Imagine a world in which there is no gravity and yet there is still air. How would such a world come into existence? This book is set in the distant future in which a giant bag of air has been built in space, with an artificial sun in the middle. Nations are built on wheels that are spun to create gravity. As a boy, Hayden Griffin, witnesses his mother's death at the hands of an enemy nation. He vows to kill his mother's killer, but as he attempts to get close, he is swept along onto a military vessel that's mission is a secret ploy to defeat an even more powerful enemy nation that threatens them all.

The story is a lot of fun, with lots of rollicking low-gravity sword fights. The world building is very interesting and the characters are sympathetic and three-dimensional. Despite all this, something was lacking. I can't put my finger on exactly what it was, and it would be going too far to say that the story fell flat, but for some reason this didn't quite do it for me. A good story, but definitely put-downable. ( )

Great world-building in this, and like the rest of the Tor downloads, part of a larger series. Damn them. Instead of a world of land, with people on the skin, this world is air, with a skin keeping everyone in. There is a lot of really inventive use of gravity. And farming! Low-gravity farming, omigod. The gravity stuff is fascinating. The cities have their own "suns" to light and warm their homes. There are pirates and betrayal and little or no electricity, because most electrical stuff doesn't work? Fun, fun, fun. ( )

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.

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 plant-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.

The full review (which doesn't include anything that could be a spoiler but does include the mass-market paperback cover) may be found in my LJ. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome.

REVIEW: Karl Schroeder's SUN OF SUNS

Happy Reading! :) ( )

This is a story of a galaxy in miniature created in a giant balloon. 5000 miles in radius, the balloon Virgas, holds hundreds of civilizations around a central internal "sun" called Candense. There are smaller ancillary suns floating in the outer reaches of the balloon also.

This is a story of a groups hunt for a treasure, for a way to save their local civilization, for anothers way to destroy the same, and finally a persons need to disable Candense and open Virga to attack.

There is lots going on here and the book it exciting and well paced. Pirate attacks, deceptions, double crosses, cold blooded murder, and romance are there for the reading.

My only problem was the ending. Seems as though the author reached hise word count and just cut off the story. A little more neatness was need.

All in all a very good book I would recommend to anyone. ( )

Virga is a Fullerene balloon. I’m not sure exactly what Fullerene refers to and a quick Google search didn’t clear it up for me. I’ll poke around that later. Virga is roughly 5,000 miles across and filled with air and all sorts of other stuff that could be used by the humans and other life that lives within.

There are lots of cool things that Schroeder works into the story. Naval fleets that travel like dirigibles in the nearly weightless Virga environment. Forests of plants that root to passing clumbs of earth and themselves trap more passing detritus that enables them to live. Except when too much oxygen builds up and it ignites in a tragic forest fire, which results in an oxygen deprived area if there aren’t enough gas current to carry away the carbon dioxide bubble. Then the areas are called sargassos. What else? Towns and cities having centrifugal wheels to create artificial gravity for the residents.

(Full review at my blog) ( )