Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder

Swashbucklers in space were common fare in the Planet Stories days. Swordfights and space pirates were standard parts of these romances. They were great fun, especially when created by such polished writers as Leigh Brackett, yet at their heart, they were a tad unsatisfying, since we had to really suspend our disbelief. Why would a space going civilization use swords. Why didn’t they all have technology at least as advanced as ours, and use radar to detect the pirates, and radio to call back home? We hid those questions away as we were reading, but they were there in the background nonetheless.

Karl Schroeder clearly looks back with some fondness at those older romances, but wanted to do one better – and he has. In his Virga series, of which Sun of Suns is the first book, we have wooden ships in space, pirates, space-going civilizations without radio or radar, Sargasso seas in space, icebergs in space, and great adventure – but with background that makes all of this, in context, makes sense.

Virga is a planet size balloon, filled with air, water, and floating rocks, with small fusion reactors as suns and the only gravity generated by rotation of artificial structures within. Ships can travel between the various civilizations, moving through the air-filled space between worlds, sometimes through charted areas, at other times through the outlying “winter,” – vast, uncharted, and often populated by pirates.

Hayden Griffin is a young boy when his parents are killed. They had been trying to create a new “sun” for their world, to free them from the domination of Slipstream, when Slipstream attacks. When Griffin is grown, he infiltrates the household of Admiral Chaison Fanning, who he believes led the attack that killed is parents. He plans to kill, but gradually learns that things are different from what he thought. Meanwhile, Chaison, pushed by his wife Venera, is leading a mission to the central sun of sun. Their armorer, who appears to have come from outside of Vega, has told them that she can create devices called “radars” that will enable them to stop an impending attack, but that the central sun broadcasts a signal that prevents radar from working. They must get to the central sun and disable this signal long enough to allow Slipstream to save itself.

The book is a great combination of adventure and discovery, of battles against pirates and slowly – both for the characters and the reader – uncovering both what and why Virga is and what the universe outside is like. It’s exciting and great fun, with good characters (who grow more interesting as the book goes on), thrilling scenes, and wonderful SF concepts. The world (or worlds) within Vega are brilliantly constructed; it’s an intricate and believable artificial world, and Schroeder’s explanations of why it is – and why it has its limitations –- work well.

The book is the first part of a longer series. It does come to a bit of a conclusion, so unlike some recent books that are part of something bigger, it doesn’t feel like it’s been simply cut at some arbitrary place. But it does leave a number of lose ands, and I’m very much looking forward to the next in the series. Schroeder himself is on a path that we’re sure to see one of is novels on the Hugo ballot in the next few years.