The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen Cycle #1

by Joan D. Vinge

This reissue of a modern classic of science fiction, the Hugo and Locus Award-winning and Nebula-nominated The Snow Queen, marks the first time the book has been reprinted in fifteen years.

The imperious Winter colonists have ruled the planet Tiamat for 150 years, deriving wealth from the slaughter of the sea mers. But soon the galactic stargate will close, isolating Tiamat, and the 150-year reign of the Summer primitives will begin. Their only chance at surviving the change is if Arienrhod, the ageless, corrupt Snow Queen, can destroy destiny with an act of genocide. 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. 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. Vinge.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Hugo Awards, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fairy Tales

408 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 1980

About the author

Joan D. Vinge (born Joan Carol Dennison) is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award-winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, her series about the telepath named Cat, and her Heaven's Chronicles books.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is higher end political space opera that borrows a number of themes and central plot components from Frank Herbert’s Dune, while creatively retelling the Han’s Christian Anderson story for which it’s named. I found much to like here. Vinge has quality prose skills and does a excellent job with both world-building and layering in a well thought out political structure. She has also peopled her narrative with strong, determined, intelligent central characters, all of whom are women. A nice change from the mostly male dominated SF of the period.

Finally, she has deftly wrapped all of the above inside a complex, engaging plot that I found very entertaining. Yeah, this is science fiction done right and this story definitely deserves a wider readership.

BACKGROUND/BACK-STORY

From the wreckage of a large, powerful galactic empire, a small group of planets have organized into a consortium calling itself the Hegemony. The Hegemony is glued together by its ability to connect to member planets via leftover empire technology. These black gates (think miniature black holes/worm holes) allow instantaneous travel between the vast distances separating member planets.

One of member planets (and the star of our tale) is Tiamet. However, because of a unique solar phenomenon, Tiamat is only accessible by the other Hegemonic worlds for 150 out of every 300 years. The rest of the time, Tiamat is completely isolated. Tiamat’s importance to the Hegemony stems from it being the only source of the spice melange “water of life,” a drug that completely retards the aging process. In order to keep Tiamat dependant on the Hegemony wares and thus allowing the Hegemony to keep itself drenched in the “water of life,” Tiamat is prevented from establishing its own technology base.

The “water of life”...must...flow.

POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

The government of Tiamat is matriarchal and constituted in a manner directly tied to the 150 year periods of access and isolation to the Hegemony. The population of the planet is radically divided into two groups that have a serious nasty on for one another. Group 1 is comprised of the Winters who rule during the 150 years of Hegemony access to Tiamat. The Winters are gadget-loving, hedonistic technophiles who welcome the hegemonic traders and all the advanced baubles they bring to make their lives comfy.

Group 2 is comprised of the Summers who rule during the 150 years of isolation from the Hegemony. The Summers are environment-worshipping luddites tied to folk-traditions who despise both the Hegemony and the Winters for the devastation they cause to the environment, specifically the hunting to near extinction of the peaceful, marine-faring Mers (think adorable, highly intelligent sea otters larger than killer whales).

PLOT SUMMARY

Against this richly textured backdrop, the Snow Queen is a deftly executed example of the hero’s coming of age journey that leads to a reordering of the status quo and a brighter future for the hero’s people. To tell this tale, Vinge gives us 3 very strong central characters all of whom play a key role in the outcome of the story.

First we have Arienhod, the titular Snow Queen. Arienhod has ruled for the entire 150 years of the Winter Cycle (thank you “water of life”). Now the time of the Change is approaching when a Summer Queen will be named and Arienhod will be become a sacrificial offering to usher in the new regime. As you might imagine, Arienhod doesn’t like that plan and is working on an alternate arrangement that will keep her in power.

Second, we have our hero, Moon Dawntreader Summer. Moon, a member of the primitive Summer tribe, pursues her life long ambition to become a “sibyl,” a sacred position among her people similar to an oracle (the true nature of the “sibyl” is one of the mysterious of the story I don't want to spoil but I thought Vinge did a great job with the concept). To achieve her goal of becoming a “sibyl,” Moon is forced to give up her relationship with her cousin/lover Sparks. The fall out from this relationship plays a pivotal role in the rest of the story as Sparks eventually comes to the attention of Arienhod.

After assuming her role as “sibyl” and due in no small part to the loss of her relationship with Sparks, Moon finds herself on a voyage of discovery that will take her from Tiamat to the heart of the Hegemony and back again as she unravels the mystery of her ancestry, the purpose of the “sibyls” and the ancient legacy of Tiamat that holds the key to her planet's future.

The final main player in our space drama is Jerusha PalaThion, my favorite character of the novel. Jerusha is a police inspector stationed on Tiamat and responsible for protecting the interest of the Hegemony by preventing unauthorized technology from being created. Jerusha acts as both obstacle to and facilitator of various plot components and ends up playing a crucial role in the final resolution of the story. Jerusha was the most three-dimensional of the novel’s characters and thought Vinge did an excellent job with her.

OVERALL

Overall, I thought this was intelligent, well written space opera that deserves a far larger audience than it seems to have. My only gripe is that the pacing was a bit uneven at times and there were some dry parts that I thought could have been spiced up a bit. However, the story as a whole was very good and I would certainly recommend it for those that enjoy less action-based and more plot-focused science fiction.

4.0 stars. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

[mark monday · Rating 2 out of 5]

somewhere along the way this turned from Awesome I want to know more! to Ugh when is this going to be over? insipid characterization ended up trumping the amazing world and universe being built. review to come I guess.

no, I'm not going to do it! I've already spent too much time this month on this book! I'm just going to copy and paste the comments I made in the group that inspired this read:

my feelings about this book really turned around somewhere in the middle. the characters just really drove me up the wall. except for the intriguing Elsevier, everyone was so flat and static and uninteresting. the only dynamic character was Sparks, but his character change made little sense (except when viewed in context of the original fairy tale) and he was actually the most annoying yet boring character of all.

