The Sunless Countries

The Sunless Countries: Book Four of Virga Kindle Edition
by Karl Schroeder


This is book four of the Virga Chronicles. Author Karl Schroeder has been revealing the amazing world of Virga by shifting viewpoint characters as he tells his adventure story. The first book began with Hayden Griffin, a young man from the nation of Aerie. Aeri was conquered by the nation of Slipstream. Griffin entered the service of Slipstream's navy and became involved in a dangerous adventure that revealed secrets about Virga. The second book shifts the perspective to Venera Fanning. Venera married into the aristocracy of Slipstream and was part of Hayden Griffin's expedition. The third book features Chaison Fanning, Venera's husband and an aristocrat of Slipstream. Chaison is as noble and honest and Venera seems to be conniving.

In the fourth book we are introduced to Leal Malspeth, a historian in the sunless country of Sere. She meets up with Hayden, who has fulfilled his mission of giving a sun to Aerie, and the focus moves out from the world of Virga.

This is a call-back to classic science fiction with big ideas about big objects. Virga is a planet-sized, gas-filled bag in space. It lacks gravity. It is inhabited by humans who have created low-tech versions of artificial gravity through centrifugal force. Lumps of soil provide farmlands. Water may exist in vast bubbles. Animals have evolved to move by flying. We know nothing of the universe outside of Virga, except that there are hostile artificial intelligences who are prepared to take over Virga if the field surrounding Virga that suppresses electronics is turned off.

The center region of Virga is home to Candesce, the Sun of Suns, which illuminates the central region of space. Candesce is an artificial sun. Other artificial suns in outlying regions allow humans to live outside the central regions in nations that stay together and float in the air current around Virga.

The inner skin of Virga is the home of icebergs. The region toward the skin is the “sunless countries” where no one has built an artificial fusion reactor.

Sere is in the sunless countries. Sere has recently fallen under the control of an political/religious faction – the Eternists - that defines truth as that which the majority of the population votes for. This is a ploy to ram a religious/political orthodoxy down the throat of Sere which defines as truth the propositions that Virga has always existed and that there is nothing beyond or outside of Virga.

Leal is a historian who knows differently.

Needless to say, the Eternists are committed to destroying the university where Leal works.

Added to this is the complication that when Hayden Griffin turned off Candesce in the first book, he let in entities from outside that wanted to occupy the one place in the universe that is not under the control of “artificial nature.” It seems that one of those entities is tearing up the outskirts of Sere.

This novel is about the plots and counterplots in Sere and the expeditions to discovery what it is from outside that came into Virga.

I enjoyed the book. I think that someone who didn't read the prior books might find themselves lost since there are callbacks to the events of the prior stories. Also, the story ends on a cliffhanger, as did the first book. The various “books' of the Virga Chronicles are probably better thought of as chapters in a much larger novel.