A Kirkus Best Book of 2006

It is the distant future. The world known as 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 gravity.

Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He’s come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden’s nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden’s spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn’t bode well for Fanning’s chances.

"What if space had air in it? That's the-ostensibly-insane premise of Schroeder's latest wooden-hulled, middle-tech adventure, the first in a projected series. How to fill space with air? Well, enclose a planet-sized volume in an impermeable barrier, call it Virga, then fill it with air, water, rocks, dirt, life forms and people. Make it habitable by creating min-suns (actually fusion reactors that shut down at night). The inhabitants will have to create their own "gravity" by building huge wheels from wood and rope (metals are scarce) and spinning them to generate centrifugal force. Fish and birds—the two are practically indistinguishable—fly or swim with ease. Out beyond the suns lies the cold darkness of winter. Much of this construct, indeed, is counterintuitive but ruthlessly logical. You want a story, too? Eight years earlier, Chaison Fanning, admiral of Slipstream nation's fleet, conquered Aerie, young Hayden Griffin's tiny, sunless nation. Now a skilled jet-bike rider, Griffin, having wormed his way into the good graces of Fanning's beautiful and ambitious wife, Venera, is poised to assassinate the admiral. But when spies uncover a plot by a totalitarian nation to invade Slipstream, Griffin finds himself assisting Fanning, who, he can't help noticing, is brave and honorable and may not even be guilty. Meanwhile, Griffin notices ship's armorer Aubri Mahallan; fascinating Aubri, he learns, comes from outside Virga, where a predatory and all but incomprehensible regime, Artificial Nature, reigns supreme. Still on the agenda: stunning naval battles, giant flying icebergs, zero-gee swordfights and a pirate's treasure that's at once much less and considerably more than it seems.Outrageously brilliant and absolutely not to be missed."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"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."—Regina Schroeder, Booklist

"As a young man eager to avenge the deaths of his parents, Hayden Griffin travels to the city of Rush in the Slipstream realm, where he hopes to confront his quarry, who is also the admiral who conquered his own home realm of Aerie. This series opener by the author of Lady of Mazes and Permanence provides an unusual setting a fullerene balloon in which humans dwell in wheel-shaped homes that create their own gravity but the characters remain unquestionably human. A promising beginning; for most libraries."—Library Journal

"The swashbuckling space settlers of Schroeder's fantastical novel inhabit warring nation-states inside a planet-sized balloon called Virga. This adventure-filled tale of sword fights and naval battles stars young Hayden Griffin of the nation of Aerie, orphaned by an attack on the artificial sun that his parents tried to build. He grows up to seek vengeance against the man who led it, Adm. Chaison Fanning of the nation Slipstream. Getting close to Fanning, though, entails infiltrating the flagship Rook and interfering in the schemes of the admiral's wife, the devious Venera. Schroeder layers in scientific rationales for his air-filled, gravity-poor world with its spinning cylinder towns and miles-long icebergs but the real fun of this coming-of-age tale includes a pirate treasure hunt and grand scale naval invasions set in the cold, far reaches of space."—Publishers Weekly

"We already knew that Karl Schroeder could do Kubrick. Now it turns out he can do Dumas as well. And more: not since Middle Earth have I encountered such an intense and palpable evocation of an alien world. Sun of Suns puts the world-building exercises of classic Niven to shame."—Peter Watts

"Mix in one part thrilling action, one part screaming-cool steampunk tech, and one part worldbuilding and you've got Sun of Suns. And oh, what world building! Schroeder is a master."—Cory Doctorow

"Karl Schroeder's Sun of Suns not only creates an even more unusual and evocative setting than his previous work, but is replete with adventures and turns, and characters that are anything but one-dimensional."—L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

"I loved it. It never slowed down. The background is fascinating and the characters held my attention. It reminded me a little of The Integral Trees, with technology a little more advanced."—Larry Niven

"Over the years, science-fiction has provided us with awesome environments, the best ones based on careful logic. There was Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity and Robert Forward's Dragon's Egg. Karl Schroeder's new novel is in a class with these masterpieces. The longer one ponders Sun of Suns, the less paradoxical—and the more intricately sensible—it comes to be."—Vernor Vinge

"Sun of Suns is a rip-roaring story full of marvelous images and cutting-edge ideas. Schroeder has the rare and invaluable ability to develop wholly new concepts and turn them into compelling narratives."—Stephen Baxter

"Karl has managed to have his cake and eat it [too] . . . It’s a satisfying story in itself, but raises enough questions for me to want to bu