fact can be democratized) come to power. But she's more worried by the mysterious disappearance of ships and towns in outlying regions. Something from outside of Virga is trying to get in and the Eternists don't want to hear about it.
The series as a whole is great fun and I highly recommend it. It is probably best to start with Sun of Suns and work up from there, but most of the books stand more or less on their own and there's some highly imaginative thinking going on.
later
Tom
So one of the big perks about being married to my wife is that she knows people who do book reviews. These people get Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs) so they can read the book and write a review before it comes out (so there's a blurb to put on the book). Some of these people even like me and give me those books after they're done with them.
Which is how I got an advance copy of The Sunless Countries by Karl Schroeder. This is the 4th book in his Virga series. I've really enjoyed the first three books and the writing continues to be very strong.
He starts with a mind-bogglingly wonderful premise -- a giant, hollow sphere of carbon nanotubes 5000 miles in diameter. Inside is a giant bubble of air, along with a few rocks, some water, and a giant fusion torch at the center. Everything is in free-fall so people live in rotating town wheels and since the major "star" at the center isn't powerful enough to light the whole thing, people have smaller fusion "suns" to light their patch of the world.
So you can have sky pirates and high adventure and it's all really neat, but Mr. Schroeder doesn't get lost in the world-building, he takes all of this stuff and lets it permeate the story he's really trying to tell. You can't escape the fact that these people live a different existence than we do and the situation in which they live colors a lot of their actions in the story, but at the same time, it isn't what the characters are focused on.
In this particular book, what's really being focused on is history and scholarship and fanaticism. Leal Maseth is a historian in Sere -- a wheeltown that's deliberately chosen to live in the sunless regions of Virga. But her position is in jeopardy when the Eternists (who believe that Virga has always existed and that fact can be democratized) come to power. But she's more worried by the mysterious disappearance of ships and towns in outlying regions. Something from outside of Virga is trying to get in and the Eternists don't want to hear about it.
The series as a whole is great fun and I highly recommend it. It is probably best to start with Sun of Suns and work up from there, but most of the books stand more or less on their own and there's some highly imaginative thinking going on.
later
Tom
