Karl Schroeder, Pirate Sun

Pirate Sun

Karl Schroeder

Tor, Aug 2008, $25.95

ISBN: 0765315459

In Virga, Admiral Chaison Fanning learns no good deed goes unpunished. His bodacious foray prevented an assault on his orb Slipstream; he was imprisoned for his actions, but he is liberated by he assumes his daring subversive wife Venera who when he was first captured he saw fleeing.

Returning to his town, to his amazement, Fanning is considered a traitor by those he saved; he expected the ruler who initially betrayed him to paint him as such but not his neighbors. As revolution, civil war, and outside invasion threaten the Virga spheres, he fights alongside Antaea Argyre, who is from another orb of the 'system' near its edges. There he begins to understand there is much more to the universe than just what is connected to Virga's central sun Candesce.

As with the first two books of the Virga chronicle (see 'SUN Of Suns' and 'Queen Of Candesce'), it is the variety of town-spheres that make for a complex exciting science fiction saga in which anything seems possible under the sun (of Candesce that is). The storyline is fast-paced from the onset as Fanning, though scorned and swiftboated continues to do what he thinks is the ethically right thing for the good of his people. His escapades never slow down as Karl Schroeder provides a strong outer space opera thriller.

Harriet Klausner