I appreciated the focus on women and the exploration of issues that women have to deal with. but when you have a female villain who comes across as excessively petty and immature (even though she's over a century in age!), and a lead character whose sole motivation is her bizarre love for her pathetic cousin (who also happens to be the most uninteresting character)... I don't know how successful that exploration is.

loved the universe, so intriguing. especially loved the sibyl Transfer concept. those two things were enough for me to enjoy the first part of this experience, and to not give it 1 star. but in the end the tedious characterization just made this such a fucking chore to get through, pardon the language.

[BJ Lillis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forget Asimov, forget Heinlein, so far as I’m concerned, the golden age of science fiction began in the 60s, when Vonnegut, Dick, Le Guin, Delaney exploded the genre and—to paraphrase Springsteen on Dylan—kicked open the door to your mind, and ended with the millennium, when the internet killed first the magazine and then our attention spans. All of which is to say, of course I loved The Snow Queen. I was always going to love The Snow Queen. I knew it was true when I pulled it off the bargain rack, with that gorgeous 80s dust jacket, and handed the man at the counter my four dollars. I never doubted, need not have doubted, because they don’t write ‘em like this anymore. Wildly imaginative, utterly derivative, rigorously imagined and rambunctiously undisciplined, long (because why should a good book be short?), utterly convinced of itself and so, so silly (the main character’s name is Moon Dawntreader Summer, need I say more?). Simply wonderful.

[Apatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always found the Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen oddly disturbing, that business with mirror splinters in the eye creeped me out as a kid. This Hugo award winning book by Joan D. Vinge (Mrs. Vernor Vinge no less), takes the original tale and turns it up to 11. I find that female science fiction authors are frequently better at character development and are better prose stylists than their male counterparts, cases in point (off the top of my head) would be Ursula K. Le Guin, Lois McMaster Bujold, Connie Willis, Anne Macaffrey and Mrs. Vinge here very much deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with them (but isn't). Certainly with this book she has created some emotionally complex and believable characters who she puts through the wringer and they come out better people for it (unlike in real life when I tend to shake my fist at the sky, post-wringer sessions).

The hardest villains to write are the ones who are morally complex and commit heinous acts on the basis of some warped principles, like altruism gone wrong. The super wicked titular Machiavellian character never hesitate to corrupt, murder and destroy for in the name of planetary progress. She thinks nothing of killing half the populace yet she misses her younger days when she was just a happy care-free girl and instinctively fall for a boy who reminds her of her younger self. She now ranks among my all time favorite villains. Romance is a major aspect of the story but not the adolescent starry-eyed type that will leave twitards weak at the knees. Here it is portrayed as a vastly complicated human condition that create, destroy, corrupt and redeem with equal facility.

My only complaint is that the male characters are not as well developed as the ladies, especially the two "starbucks" characters who are despicable and deserve their eventual decaffeination (sorry). The one exception is a sympathetic policeman who goes on to have his own spin-off adventures in later books.

It is a terrible shame that The Snow Queen is out of print (as I write) while Stephenie Meyer's literary manures are in plentiful supply. The most recent book by Joan D. Vinge appears to be a Cowboys and Aliens novelization. What is the world coming to??

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

OK, I am going to describe a scene to you, and I want you to then tell me which famous science-fiction property it comes from. Ready?

So, this is the climax of the middle part of the story. The hero finally meets up with the primary antagonist. They go head-to-head in a duel on a narrow bridge over a vast abyss. Midway through, our hero learns a stunning piece of news regarding a parental figure, and is then tempted to join the villain in an evil scheme to rule the galaxy.

Ha ha, yeah, I did make it pretty easy. Of course I am talking about Joan D. Vinge's The Snow Queen.

So, this is a very Star Warsy book, very hero's journey. I might just be grasping at narrative tropes that were obviously very common before George Lucas came on the scene (humble farmer discovers a wider world, plays an active role in world-shattering events, faces darkness and temptation yet triumphs), but I can't overlook the fact that it was published in 1980, just three years after Lucas made Joseph Campbell a household name. Granted, a lot of the material couldn't possibly have been inspired by The Trilogy, but it is almost funny the way the book predicts events in Empire and Jedi.

Anyway, broad similarities with other genre entries don't mean this isn't a great book; in fact, it's a damn interesting take on the material, Star Wars from a feminist point-of-view. The hero, Moon Dawntreader (seriously?) is female, for one thing, and an inhabitant of a matriarchal world where one woman, Arienrhod (the semi-villainous Snow Queen of the title), has been in power for more than 100 years and has concocted a scheme to ensure she keeps it. I'm sure you could pick a lot of it apart, even from this angle -- for much of the story, Moon is motivated by her quest to rescue her lost love, who has been seduced into becoming the Snow Queen's dark apprentice -- but she eventually realizes she has her own greater purpose, one motivated by her connection to the women of her bloodline and a great, galaxy-spanning force than unifies the... you know, it really is uncanny.

It's a nice change of pace to read a sci-fi novel in which the three primary characters are strong women -- in addition to Moon and the Snow Queen, there's also Police Inspector Jerusha PalaThion, certainly one of the more nuanced female characters in any genre entry I've read. It also manages to create an interesting mythology (somewhat loosely inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale), about a world that holds the secret to eternal life, is exploited by a Galactic Empire (erm...), and, due to its plot-convenient location near a black hole, disappears, Brigadoon-like, for a century every 150 years. It's all a lot of fun, even though there is hardly any space travel and little in the way of laser fights (one tense showdown involves some flute playing).

