On the planet Tiamat, people are divided into Summers and Winters.
This was not the best start for reading my first Vinge novel.īut when I got to the actual story, I quickly forgot all about the author and simply basked in the very interesting world she has created. After I finished reading the introduction however, I felt like I’d just read a list of pretexts as to why the author didn’t publish for a while or why she published things that others may have disliked… Again, I knew nothing about her or her work and writers can publish or not publish whatever the hell they like, if you ask me, but reading this author justifying herself felt rather petty to me. I had never read anything else by her, I hadn’t read a ton of reviews of her books, I like to think that I approached this novel quite neutrally, or leaning towards positive. Vinge was the first author ever that I slightly disliked after reading the foreword. Normally, I find forewords interesting as they give some background info about how a book came to be or what inspired it.
I’ll start this review with my very first impressions and those didn’t happen in chapter one, but rather with the author’s note. Interstellar politics, a millennia-long secret conspiracy, and a civilization whose hidden machineries might still control the fate of worlds all form the background to this spectacular hard science fiction novel from Joan D. Arienrhod is not without competition as Moon, a young Summer-tribe sibyl, and the nemesis of the Snow Queen, battles to break a conspiracy that spans space. Their only chance at surviving the change is if Arienrhod, the ageless, corrupt Snow Queen, can destroy destiny with an act of genocide. But soon the galactic stargate will close, isolating Tiamat, and the 150-year reign of the Summer primitives will begin. The imperious Winter colonists have ruled the planet Tiamat for 150 years, deriving wealth from the slaughter of the sea mers. Which is probably why it took me two months to finish the thing…įirst line: Here on Tiamat, where there is more water than land, the sharp edge between ocean and sky is blurred the two merge into one. And it was enjoyable to some degree but it just never really grabbed me. As a sort of retelling of The Snow Queen (the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen) and a Hugo and Nebula Award winner, I thought this would be just my jam. This book took me way longer to read than expected.
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