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Title: Ventus by Karl Schroeder ISBN: 0-8125-7635-7 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.87 (15 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Great blend of thoughtful SF and space opera
Comment: The "lost colony" story, in which a otherworldly settlement forgets its roots and becomes a sort of ersatz fantasy setting, is an old one.
_Ventus_ is a fun, thoughtful, adventuresome update of this tradition. The aristocracy of Ventus's vaguely medieval civilization are those who are able to influence the Winds, machine intelligences responsible for maintaining the world's delicately balanced ecosphere. A bit of magic is provided in the form of nanotech devices woven into the flora, fauna, and landscape.
As long as the book is, I wish a bit more time was spent looking at the society from the point of view of the inhabitants. As it happens, our viewpoint native, Jason, soon finds himself drafted by off-world mercenaries who have come to Ventus to hunt down the last remnants of a menacing superbeing. We get brief and tantalizing glimpses of a interstellar civilization, perhaps influenced by Vernor Vinge's space opera but unique enough to be interesting.
Despite these nits, I highly recommend this one, and look forward to more by Schroeder.
Rating: 5
Summary: Possibly the SF book of the year
Comment: Ventus could be heaven--every drop of water, grain of sand, flake of snow is created and shaped by the nanotechnology that has teraformed the planet and made it earthlike. Yet the self-replicating and fractally self-aware nanos that make up this world view humans with suspicion and bare tolerance. They may have been created to serve humans, but they have left this behind them.
Into this world comes Armiger, once a part of a God (a self-programmed artificial intelligence with superhuman powers and knowledge). If he can subvert the nanotechnology to his own ends, Ventus can become a power base stronger than anything known in the Universe.
Against Armiger stand a pair of off-planet near-humans who defeated the God he served before, and Jordon Mason, a local implanted with a portion of Armiger now turned to be a tool against him. All of their off-world powers offer little help, though, in a world where anything external is treated as a disease and eliminated.
Karl Schroeder makes this intriguing concept a powerful reality. Both characters and philosophical arguments are fully developed and convincing. The growth of Jordon, as he discovers that easy answers don't answer, the humanization of Armiger against his will, and the parallel changes in Calandria May (the off-worlder who seeks Armiger's destruction) are all sympathetic and believable.
Ventus is the best SF novel I've read this year.
Rating: 5
Summary: Epic scope, human scale
Comment: Two things I'd add to the customer reviews already posted:
Although it's an epic, it's told on a human scale. Little of the narration is from a god's-eye point of view; it's mostly from the point of view of people on foot or horseback, tired, cold, hungry, lonely and lost. Schroeder made me feel, hear and smell the planet Ventus.
Also, there are deft "culture shock" touches which I enjoyed, like a nobleman laughing at (under-cover) off-worlder Axel's idiom, "I'm all ears."
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Title: Permanence by Karl Schroeder ISBN: 0765342855 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 14 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Golden Age (The Golden Age) by John C. Wright ISBN: 0812579844 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Phoenix Exultant (The Golden Age) by John C. Wright ISBN: 0765343541 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 19 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Wellstone by Wil McCarthy ISBN: 0553584464 Publisher: Spectra Books Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Collapsium by Wil McCarthy ISBN: 055358443X Publisher: Bantam Books Pub. Date: 26 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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