Despite the fact that it won the Hugo (and has amazing cover art), The Snow Queen has been in and out of print for years (and is currently out). The author was injured in a car accident a decade or so back and has been unable to publish anything new, which might have something to do with it, but this is one book that deserves to be available in bookstores.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a modern re-telling of Hans Christian Anderson’s classic tale. Moon and Sparks are equivalent to Anderson’s Gerda and Kai, who grow up together and are devoted to each other. In the original tale, Kai is infected with a tiny piece of an evil troll mirror, which causes him to see only the bad and ugly in people. In Vinge’s version, Sparks gets left behind when Moon is chosen away to become a sibyl and he flounces off to the city of the Snow Queen to try his luck at becoming someone of importance. Just like Kai in Anderson’s tale, Sparks becomes a cruel and violent man. Gerda and Moon are each launched on a quest, to find their beloved friend/cousin and to save him from the Snow Queen to rejoin his people and his world. Both have transformative adventures and make interesting allies along the way.

There are so many parallels between the two stories that it would be boring in the extreme to list them all—but this is one of Anderson’s tales that I was less familiar with and I enjoyed comparing them. Both versions are populated by many female characters—indeed, it is women who are the prime movers, although they are supported or motivated by their love of the men in their lives.

I also couldn’t help seeing many parallels between Vinge’s Snow Queen and Frank Herbert’s Dune. Both take place on low-technology planets in large galactic empires and produce substances that extend human life span substantially, the waters of life or geriatric spice respectively. Each has a fabulous and misunderstood creature that is responsible for these substances, mers in the SQ and worms in Dune. Each has a mysterious “religious” class—sibyls (who can be either sex) in SQ and the Bene Gesserit (exclusively female) in Dune.

I also find it interesting that so many science fiction and fantasy writers deal with the issue of human life extension/immortality, since I certainly don’t aspire to live a particularly long time. For one thing, my finances would not allow it—one must be an aristocrat, a criminal, or an aristocratic criminal to have the funds for this kind of life plan! And one must be sure that the body & mind are going to cooperate before signing on for too many extra decades—but these fictional characters are never confined to nursing homes or assisted living! My mother used to be horrified by the prospect of losing her wits to dementia of some sort and I am watching elderly friends and relatives deteriorate as they progress through their 80s. It definitely gives me motivation to live a healthier life in the here and now, to try to improve my own old age. I guess that is the dream—to have a substance that doesn’t just prolong life, but prolongs youth and ability.

Eventually, I will have to read the next book in the series, The Summer Queen. I was sorry to read that Joan D. Vinge suffered minor brain damage in a car accident in 2002, leaving her unable to write. The good news is that by 2007 that she has recovered enough to resume writing. I will look forward to reading more by this author.

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 Stars
I enjoyed finally getting to read this hard to find vintage science fiction novel. I hoped it would be a five star read but it was still a solid four stars. I'm glad I finally got a chance to read it.

[Clouds · Rating 2 out of 5]

Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.

On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.

While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became a father. As such these stories became imprinted on my memory as the soundtrack to the happiest period in my life (so far).

Reading The Snow Queen felt like watching snooker on the telly at three in the morning. It’s inoffensive, doesn’t take much effort and it keeps your eyes busy.

Stretching metaphors (and similes) is a hobby of mine, so let’s have a go at this one; imagine this hypothetical game of billiards being played on a golden mountain-top, beneath a green and purple storm-whipped sky – and the two competitors are a jewel encrusted cyborg and a naked, tattooed nympho-fairy with fluttering wings.

My point? You can dress it up pretty, but the game remains the same.

I read it during the build-up to my wedding, amid a run of early/mid 80s Locus Sci-Fi winners – Integral Trees , Titan , The Snow Queen and The Postman . Vinge’s tale came 4th in that little mini-league. I’m normally a big fan of clone stories, but even that didn’t help push my buttons here.

I was equally unimpressed by her ex-husband Vernor’s 2007 winner, Rainbows End , so perhaps I’m just not operating on any Vinge-receptive wavelength.

I know there’s a lot of love for TSQ out there but it reminded me a lot of McCaffrey’s Restoree ; my wife got me to read that, insisting it was worthwhile and every other chapter I was rolling my eyes and glaring at her sceptically. Really? Really ? You think this is good ?

Some specific complaints:
The planetary backstory is reminiscent of Dune, but not as good.
The whole sci-fi / fey merger just jarred in an overly melodramatic manner for me.
The villain of the piece, Arienhod, is like a cartoon bad fairy.
The lovers are called Moon and Sparks for frack’s sake!
Moon, the hero, was like banal nails on a chalk-board.
I thought Spark deserved a long walk off a short pier.
The chamber of wind (or whatever it was called) seemed pretty damn arbitrary.

It’s not terrible, but I found it insipid.

Best bit?
Without a doubt the flute-duel!
Wind instruments have always seemed mortally dangerous to me…

There were spaceships, aliens, love, murder and mayhem – it's in my genre and it gets two stars without complaint.

I’m glad I’ve read The Snow Queen , but I won’t be reading the rest of the series unless someone pays me too.

[Metodi Markov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Малко се попроточи историята, но доволно ми хареса.

Странна планета, интересни герои и ситуации, тайни и интриги на локално и междузвездно ниво. Макар и действието да върви относително бавно, "Снежната кралица" няма да ви разочарова!

Моята оценка - 3,5*.

P.S. Естествено, издателство "Бард" не са си направили труда да издадат останалите книги от поредицата.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book when I was somewhere from 15-17. This is not the book that the teen me remembers. I am positive the teen me focused on the sex(there is really not that much) and the love story between Moon and Sparks. The adult me has some major issues with the love story between Moon and Sparks. As a matter of fact, as we get to the "climax" of the book, I might have said out loud at work in the break room, 'You have to be fucking kidding me' and gagged. Even the inner teen agreed with me.

