Mattastrophic
4/7/2012
So, what is vigra? Virga is a meteorological term referring to visible streaks of precipitation that evaporate before touching the ground. In contrast, Karl Schroeder’s world of Virga is much more interesting. It’s a structure similar to a Dyson sphere: 5,000 miles in diameter, warmed in part by a large artificial sun in the center called Cadesce, and filled with enough air and moisture to sustain life. The light of Candesce only reaches so far, however, and many nations cluster around their own, smaller suns. Where Virga really becomes interesting is it’s lack of real gravity. Towns, cities, and entire nations exist in freefall, making their own gravity with rotating wheel-towns. This makes a larger portion of the planet’s interior viable for habitation than, say, that of a Ringworld-type ring would have. The people in Virga use kerosene lanterns and jets to warm their homes and keep their wood-and-metal town-wheels spinning. Airships are similarly made out of wood and steel. It’s steam-punkish without the historical anachronism, and it’s a world filled with pure sensawunda. You can read more about the world by looking at this page and this page from Schroeder’s website, where he explains the world of Virga and has some helpful illustrations.
At the end of Sun of Suns (the first book in the Virga series), Venera Fanning, Hayden Griffin, and a couple of others ventured into the heart of Candesce and temporarily disabled part of it’s anti-technology systems in order to give the fleet of Rush a fighting chance against the much larger forces of their predatory neighbor, Falcon Formation. In the course of their escape, Venera, in posession of the key to Candesce, was shot and sent careening away from the center of Candesce with nothing but a pair of flipper fins to help her reach minimum safe distance before the sun turned itself back on and incinerated her. Queen of Candesce follows Venera after her trajectory lands her unconscious in Spyre, an incredibly old and gigantic cylindrical nation that has long passed its prime. Spyre has been slowly decaying and spinning apart for centuries, but rather than abandon ship, it’s occupants have become insanely insular, with “nations” measured in acres and buildings sequestering themselves from all outsiders. Injured and seperated from the key to Candesce, Venera has to play a very deadly game of politics and deceit with these ridiculously paranoid nations if she is going to muster enough power to reclaim the key to and return home to take her revenge. Fortunately for her, however, the Machiavellian game played by the nations of Spyre is one she knows very, very well.
The two major strengths of this book are its character study of Venera Fanning and its world building.
While Queen of Candesce focuses on Venera, the first book in the series followed Hayden Griffin, a young man on a quest to kill Admiral Chaison Fanning of the nation of Slipstream, who supposedly headed the police action that killed Griffin’s separatist parents. The Griffins were trying to gain independence for their lesser nation by lighting their own sun. Working his way into Fanning’s household years later, Griffin became conflicted in his revenge when he was pressed into service on a secret expedition headed by Fanning geared towards saving Slipstream and it’s dependent nations by from it’s predatory neighbor, Falcon Formation. Although he was competently written for the most part, Hayden Griffin was a by-the-numbers male protagonist. Sun of Suns also featured Chaison’s wife Venera, who was a far more intriguing character. Raised in a snake pit of conspiracy and backstabbing that would make Paul Atreidies of Dune would feel right at home, it was Venera’s cunning and spy network that made the expedition in Sun of Suns possible, an expedition that took them into the ruins of mythical nations and into the heart of Candesce itself. I enjoyed the novel immensely, and you can read my review of it here.
Schroeder made a good choice in making Vanera the protagonist in the series’ second installment. She is a remarkably more versatile character than Hayden Griffin: the moments where she is as callous and despicable as a noblewoman who just threw a commoner’s baby down a well are nicely offset by genuinely humanizing and sympathetic personal struggles, leaving us to ponder whether she is a villianess or a sympathetic anti-hero. I enthusiastically enjoyed seeing the unfolding of Venera’s plots to gain power and prestige within the nations of Spyre in her attempt to reacquire the key to Candesce and exact her revenge. Venera is willing to use people to get what she wants, to lie, cajole, steal, and even kill to acquire and keep the upper hand. She is certainly not timid and her confidence and willingness to do something brazen and unpredictable led to some satisfying moments, as demonstrated when in the blink of an eye she goes from captive to de facto leader of a small nation all thanks to her her capacity to play sudden, forceful moves. While other protagonists may be gawking in shock as the antagonist reveals his/her plans, Venera has already worked out how she can gain the advantage! Shcroeder compensates for Venera’s shrewdness by setting her against characters equally if not more ruthless, so however Machiavellian she appears it’s easy to root for her since there is someone worse on the other side of the table.
