After reading The Sunless Countries, I went back and looked over my reveiws and realized I hadn't written a review for Sun of Suns. Or the Pirate Suns. Oops. So here's an attempt to fix the oversight.
Sun of Suns opens with young Hayden Griffin trying to shirk off chores so he can watch his mother's test lighting of a new sun for Aerie. Wait - I know this sounds like fantasy, but bear with me. Karl Schroeder has created a very interesting habitat and setting called Virga. Its a 'balloon' 5000 miles in diameter, filled with air at sea level pressure in the outer system of Vega. What makes it unique is that its not under spin or gravity generators (like a Dyson sphere would be), so the contents are habitable and free floating. However, given the design set up, it tends to be dark in there away from the central 'sun' (actually a cluster of Farnsworth Fusors) called Candesce. Away from Candesce nations are centered around their suns, and the mobile nation of Slipstream destroyed Aerie's years ago, making the population dependent on Slipstream's good will for light and heat. For more on the setting concepts go to http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/sun-of-suns/engineering-virga and http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/sun-of-suns/virga-visualizations.
Now, back to the opening. Hayden Griffin is trying to shirk off chores so he can watch his mother's test lighting of a new sun for Aerie. This is culmination of his dead (at the hands of Slipstream) father's dream. Unfortunately, the navy of Slipstream has other plans and attack the town hosting the construction. During the fighting, Hayden manages to destroy a Slipstream vessel and his mother sets off the sun early rather than let it (or her fall) into enemy hands. The chapter ends with Hayden falling into the unlit portions of Virga, called Winter.
From there we meet Venera Fanning, wife of Admiral Fanning of Slipstream. She's a canny and ruthless individual having established her own intelligence network for her husband's country and has discovered something that endangers Slipstream. Which she needs to get to her husband. Along the way, her driver sees the evidence she has and fleshes it out making the threat more real. Which is where we meet Hayden Griffin again, who has joined the Fanning household with the express purpose of killing Admiral Fanning who he holds responsible for the death of his mother and all he knew.
The bits I directly summarized are available for download on the author's website.
And from there it gets complicated. The fleet is mobilized. Politics rears its ugly head. We meet a refugee from the world outside of Virga, Aubri Mahallan, who is helping the Fannings with their plot for her own reasons. We also get switching viewpoints between Hayden, Venera and Admiral Fanning, and the supposedly villainous Admiral comes across as admirable and heroic, complicating Hayden's quest.
I'm not going to say anymore about the plot, but it is complex version of the quest and sets up the events of the next two books directly. It also has some character growth for Hayden who grows up quite a bit, as well as holds some secrets he keeps very close. The other characters are interesting - Admiral Chaison Fanning is a dedicated soldier and warrior that I like. He cares about his men, is patriotic and far from stupid. Venera Fanning is more complex and harder to like. She's sneaky, conniving, manipulative and very much a intriguer and opportunist. She also loves her husband, and as a result his nation of Slipstream.
The book has lots of great concepts as well - capital bugs that are large enough that they support their own ecologies. Wheeltowns that spin to provide gravity for their inhabitants. Space operatic battles complete with boarding actions. Exotic locales and people. And, oh yes, jetbikes. This is all space operatic and was designed with that in mind, plus its all supportable by physics as we understand them.
So, go out - get this book. Read it and its sequels and enjoy them.
This was the first book I've read by Karl Schroeder, and it was a pleasant discovery - I liked it well enough that I've already picked up a couple of other books by him. It's exciting sci-fi adventure with an unusual setting that reminded me a little of Flash Gordon (the movie). Virga is a bubble-like world, filled with floating cities and towns heated and lit by artificial suns. Settlements' wandering paths often take them into each other's way, causing political conflict. Hayden Griffin's life has been formed by such a conflict - his people, from the tiny nation of Aerie, perished in a rebellion against a larger nation, and he has been bent on revenge for years... but when he finally infiltrates the inner coterie of the powerful Fanning family, whom he believes to be his enemies, what he learns besets him with doubt. And when he meets a woman who says she is from outside Virga, and tells him strange things about the Universe outside Haydn's world, he realizes much more may be at stake than the future of Aerie.
