The Sunless Countries: Book Four of Virga
The Sunless Countries is the fourth novel in the Virga series of hard science fiction space opera adventures In an ocean of weightless air where sunlight has never been seen, only the running lights of the city of Pacquaea glitter in the dark. One woman, Leal Hieronyma Maspeth, lives and dreams of love among the gaslit streets and cafés. And somewhere in the abyss of wind and twisted cloud through which Pacquaea eternally falls, a great voice has begun speaking. As its cold words reach from space to the city walls—and as outlying towns and travelers' ships start to mysteriously disappear—only Leal has the courage to try to understand the message thundering from the distance. Even the city's most famous and exotic visitor, the sun lighter and hero named Hayden Griffin, refuses to turn aside from his commission to build a new sun for a foreign nation. He will not become the hero that Leal knows the city needs; so it is up to her to listen, and ultimately reply, to the voice of the worldwasp—because an astonishing disaster threatens Virga. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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5 primary books#4 in Virga
Virga is a 5-book series with 5 released primary works first released in 2006 with contributions by Karl Schroeder.
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3 stars, Metaphorosis reviews
Summary
Leal Maspeth is a history professor in a country that's trending more and more authoritarian and stifling. Hayden Griffin, legendary sun-lighter, is visiting her country for his own reasons. Both become entangled in an adventure that literally takes them out of their world.
Review
I greatly enjoyed the first three books of the Virga series; Schroeder created a fascinating world and fairly deftly outlined the arcs of three core characters. In this fourth book, however, he stumbles a bit.
To begin, we start with a brand new character in a new region of Virga. While protagonist Leal eventually links up with prior characters, much of the book feels quite divorced from the preceding arcs. And where Schroeder does link them up, through the relationship between Leal and sun-lighter Hayden, it's awkward and unfulfilling. It feels like Schroeder has made the barest of required gestures toward a (completely unconvincing) romantic relationship – banking more on expected tropes than actual character development – and I found the whole thing more irritating than interesting.
The story as a whole is also fairly muddled in terms of both plot and worldbuilding. We hear about Virga inhabitants with vague names that Schroeder does little to distinguish. Even partway through, I constantly had to remind myself which was which among world wasps, precipice moths, capital bugs, and wraiths. Even when we do finally get outside Virga itself, which should have been a tremendous climax, the mood is so flat and underplayed that I hardly cared. It's not even really described very well, in contrast to Schroeder's excellent work in preceding books. The result is okay, but not great.
All in all, treat this book as a somewhat unfortunate bridge book between a very strong start (though trending down) and (what I hope will be) a similarly strong finish.