Venera’s Machiavellian nature reminded me a bit of Cersei in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire books, but where Cersei’s sob story came off as hollow and conceited, Venera’s personal struggles are believable enough that she doesn’t come off as an anti-hero nor as a heartless shrew. One might expect a conspiratorial snake like her to have a small capacity for genuine affection, but she is believably shaken up by the news that her husband, Chaison, might have died after the events of Sun of Suns. More is revealed about their relationship here, and it is enough to show that she has a heart beneath the haughty exterior and the ruthless cunning. She is also humanized by a debilitating injury. Venera caught a bullet with her face some years ago, a bullet that had missed it’s target and traveled hundreds, possibly thousands of miles in Virga’s open, gravity-free air before hitting her by chance. The event gave her a star shaped scar on her jaw and periodic, explosive migraines. Schroeder’s extrapolation of how this event affected her physically and psychologically also helps to make her at turns despicable (when she uses it as an excuse to blame others and throw a pity party) and sympathetic. Of course, part of Venera’s struggle is not to let her emotion and her physical weakness show to her enemies. In short, Queen of Candesce presents Venera as a complex character that it is possible to love and hate (and love to hate), and Shcroeder does an admirable job of showing her growth as a character without the overly-blunt, cliched techniques he frequently used for Griffin in Sun of Suns.
Schroeder’s worldbuilding in this book shows some new and interesting elements of Virga through Spyre. Where the towns in Sun of Suns were smaller town-wheels strung together, Spyre is a large Rama-like cylinder that is technologically unfeasible by the standards Venera is familiar with. As a grand nation dating back closer to Virga’s founding, Spyre is all faded granduer and ruins, but the people inside are still clinging to that grandeur with a death grip. As Spyre has fallen apart over the years, it’s rotation has slowed, lightening the pull of centrifugal gravity on its inhabitants and requiring some of them to wear heavy armor to prevent bone and muscle loss. A faction called The Preservationists formed and laid railroad tracks all around the cylinder in order to shift rocks as counterweights when pieces of the cylindar broke off. Elevators and stairs are attached to the cables and stays stabilizing one side of the cylindar against the other, although these are either disabled or jelously guarded by the multitude of tiny factions within Greater Spyre (the larger wheel, with smaller towns existing in wheels at the center). Some of these “nations” are no bigger than a large house, and their occupants, many of whom have never stepped outside their nation’s tiny boundaries, have the same jobs, work in the same small spaces, and sleep in the same rooms their ancestors did. Spyre is a testament to what was possible within Virga and it’s an artifact of it’s past. The massive cylinder’s faded grandeur is not only awe inspiring but used in ways deeply relevant to the plot. It also makes for some exciting action sequences, such as when Venera and others use parachutes to help them move around the outside of the Spyre cylinder and infiltrate a neighboring nation without being detected. While the book does not provide the same rip-roaring survey of Virga that Sun of Suns does, it is nevertheless interesting as it slows the pace and explores one location deeply, allowing the facets of Schroeder’s worldbuilding to show.
As with Sun of Suns, Schroeder’s ability to imagine and present the world of Virga and show how its physics and possibilities have steeped into the fabric of the society of the people within it is one of the true selling points of the book.
Not seeing any of the other characters from Sun of Suns was a bit of a disappointment, but what I missed most were the ship-to-ship battles. Fights in zero gravity require you to let go of your earth-bound conception of direction, and Shcroeder further spiced up his battles in Sun of Suns with jet bikes, giant iceburgs hidden in clouds, zero-g sword fights, etc. While there are battles in Queen of Candesce, they are all land-bound between small groups of infantry, and while the reduced gravity of the big wheel on Spyre did allow for one or two interesting events it wasn’t as exciting as Sun of Suns. In fact, the fighting towards the end of the book made things somewhat confusing to me. Some plot threads became muddled in the action and I wasn’t sure it all worked for me. It was exciting to be sure, and the climax made my jaw drop, but still.
Between these first two books, Schroeder is also developing a larger plot-line in the background concerning the forces beyond Virga. In the human-occupied galaxy beyond Virga, a force called Artificial Nature appears to be dominant. As best as I could make it out, it’s some kind of technological culture maintained by powerful AI, and Virga was intended as a kind of refuge from this post-singularity culture that blurs the line between nature and technology. In both books, however, it’s only mentioned in passing. I can sense that Schroeder is laying the grounds for a major future conflict, but so far it’s inclusion is only perfunctory. It doesn’t add much to the story and leaves me with nagging what-the-heck-am-I-supposed-to-do-with-this questions instead of those more pleasant oooh-I-wonder-what-exciting-situations-this-will-lead-to questions.
Queen of Candesce can actually be read on it’s own. It includes enough references to the back-story of Sun of Suns to keep the reader caught up, but a real joy of this book is seeing what new directions and wonders Schroeder can build within the world of Virga he introduced in Sun of Suns. The sensawunda evoked by Spyre and the events that take place there are viscerally exciting. This book also builds very well on one of the most interesting characters from Sun of Suns, Venera. While she is not the only interesting character in Queen of Candesce, she is easily the most compelling and not simply because she is the protagonist. Schroeder shows some strong character-building chops that mirror his world-building chops by crafting a complex character who is simultaneously shrewd (bordering on cruel) and sympathetic, but all-in-all well rounded. In my mind, an effective sequel has to do at least two things: build on what happened before and include enough new and innovative stuff to reinvest the reader in the experience. Queen of Candesce does just that; it’s a book I would recommend to just about any SF fan and I look forward to continuing the series.
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