But this is not a book that is exclusively about characters names Moon and Sparks, hence it's title. It is also about the Snow Queen and MANY other folks. Too many to name really. But not too many to keep track of. Thankfully their parts in the book played larger roles in the grand scheme of things. One thing the inner teen and I agree is that the Snow Queen was not EVIL. She may have done some not nice things, she may have lost her way, but in the end she was seeking a greater change for the good of her planet.

I could write paragraphs about each character and what role they played, why I liked them or not. But I am not going to do that. But I do need to say that I was pissed when Moon still picked Sparks over GZ even though I new it was coming . The inner teen and I were very disappointed.

I must pause here and will be back to finish this.

After reflecting further, I can say I really enjoyed the sci-fi aspect of this, the black hole,space travel, nano technology. Although it is not called nano technology, that is just how I think of it. I will not bore you with endless details about the planets various cultures and such. But I can say certain aspect of this book hold up, some do not. I am looking forward to reading The Summer Queen and if you are at all interested in how we get a Summer Queen, first you must read about The Snow Queen.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. The sheer imagination involved in this story is absolutely amazing! I think I was about five minutes into it when I started frantically searching for the rest of the series. The fascinating thing about it is that the world itself seemed very much like a fantasy world but this is most definitely a sci-fi story. It's not subtle about the space travel and other planets and FTLT stuff. But it was this blend of sci-fi and fantasy that made the story a bit of genius. More than a bit.

I'm going to botch all of the names because I used the audiobook. I'm pretty comfortable with Moon and Sparks, but somebody please tell me how to spell Arianroad? And Inganott and whatever the hell BZ's last name was.

The story is about a young man and woman, Moon and Sparks, two Summers who are separated at the very beginning because Moon is taken to be a Sybil and Sparks is not chosen. This creates a very early rift between the two, despite being pledged to each other, that leads to a truly fascinating avalanche of hardships and frustrations on both sides. It was brilliant because it made it seem as though these two had very little control over their lives and this made them seem so much more real.

The Snow Queen, Arianroad, who is a Winter, is about to see the end of her 150 year reign and is frantically trying to figure out a way to extend it. She's sown clones of herself throughout the population of Summers, the population that the next Queen will be chosen from, so that she can be immortal. All she has to do is make sure that Moon, the only surviving and sane clone, is the next Summer Queen.

This is brilliantly imagined and utterly human. I want to turn around and listen again :)

I decided to tag this as fantasy as well as sci-fi because the world of Tiamat seems like a fantasy world within a sci-fi world. It's definitely sci-fi but I just have to respect this beautiful planet and people that Vinge has created.

As far as the audio goes, the narrator did a truly excellent job. She's got a serious knack for accents and worked very well because there were multiple cultures interacting here. My only real complaint is that it was difficult to tell when the character was thinking or talking. Otherwise, it was amazing and I'm very disappointed that the rest of the series isn't available.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Good:
This is science fiction painted with fairy tale themes. The setting is very cool and full of good ideas, the details well conveyed through the various point-of-view characters.

The Bad:
The story is slow and the characters are all slightly wooden. The ending gets a bit Days of Our Lives.

'Friends' character the protagonist is most like:
Moon is very New Age but also heroic. She is also the spitting image of another character in the story, which makes her most like Phoebe.

[Nicholas Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that is long, is a long a journey, and when you're done you're just like "Wow...what a ride."

Update 1/11/21: Since this review is getting likes again, I thought I should add some info I forgot to add when I original wrote the review. Winner of the 1981 Hugo Award for Best Novel, The Snow Queen tells the story of Moon Dawntreader Summer, a young woman from the planet Tiamat who is training to become a sibyl among her people, the Summers; a people who are a bit fearful of advance technology. Tiamat is currently ruled by Arienrhod, the Snow Queen, and thus Winter dominates Tiamat not only environmentally, but culturally and socially as well. Arienrhod's rule has lasted 150 years due to her ingesting of the water of life, a substance taken from the native nautical life of Tiamat. Not only that, Winter is more technologically advanced than the Summers, but it is far form being a utopia.

Moon along with her cousin-lover Sparks train to become sibyls, but only Moon achieves this. Sparks leaves for the capital to seek answers about his unknown father and to find a new path in life. After being robbed, The Snow Queen takes him in and psychologically manipulates him into being her new prime lover, doing away with her original lover Starbuck. It is soon revealed that Moon is actually a clone of Arienrhod--the only surviving one--and that the Change is coming; in which Summer will finally take over from Winter via a literal sacrifice of the Snow Queen. Thus Arienrhod attempts to find Moon and use her as an extension of her life, but Moon escapes Tiamat into a journey that will uncover the history and mystery of the sibyls.

Also, I am upset with myself that in my original review I forgot to mention the police woman Jerusha PalaThion, probably one of the best characters. She's trying to unravel the mystery of the Snow Queen and keep Tiamat from falling into disarray, but the Snow Queen's manipulations get in the way. This the end of the update editions, everything else below is the original review.

The Snow Queen wasn't perfect. Some scenes went on for too long, the romances had some hitches (but were far from being the worse romances I've seen), and I felt at times that Joan D. Vigne over explained some things. But other than that, it was a very enjoyable read. What surprised me the most is the lush writing that Vigne often employed. I'd expect that for a short novella or something, but in a full-length sci-fi novel? I was surprised at how well it fit.

Vigne had some amazing ideas that she played out well and, unlike some other sci-fi works that dealt with the topics she did, there was care and nuance. Even our main heroes and heroines had questionable actions, although this book is far from being anything grimdark or grey-morality tone.

All in all, I really enjoyed this! I will read The Summer Queen at some point, but now my brain needs a break.

