Karl Schroeder, Sun of Suns [Library of Babel]

I am totally mystified by the vagaries of the publishing industry. Karl Schroeder's latest novel, Sun of Suns apparently came out back in October, but I can't recall ever seeing a copy in a bookstore. I think I would remember it, because he's on my "buy immediately" list after Permanence and Lady of Mazes. And it's a Tor book, too-- their stuff is usually easy to find. I expect this "In print but instantly unavailable" crap from Ace, but Tor's usually reliable.

Anyway, I ended up getting this from the local library, and I'll probably buy a copy this weekend at Boskone. As I expected from the reviews and summaries I read, it's great fun.

From the very first page, it's obvious that this is a book that thinks big. It starts off, "Hayden Griffin was plucking a fish when the gravity bell rang," but it gets even better at the bottom of the first page:

"Gravity ain't gonna go, boy," snapped Miles. "It's solid right now."

"Then I better go see what else is up."

"You just want to watch your old lady light the sun," said Miles.

"Don't you?"

"Today's just the test. I'll wait for tomorrow, when they light it for real."

If that doesn't make you want to read more, well, you're probably not an SF fan...

The deal is this: Hayden and Miles and all the rest of the characters live in Virga, a planet-sized bubble of gas contained in some sort of giant envelope. Inside this huge volume of gas, there are floating forests, blobs of water, very large rocks, and a whole human civilization based on artificial fusion-powered suns and towns that are spun to provide the illusion of gravity. Schroeder doesn't think small when it comes to settings, and all of the little details of life in this environment have been worked out with an impressive amount of care-- enough to satisfy the hardest hard-SF fan.

The human civilization in Virga exists at an odd in-between technology level-- towns and ships are made of wood, and warfare is conducted with gunpowder weapons and swords, but they have rocket-powered bikes and artificial fusion. This is awfully weird, but it becomes clear by the end of the book that this weird mix of states is artificially maintained, and Virga is deliberately cut off from a larger post-human civilization.

The plot appears at first glance to be a strightforward swashbuckler-- Hayden's home country (a loosely defined volume of space centered on a few towns orbiting through Virga on more or less the same path) has been invaded, and his parents are killed in the first few sections. Het sets out to gain revenge on the people responsible, and winds up serving in the enemy navy. He ends up on a mysterious mission to gain access to lost technology that will prove militarily decisive, with a handful of other characters who have their own secret agendas.

The mission provides for a bunch of swashbuckling Patrick-O'Brian-in-Spaaace adventure material-- pirates! Enemy fleets! Naval action! It also brings Hayden and company into contact with visitors from the universe outside Virga, and their simple mission to retrieve the technology to save a single nation turns into something much larger.

This is book one of a trilogy, and as such, a lot of plot threads are left hanging, though there's a reasonably satisfying conclusion to the story in this volume. There are a whole lot of interesting directions that I see where this could go, but given my experience with Schroeder's other books, I expect he'll end up going somewhere else entirely. Wherever that ends up being, though, the first book is a fun ride.