Sun of Suns

Book One of Virga

By: Karl Schroeder

Narrated by: Joyce Irvine

Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for gravity.

Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He's come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden's nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden's spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn't bode well for Fanning's chances.

©2006 Karl Schroeder (P)2008 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“The swashbuckling space settlers of Schroeder's fantastical novel inhabit warring nation-states inside a planet-sized balloon called Virga. This adventure-filled tale of sword fights and naval battles stars young Hayden Griffin of the nation of Aerie, orphaned by an attack on the artificial sun that his parents tried to build. Schroeder layers in scientific rationales for his air-filled, gravity-poor world-with its spinning cylinder towns and miles-long icebergs-but the real fun of this coming-of-age tale includes a pirate treasure hunt and grand scale naval invasions set in the cold, far reaches of space.” —Publishers Weekly

“Outrageously brilliant and absolutely not to be missed.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“We already knew that Karl Schroeder could do Kubrick. Now it turns out he can do Dumas as well. And more: not since Middle Earth have I encountered such an intense and palpable evocation of an alien world. Sun of Suns puts the world-building exercises of classic Niven to shame.” —Peter Watts

Excellent

Clearly inspired by Larry Nivens Ringworld this series is a masterpiece of world building. Imagine a gigantic breathable gas giant with a manufactured sun in the middle that interrupts certain technology. There is no gravity except that created by the centrifugal spinning of wheels, pirates with cutlasses and muskets in ships that soar across the three-dimensional gas sea attacking the unsuspecting trader, mushroom farmers on minute pieces of rock.
A magnificent adventure.

Space pirates!

This story was incredibly unique and a great yarn. I loved the steampunk feel and yet the fact that it was not really true steampunk at all. In some ways it felt like a combination of fantasy and science fiction. The characters were relatable. The only real flaw was that the big villain, Falcon Formation, is completely faceless and evil and you learn nothing at all about them. It is a completely one-dimensional cardboard cutout held up for all the characters to unite and fight against. But other than that one complaint, I absolutely loved this book and every quirky thing about it.

The narrator is exceptional and may be the best female reader of male voices I've ever heard. In short, I highly recommend this audiobook!

A visual feast for your mind

The images evoked by this book will blow your mind. Vast, open three-dimensional spaces filled with a combination of far-future biotech and robotics and 17th-century wooden sailing ships. Cylindrical wooden towns rotating for gravity, artificial suns, hollowed-out lakes in the sky with airship pirate hideouts lurking inside...

Karl Schroeder has written something really fresh here. Though it's brilliantly creative science fiction, Sun of Suns feels like a swashbuckling pirate adventure. The characters, if not the deepest ever penned, are fun, realistic, and memorable. All in all, a great listen, perfect for the audiobook format.

Two caveats. The first is that the narrator does not do a lot of different voices. The second is that this is very much the first in the series, so be prepared for the inevitable cliffhanger.