Thanks for the ride, Joan!

[Lee (the Book Butcher) · Rating 3 out of 5]

my first Sword and laser group read was a different type of book than I am use to. A political hard sci-fi love drama. there are interesting concepts here. I have enjoyed the forums that discussed the many topics and aspects that I did not realized until pointed out. fairly long at around 700 pages following political discord surround the seasonal change winter to summer which happens ever 100 or so years on a world (Tiamat) in the outskirts of the universe ran by a hierarchy called the hegemony. Winter is a hegemony back tech society and Summer is a agricultural based society. the hegemony pulls all tech and outworlders off the planet during summers reign. I am told that the hegemony represents the European colonist somehow particularly the British empire but that all went over my head. there is a substance called the liquor of life that of course is the blood of a sentient being called a mer. the liquor of life that prolongs life is why the hegemony is interested in Tiamat at all. the liquor or life is suppose to represent the whaling trade or Chinese silk or some other good that the Europeans exploit other civilization for but again that went over my head while reading. what didn't go over my head was the drawn out overdone love story that everything else in the book centers on. like most love stories I was drawn in yet repulsed by this one. where two "pledged" cousins of summers (yeah lets ignore there cousins for a moment) separated and send spacetime and actual time trying to reconnect with versions of each other. oh, did I mention there is a love triangle with a clone. wow this is sounding better when I describe it. the boy goes to the winter capital and become the queen's consult and the girl goes off world to learn the secrets of the universe. which is really shocking a unexpected. can't say the author withheld the revelations. all in all not sure why I did not enjoy this book more the characters were good the story is backed by historical simile very interesting things happened. the only excuse I have is that it's was just not my cup of tea. and the notion that maybe there is a reason why no one has ever heard of the author or this series written in the 80's. I would only recommend it to the rare hard core lover of sci-fi romance.

[YouKneeK · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Snow Queen is the first book in the four-book Snow Queen Cycle, a science fiction series with some really interesting world-building. There were a lot of things I liked about this, and also some things that annoyed me. The first half went a bit slow for me at times despite being interesting, but picked up in the second half.

The setting is an interesting one. Although it’s definitely science fiction and there are science fiction explanations and back stories for everything, there are parts that have more of a fantasy feel. The story is set on a world called Tiamat which is caught in a cycle that makes it accessible to other inhabited planets for 150 years, then cut off for another 150 years. The story starts a few years before the end of the accessible part of the cycle. Tiamat has two factions among the native population – the Summers, who live primitive lives without technology, and the Winters, who embrace alien technology. Because Tiamat has a resource that they can’t get anywhere else, the people from other worlds keep Tiamat technologically repressed, allowing the Winters to share some of their technology while they can access the world, but ensuring that they can’t become technologically self-sufficient during their absence. The Winter faction reigns while their planet is accessible, but at the end of that period they’re forced to turn control over to the Summer faction. The current Winter queen, Arienrhod, naturally isn’t looking forward to the end of her reign, which will require her death, and she has a plot or two.

Although I liked some of the characters, I think the world-building and the story were the more interesting parts to me. I really enjoyed the concept of the sibyls, I loved seeing characters with minimal exposure to advanced technology suddenly getting a bigger taste of it than they ever imagined, and I wanted to see Tiamat become technologically self-sufficient while yet hating everything Arienrhod did.

My feelings about the characters were more mixed. I liked some of the secondary characters quite a bit once we got to know them more. As far as the main characters went, I mostly liked and sympathized with Moon, but I didn’t agree with some of her decisions. I initially liked and sympathized with Sparks too, but that didn’t last long. I hated him pretty strongly by the end. He was a wimpy, whiny, flip-flopping jerk. He became whatever the girl he was with wanted him to be and had no spine of his own. When they were young, he wanted to be a sibyl because Moon wanted to be a sibyl. As soon as he had sex with the queen, he decided he wanted to be the next Starbuck and essentially become all of the things he had believed were morally wrong. Then when Moon found him again they had sex and instantly he flip-flopped back to being good again, feeling guilty about all the things he had done and ready to do the right things again because that’s what Moon wanted of him. I never felt like he did anything because it was the right thing to do; he was driven by his emotions and what the people influencing him wanted. And so I was really annoyed at Moon for saving him and continuing to love him. I couldn’t understand how she could love somebody who had such a weak moral center that he would do the things he did, to the point of being complicit in the attempted murder of all of his people. Feeling guilty about doing horrible things doesn’t redeem you if you still did those horrible things when you knew better. Yeah, I think he made me a little angrier than I even realized until I sat down to write this review! :)

Aside from my spoiler tagged tirade about Sparks, I sometimes wished the story was a bit less romance-y. It wasn’t enough to really annoy me, because there was still a lot of interesting world-building and story to hold my interest, but there really was quite a bit of romance once you list it out. There were two connected love triangles, with offshoots. There was also a separate angsty romance, but it received very little page time. Moon-Sparks-Arienrhod make up one triangle, and Sparks-Moon-BZ make up another. Then you have Herne obsessed with Arienrhod and hints that Cress had a thing for Moon. Then Jerusha and Ngenet.

I always find it easier to rant about my complaints than the things I liked though, and the things I liked outweighed the things I didn’t by quite a lot. Although this book tells a complete story, I’m really looking forward to finding out what happens next on this world and plan to continue the series.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like her husband at the time, Vernor Vinge, Joan Vinge is great at world-building. The story is based loosely on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale of the same name. The Hegemony and the world of Tiamat are beautifully described and the reader is pulled into the intrigues with high stakes surrounding the Snow Queen and the Summer Queen. The plot is not overly complex and remains highly entertaining with some great ideas with the mers (an alien whale native to Tiamat) and there is a little bit of psychic power going on, kind of akin (although less powerful) to spice in the Dune books. A great read and worthy Hugo and Locus winner in 1981.

