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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Thanks to the introduction of power-packed character Reede Kullervo; a secret society; and ancient history, this book continues the ambitions of the Snow Queen without repeating them. Negatives: the timeline of the book is a bit hard to follow; ten minutes or five years may pass between each chapter. Also, you want to slap both Moon and Sparks for pretty much the whole book. A whiny pair. Another massively long novel set on the world of Tiamat, like in the Snow Queen. As the seasons shift, things change, but the wealthy and powerful still want their longevity treatments, so the hunting of the mer race continues. A technological advancement does allow the isolated planet more offworld communication, but that certainly doesn't solve all their problems. http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2006/12/summer-queen-joan-d-vinge.html Bleaker than the first one (Snow Queen), this story reminded me of how Terry Goodkind flays one alive while reading. Vinge really brings one's emotions into play. Helpless anger over the Hegemony's utter arrogance in insisting on merhunts to obtain the water of life. Complete selfishness everywhere. The poor Summer Queen was misunderstood by just about everyone. Unlike the first book this one does not rally around an Andersen fairy tale. Instead it tells a true story of humanity. One can recognize our own country as the Hegemony, forcing our way into a "backwards" country, taking control, killing off an indigenous species because its blood contains the key to immortality, and introducing technological "things" that snare the natives. And oh, the politics involved! Its rare that I complain about a book being too long, but I'm going to make that complaint about this work. It is the equivalent of a 19th century Russian novel set in outer space that just goes on and on and on. My copy had a tiny size font, but still ran to over 650 pages. Still it was a worthwhile sequel to The Snow Queen, meanders and all. We find out what happened on Tiamat, how Moon and Sparks get on, the mystery of the mers, sibyls and Carbuncle is all solved. Though the way they all of sudden figure out FTL travel was rather forced, it did allow readers to find out what was going on other planets of the Hegemony. no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400)
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| — | — | 8/11 |
This is a character-driven book with not a lot of action. If you're looking for space adventure - look elsewhere. Having said that, the last third of this book is so suspenseful that I almost missed my stop because I was reading it on BART.
Lots of levels and lots of layers. Ms. Vinge really loves her story and her characters and obviously had a great deal of fun creating all the different worlds and political wheels upon wheels. It was fun to visit other worlds and see what else was out there in her universe, but I think I loved most of all the bits and pieces of the people of Tiamat roaming around their planet amidst the Hegemony's rubble.
Interesting, engrossing, and emotionally engaging - this whole series is great. (