Schroeder, Karl: Sun of Suns
Sun of Suns: Book One of the Virga
Writer: Karl Schroeder
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 318
So let me tell you why I wanted to read this book: PRETTY COVER. I'd seen the cover for its sequel, Queen of Candesce on, I think, Tobias Buckell's blog, and promptly fell in love with it. Thankfully, the cover art for this book followed the same design scheme, but as I usually do with writers whose work I haven't read, I decided to wait for the paperback.
Until I saw the cover (which you may gaze upon behind the cut). Hated it. Absolutely hated it. Yes, the basic art itself is kept, but besides that, everything I liked about that hardcover design was GONE from the mass market.
Since my fiance is a graphic designer, I thought he would appreciate my ranting about the two covers. He did. In fact, he was so interested in the hardcover's design that he actually read the blurb and bought the book. He's bought the rest of the Virga books since, and reads them as they're released.
Me, though I'd planned on getting the hardcover anyway, never got around to reading it until now. Not sure why it's taken me so long, but it has. And I have to say that I, personally, am a bit disappointed. That's my own fault though for not paying closer attention to the blurb.
The premise: Hayden Griffin is out for revenge. His parents were part of a Resistance on Aerie and Aerie was building its own sun. The far more powerful Slipstream wouldn't hear of that, and destroyed the sun and everything with it. An orphaned Hayden decides to kill the man responsible for the murder of his parents. Only after enmeshing himself in the Slipstream and Admiral Fanning's household, Hayden becomes part of a bigger plot that doesn't just endanger Aerie, but the entire Slipstream as well. Sun of Suns is a story of high action and adventure, including pirates, treasure, artificial suns, and civilizations that live inside a giant air bubble (I'm SO not describing that well) called the Virga.
I can recognize some of my problems with this book easily. For starters, I've heard for a long time that Schroeder is a master in the genre, critically acclaimed but under-appreciated. Such claims gave me a high expectation for reading his work.
And I can see why, especially if all his other stuff is similar, his work is so critically acclaimed. I've read thorough, intense world-building before, but nothing like this. Schroeder has taken the familiar and yanked it out from under me to create an entirely alien setting where you can float in open space but still breathe (it's full of air), where suns are constructed, and where the level of gravity is something of a crap shoot. God help me, because I still don't have a solid picture in my head of what all of this is supposed to LOOK like. Despite all the detail, I was never grounded. I never got a clear picture of what all these settings looked like. And when I did, it was so unfamiliar and strange to me that my brain had a hard time processing. There were some amazingly cool settings, like the description of Candesce, the Warea, the Leaf's Choir, and when I could wrap my head around them, they were pretty cool. But it took some serious effort on my part to do so.
But among all this unfamiliar setting is are all too familiar tropes: pirates and treasure. The Borg-like mentality of Artificial Nature. So much of the action of this book left me wondering if I was reading SF or if I'd gotten transported to some kind of ship-faring fantasy instead. Part of it was the terminology, and part of it was the plot. I mean, come on: pirates and treasure. It doesn't get any more fantasy-sounding than that.
And I never cared about the characters. No, they aren't one dimensional by any means, but as far as fully fleshed human beings go, they aren't close. While Schroeder does a good job at making sure his heroes aren't truly heroes and his villains aren't truly villains (everyone's got their good and their bad), there's something missing in this equation. Maybe it was Schroeder's habit of telling us about the characters instead of showing us the characters, or maybe that whatever side we saw of these people, they rarely came across as more than their tropes: boy bent on revenge but having second thoughts; Machiavellian wife. Oh, each character exhibited moments of humanity, but I found myself reminded of characterization of the good ole Golden Age of SF where characters acted a part rather than lived the part (or something like that). Anyway. It was lacking for me. When I read space opera, I want characters I can sink my teeth into. It's what makes the action tolerable, and I say that because I'm not a fan of high-action, adventure stories. They bore me.
So you can see why I had trouble with this book.
My Rating
Give It Away: for readers who want more character than action in their space opera, this book isn't going to fit the bill. However, I would recommend this book to readers who want something different out of their space opera, those who want settings that aren't of the usual planet/ship variety. Schroeder has a gift of creating impossible settings, so those SF readers who really sink their teeth into that sort of thing (and don't mind high action), definitely check this out. Fans of Tobias Buckell's action and thorough world-building should definitely check this out.
As for me, we've got the rest of the books in the series, and despite my difficulty with this one, I'll probably give at least the sequel a shot. We'll see what happens.
Next up:
Dark Space by Marianne de Pierres