Fino Reviews of Joan and Vernor Vinge Books:
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been on my shelves for decades. I am glad that I finally got around to reading it. This book was a strange mix of fascinating ideas and the banality of florid language. It really is an odd mix. I found the writing to be good and the characters were interesting and many of the concepts such as the "sibyls" and the Black Gate, and the construct of the Hegemony and the political intrigue to be fascinating and yet for me the sum of the parts were far larger than the book as a whole. It was just too difficult a read for the payoff. Too many words, not enough imagery "magic". I was never swept up in the tale. It got to be a bit of a slog until Moon left Tiamet. I was bored with Sparks and Arienrhod and the whole business with the mers (primarily because it is open-ended). It lacked sophistication/nuance. The whole scenario was just straight forward evil. No mystery in who to root for in this book. I thought the characterizations of the main characters were lacking, but the characterizations of the peripheral characters were great. So many minor characters to love: Jerusha, BZ, Miroe, Aspundh, Elsivier, Tor, Pollux, Fate Ravenglass, etc. Heck, I even like Herne. I gravitated far more to the minor characters. Arienrhod is barely given any substance at all. Very superficial. It's funny, this book was written in the late 70s and early 80s. It was intended to be somewhat of a feminist tome designed to empower women. Both the protagonist and antagonist are female. The Blue Commander is female, almost all of the minor characters with substance were female. Frankly, in general males don't come out very well in this book. A few good men, yes. But not many vs the wealth of "good" women in the book. Of course the fatal mistake in this book was the old "yes she's independent, strong and powerful but without true love she's nothing." Luckily all the good women ended up with their man. Tor ended up with no one and presumably poor and dirty. Oh Joan Vinge...smh We won't talk about Sparks and Moon. Overall, I did enjoy the book, but I did find it to be too long.

One should keep in mind that this book was written almost 40 years ago. It really has aged pretty well and the influence of this book is evident in many of the books written today. I do want to see where this series goes, but i'm not in a hurry...

Almost 3.5 Stars

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. It dark and romantic and sad. I love the juxtaposition of Summer and Winter, innocent and corrupt. It's been years since I read it and I think I need to re-read it.

Re-read August 3-12, 2018

I still loved this. The world building is wonderful, although I did find the second half of the novel more compelling than the first half. I found Moon and Sparks to be so very young. The last time I read this I wasn’t to much older than they were in this novel. Now I am old indeed, probably the same age as Moon’s grandmother. I found it less romantic and sad and I was more angered by the Hegemony. I thought the most interesting and well developed character was Jerusha Pala Thion, and I found her story more interesting to me than Moon’s, a woman’s struggle against corruption and misogyny. I found her love story with Miroe Ngenet unexpected and sweet. Finishing this I felt pity for Moon and Sparks. Only a really young person could think that their love would be eternal.

Often when I return as an older person to a book I loved in my youth I find it falls flat. The things I once loved I no longer do. In this book I found other things to love and I was very satisfied.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! What an incredible read! I am so glad I requested it via interlibrary loan.

One small problem.... in my copy, pages 375-406 were missing and replaced with pages 311-342, AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Whew. Glad to get that out of my system. Now, on to the book....

This book was epic. The world-building, the characters, the political intrigue... I just loved everything about it. If this had been written these days, it would've been optioned for film or TV! I just fell into this book and became part of the world.

The world (part of a system with 2 suns) has an interesting season cycle and two different peoples, the Winters and the Summers. It is also tenuously connected to the rest of the universe by a black hole. (Think wormhole.) It is also kept technically unaware. Technology arrives when the offworlders can be there and they take them away later.

This sets up the worlds for political intrigue. One Queen has to die for the other to take over. What will happen? What is the history?

I loved this book and will try and find the sequels.

For those of you who didn't love it like I did ;-P

[MadProfessah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably 3.5 Stars.

Reading this classic science fiction novel more than 35 years after it came out reveals that it still has the power to affect the reader.

As some have mentioned the language is definitely flowery and the pace is slow. It is probably 3 or 4 chapters too long.

But that said, there's something compelling about the plot, which is intriguingly complex but simply banal at the same time. There are two star-crossed lovers: Moon and Sparks, who grow up as cousins and pledge to share their lives together. But through a variety of story developments they are separated and the central plot is about how/when/whether they will be brought back together again.

There are some really enduring aspects of space opera that are included. The story takes place on a backwater planet (Tiamat) which happens to have a priceless resource (water of life) that extends human life. The Hegemony, which is a confederation of planets has an outpost on Tiamat but they try to respect the cultural traditions of the planet.

One interesting feature of the story is the centrality of sexism and the fight for a woman to be recognized in a mans world. However, it is primarily depicted in a somewhat ham-handed fashion.

Overall I'm glad that I finally read it.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Snow Queen is part of a long-time project to read some of the books that have been in my physical library for decades. I bought this one used when I was in high school, I think.

Was it worth the wait? Let's see...

*

Tiamat is a planet in transition. Its approach closer to a black gate in space means that it will be cut off from the galactic Hegemony who has been in residence there for decades trading with Tiamat's queen for the "water of life," the blood of mers--a seal-like form of sea life--that can grant immortality. Per a native Tiamat tradition, Airenrhod, the Winter Queen who presently rules Tiamat, must be sacrificed during the transition. The planet's "Summers" will come into ascendancy and a new queen will be chosen from among them.

Airenrhod has her own plans to continue her reign in the form of clones raised among the Summers. But things don't quite go as she'd planned, and in the end she decides to take a different, more sinister path.

