You searched for book_author:"Karl Schroeder"
Few authors manage to win me over the way Karl Schroeder has done. After the mediocre Sun of Suns, Venera Fanning's con game in Queen of Candesce impressed me enough to do an almost complete about-face. So it was with eager anticipation that I started the third book in the Virga series, anxious to find out what will happen to Venera; her husband, Chaison; and the pirate sun builder, Hayden Griffin.
The world of…
I read Karl Schroeder's Sun of Suns almost a year ago and liked it but didn't love it. Queen of Candesce, in addition to standing by itself, has made me wonder if I was uncharitable to the first book. I honestly enjoyed Queen of Candesce every step of the way.
There is no question that Schroeder's Virga is a fabulous example of world-building. But it was so obvious in the first book, so…
Karl Schroeder demonstrates an impressive capacity for worldbuilding and imaginative hard science fiction. Sun of Suns is truly awesome in the scope of its technological milieu. The civilization of Virga, with artificially-generated gravity, is as alien to us as the idea of "Artificial Nature" is to the isolated Virgans. Set against this majestic backdrop, the protagonist, Hayden Griffin, is on a mission of revenge that quickly becomes complicated.
Quixotically, Schroeder spends very little time actually…