The Snow Queen

First book of the year, woot!

Another random stumble-upon at B&N. It was the cover that caught my eye, that lovely mask, so lovely I almost want a tattoo of it. And I was pleased to be reading a Hugo Award-winning book by a woman. So I bought it.

I quite liked it. Not the most amazing thing I've read, but definitely one of the better sci-fi/fantasy books I've read in the past few months. Sort of a space opera/political intrigue/sci-fi soap opera, but better written. Especially the first half.

I'm going to say straight-up right now that I hate Sparks. He's lousy, selfish, stupid and awful. Sorry. Ghundalinu is much better. Yes, he is an elitist bigot, but he changes for the better and ends up being pretty cool. Sparks is just a poop.

Anyway. On the planet of Tiamat, the time of Change is coming. The Winter tribes led by Arienrhod the Snow Queen are about to lose their positions, their power, their technology, because the Summer tribes are taking over when the off-worlders leave the planet. Their planet is run by the Hegemony, a group made up of eight planets, including Tiamat, and led mostly by the leading planet of Karemough, a strict, caste-striated society from whence most of the technology seems to come. The worm hole that allows the Hegemony access to the planet is closing for a century, so all the off-worlders leave before that happens, taking all tech with them. Thereby leaving Tiamat techless and essentially in the Dark Ages.

Arienrhod is not keen on this happening. So she makes herself nine clones, in the hopes that one will turn out well and be able to take over for her, when her rule ends at the Change.

Enter Moon, her clone, and a sybil–a sort of holy person connected to what seems to be the Goddess of the planet, but who is really something much more.

And largely, this is about Moon's coming of age and journey to becoming Summer Queen and finding out what really goes on with the Hegemony. It is also a love story between her and Sparks. And a tale of eco-destruction and giant empires treating small colonies like crap. Ahem.

There are some good characters here. I quite like Jerusha and Tor and Pollux (whose tale probably moved me the most in the end). And I love that there are competent women dealing with rampant sexism and prejudice. But there are times I feel like Ms Vinge tried to pack too much into too few pages. There are jumps in events and relationships that are jarring at first, as if she couldn't think of how to provide information, or as if she edited that information out to save time and space.

In the end, though, I'm glad I read this classic. And I'm glad I got to experience Arienrhod, although I wish she had gotten more page-time in the end. She is a wonderful villain. She does horrible things, and she takes ambition in dangerous directions, but she also wants her planet to be powerful and self-sufficient and not completely spoiled by the Hegemony. She's complex.

But I really don't know why either she or Moon give a crap about Sparks.