The scene-setting and world-building in this novel are great, especially on Tiamat, the main center of the action. There's the island where Moon begins her quest to become a Sibyl along with her cousin and lover* Sparks; the gradually revealed background of the Sibyls' role in the history of the galaxy and of Tiamat itself; Carbuncle, the spiraling Winter city near the Hegemony's spaceport; the mers; the tribal Winters' enclave out in the wilderness; an isolated estate where Moon learns more about herself and her quest from a conservationist who used to belong to the Hegemony... and much more. It gets a little weak when we go to Kharemough, the capital planet of the Hegemony. I didn't get a great sense of that planet, either as a whole or individual settings.

*Yeah, that's more than a little questionable. Since the reader knows from early on that there isn't any real consanguinity there, it might not be quite as distasteful, but the characters don't know that, so... yeah. Blech.

Vinge isn't shy about exposition, and one of my major problems with this book is its pages of dense paragraphs full of telling you what the characters see and feel, or long descriptions of scenery. "Show, don't tell" is limiting in its way, but The Snow Queen offers a good demonstration of how the opposite can be taken too far. I couldn't bring myself to read more than 50 pages of its dense, essentially shallow prose on any given day before my mind pleaded to experience something that took less work for the level of payoff.

There are a good number of characters that the story follows, from both the Hegemony and Tiamat. The "telling"-heavy style made them feel superficial for over half the book, but eventually the wall of words did its work and I felt I knew them and was invested in knowing what would happen to them.
- Moon, the Princess of the tale. She's the one who sees more of Tiamat, and Kharemough, than anyone else in the story, and goes through several ordeals on the way to her confrontation with Airenrhod.
- BZ Gundalini, a Hegemony officer who has the worst luck of anybody in the book, spending a lot of it injured, captured or ill.
- Jerusha, his boss, the beleaguered Commander of police for the Hegemony in Carbuncle, the city where Tiamat and Hegemony meet and merge.
- Ngenet, who chose to cut himself off from the Hegemony to run a plantation on Tiamat and create a preserve for the seal-like mers.
- Fate, the mask-maker, who lives in Carbuncle and is creating masks for the Summer Queen and for the celebrants of the festival that will mark the change from Winter to Summer.
- Tor and Pollux, a Tiamat Winter and her robot companion.
- Herne, Airenrhod's lover early on, and also the Hunter who gathers the mers' blood for the Hegemony and for the Snow Queen's immortality. Moon's lover Sparks ends up taking his place in this role.

This is a decent place to talk about Sparks. To me, he represents one the main flaws of the book. The storytelling can't seem to decide if it wants to be a good-vs.-evil melodrama or something closer to a space opera.

Sparks' role in the fairy tale would be the brother whose sister travels the world to save him from the Snow Queen. Here, he fulfills a similar role, but I get the impression that he's shoehorned into this role to create a SF version of that tale, and his depiction is inconsistent. Sometimes he's a heartless badass. At others, he's a petulant puppy, a whining victim of circumstance. (He isn't the only one who passively follows authorial fiat and suffers for it. Jerusha and BZ do, too, among others.)

There's a give-and-take in character and in storytelling mode that doesn't quite gel, here. It's obviously told by the same author, in the same style, and I don't think the novel would have been as strong without either the Snow Queen aspect, or the Hegemony, or the idea that Airenrhod and the Hegemony's days on Tiamat were numbered. Unfortunately, I can't offer much of an argument except to say that the mix didn't work as well as I might have hoped.

Back to the question at the beginning of the review: was The Snow Queen worth waiting over 30 years to read?... sadly, the answer wasn't as strongly "yes" as I had hoped. There are several books I would recommend to others that offer a similar experience and fewer annoying problems.

- Anything by Brandon Sanderson: much less effort for an equivalent page length, fun world-building, characterization on a similar (i.e. somewhat lacking) level.
- Illusion: long, detailed and dense, with a much better style and a stronger thematic throughline. (5 stars, highly recommended.)
- City of Bones: wonderfully depicted setting, appealing characters, and much shorter. (4 stars, a personal favorite.)

[Kat Hooper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Originally posted at Fantasy Literature.

The Snow Queen, published in 1980, is Joan Vinge’s science fiction adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale of the same name. In Vinge’s version, Anderson’s love story takes place on the planet Tiamat which is located near a black hole. Tiamat is a convenient rest stop for interstellar travelers and they often go down to the planet for respite or trade, but Tiamat also has its own special commodity: the Water of Life. This youth-preserving substance is made by killing a marine species found only on Tiamat and is available to rich travelers who are willing to leave their money or their technology behind. The “Winter” clan who governs Tiamat craves the technology that will make their life more comfortable, but the Hegemony, the real rulers of several worlds, keeps Tiamat (and, therefore, the Water of Life) in their control by restricting technological development.

The Snow Queen has been ruling Tiamat for the Winter clan for 150 years, but everything on Tiamat is about to change because the planet’s unusual orbit is nearing the phase where the black hole will become unstable, closing the planet to outside influence. At that time the planet’s relationship to its sun will also change, reverting Tiamat to its “Summer” ecology. As has been the tradition, the Summer clan will choose a Summer Queen who will sacrifice the Winter Queen and her consort and will rule for the next 150 years until the orbit changes again. The Summers are backward, superstitious, and hate technology. They also revere the sea creatures that the Snow Queen has been killing. Thus, the entire culture of Tiamat will be transformed when they are in power. But the Winter Queen is not ready to be sacrificed and she has a plan to keep her clan in power. It involves our protagonists, Moon and Sparks, a pair of teenage cousins and lovers who belong to the Summer clan.

Joan Vinge’s The Snow Queen won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1981 and I respect the opinion of several people I know who love it and claim it as one of their favorite science fiction novels. I, however, remain completely mystified. Perhaps if I had read it back in 1980 (except that I was too young) I would have appreciated it. After all, the novel has an ecological focus and its main characters are women — both of those features were unusual for science fiction novels of that era.

