By: Karl Schroeder Average Rating: Binding: Kindle Edition Format: Kindle Book Label: Tor Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 320 Publication Date: March 11, 2008 Release Date: March 11, 2008
Product Description: With this book Schroeder launches a saga set on Virga, a balloon-world warmed by artificial suns. The inhabitants build, besides their own suns, floating towns. The spaces between the towns, lacking nearby suns, are wintry cold, and only a few pirates and the utterly desperate live on the towns' edges. Hayden Griffen is dead set on revenge for his parents' deaths in the destruction of his home, Aerie, by the nation of Slipstream six years before. Somewhat unexpectedly, after catching the attention of Venera Fanning and becoming her driver, Hayden is dispatched on a mission under Admiral Chaison Fanning, the man he believes responsible for his parents' demise, to find a vast treasure and, even more valuable, a key to the sun and the world outside, where posthumanity reigns. The satisfying opening of a promising space opera.
Most Creative Book I've Read in Years 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.
Space opera with a provocative setting 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.
Not Free SF Reader Wooden ships, iron men, fusion suns and speeder bikes.
With a setup like that, the only thing missing is pirates. Fortunately, there are a whole passel of pirates to be found here, in various flavours.
A young man bearing a grudge sets out on a mission to murder the man who had his parents killed, for trying to provide the town they lived in their own independent power source.
Things are much more complicated than they seem as he runs into resistance fighter, his target's spymaster wife, an alien woman engineer, and a greater plot to take over they city state he is now part of.
All very cool. The setting is a giant balloon full of floating rocks, providing an atmosphere as they drift in space, with small cities built spinning if necessary to give gravity, and strange creatures in between in the dark and the cold.
The important fusion engine at the centre of this structure that provides heat and light, no-one seems to understand the technology anymore.
Apart from all that, with flying airship pirates you need treasure, and a mapl.
Yep, check. Swords and broadsides? Check, likewise.
The book also says 'Book One of Virga' - I have read the second, or at least presumably most of it, serialised in magazine form, and didn't really need to know what happened in this one, to read the next, either, if you are thinking of doing so, or might be put off by that.
A good effort, this novel.
Interesting ideas but poorly written I can only think that the 4-5 star reviewers are friends of the author or people who value ideas so far over the actual writing that they are not really qualified to review books. The writing of this story is very poor. As other reviewers have stated, sometimes sentences do not even make sense. The characters lack any depth and their descriptions are often hurried and disjointed.
I'm sorry to have to review a book so harshly, but it was the 4 star review that led me to this book in the first place. I feel others should be warned about exactly what they are getting here. A really great idea (I loved the idea of a giant air bubble floating in space with no gravity and tiny man made suns) but quite poor execution.
Out Nivens Niven This is a well written descendent of Larry Niven's Ringworld and Bob Shaw's Orbitsville. The essential features are an immense, exotic, and technologically formidable habitat in an extrasolar system combined with some kind of action/adventure plot that reveals the interesting features of the habitat and its occupying human societies. Schroeder does well on both counts with an ingenious space habitat and a decently written story line. The habitat is well articulated and the plotting does of a good job of displaying a variety of human cultures occupying the habitat. The plot incorporates a theme of personal transformation on the part of the protagonist that boosts character development.
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