Vinge’s main characters may be women but most of them are pathetic. On the surface they seem to be strong, but those in power are either evil (e.g., The Snow Queen), unconfident because they’re women (e.g., Jerusha the police inspector) or are completely derailed by their love of a man (e.g., Moon). Fortunately, there are some admirable secondary female characters.

I had a couple of major issues with The Snow Queen. The first is that I had a hard time believing in Vinge’s world. The black hole, orbit and ecology change is a clever setup, and there were other clever features which I can’t explain without spoiling the plot, but I didn’t really believe in the Summer/Winter dichotomy and that any rulers could ever expect such a governmental and cultural transition to be successful. Along with this, I didn’t believe that the Winters, with 150 years worth of technology to study (and immortality besides) couldn’t figure out how to replicate, or create their own, technology, even if they had to keep it hidden from the Hegemony.

But what I disliked most about The Snow Queen was the protagonists, Moon and Sparks. Biologically they are cousins, they were raised as twin siblings by their grandmother, and they became lovers as children. YUCK. It’s really hard to root for their love affair, upon which the entire foundation of the plot rests — The Snow Queen is, after all, a love story at heart. I could not get past the incest or the sick single-minded blind devotion to each other. In addition, besides the weird relationship, I found both characters hard to like. They were sulky, self-absorbed, and impetuous. Sparks brooded for the entire story. Moon was better, but still did not display enough loveable qualities to explain why everyone thought she was a saint. Yet nearly every character either fell in love with her or announced that she had profoundly changed their life. I didn’t get it and this eventually ruined the story for me.

I listened to Audible Frontiers’ version of The Snow Queen which was read by Ellen Archer. At first her narration is plodding — lacking the right rhythm to effortlessly carry the listener along — but this resolves about 1/3 of the way through. I’m not enamored of Ms. Archer’s Irish accents — they just don’t seem to fit the story — but other listeners may feel differently.

So, while I did not like The Snow Queen, I hesitate to try to steer potential readers away. The book won a Hugo Award and I know people of excellent taste who love it. This is one you’ll have to read and decide for yourself. If you’ve already read it, I’m interested in hearing your opinion.

[Liviu Szoke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Premiile Hugo și Locus, un cadru natural extrem de interesant, câteva idei la fel de interesante, o planetă fascinantă, câteva personaje interesante, ingredientele unui roman de succes, nu-i așa? Dar totuși ceva nu s-a legat pentru mine, parcă am tot așteptat să se întâmple ceva ieșit din comun, să mă atașez de un personaj, să mă prindă povestea, dar degeaba, declicul nu s-a produs și a trebuit să mă târăsc cale de aproape 700 de pagini ca s-o termin. Mai multe, pe blogul FanSF: http://wp.me/pz4D9-2l6.

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh. Within the first two or three dozen pages I was very strongly tempted to put this down and walk away. NPR had just released their listener-selected list of the best 100 of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and there's lots there I haven't read yet. Vinge's The Snow Queen isn't on the list.

What dragged me down at the very beginning was the overly lyrical style, unoriginal plot set-up and banal characters of her young protagonists. But I glanced at some Goodreads reviews, realized it had won the Hugo Award, and decided to give it another chance.

Once more mature characters started showing up, it got better.

But... Those two central adolescents were still gratingly clueless. I mean, the guy was passive-aggressive and blamed everyone else for both life's disappointments and his own stupid decisions, and then turns into a very evil thug... and we're still supposed to like him? And Moon just moons over this idiot and screws over the rest of the world and her own life to "rescue" him. Does that ever work in real life? Isn't this supposed to be "fantasy" because of the setting, not because it's plot is centered on a pathetic juvenile love story gone wrong?

Most of the other characters are better. The cop, Jerusha, was more interesting, but at least as frustrating. She was maneuvered into an untenable position by political forces far beyond her control, but her stupid arrogance led her to fight this unwinnable fight, to her own detriment as well as those around her. She recognized the trap, walked into it eyes wide open, but neglected to notice her choice had horrible repercussions on everyone around her.

I find it difficult to imagine that Vinge intended so many of her characters to actually be repugnant. After all, it isn't as if life isn't full of people like this — but a good novelist would show us the more likely tragic outcomes of these poor choices, whereas Vinge portrays any form of bull-headedness as if it is "strength of will" and will end up winning the day.

So in the end, this turned out to be a lousy romance novel, in which stupid people make stupid decisions, which they follow up with stupid determination, and the stupid author grants them their stupid wishes.

Huh, that came out harsher then I expected.

So I need to balance this with a few pluses.

Uh... well, Vinge writes well. Mostly.

I'm now realizing I'm more disappointed in this than I thought. I actually can't point to anything here that recommends this book. Way too much melodrama, even in the setting. I mean, the planet's seasons are disturbed because its solar system has been captured by a black hole? Hunting poor innocent seals because their blood is the fountain of youth?

Skip it.

This was the science fiction selection for the Goodreads SciFi and Fantasy Book Club for the month of July 2011. Visit this link to see all of the discussions, group member reviews, etc.

­

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

190119 from ??? 80s: i would really like to believe love conquers all. at least it does in books like this. so i once read books like this... and if it works for her, it works for me...

010716 this is a much much later note: just read the fairy tale again, looking for parallels, finding aspects that might be common in most such heroines: immediate emotional rapport with furry critters, talking crows, royalty, etc. in this book there is more or less the same thing, in her native psychic sensitivity, perhaps increased by her role as 'Sybil'- and when we find out what that means... some parts really liked, like the battles in the hall of winds, like the blind mask-maker at work... not too many characters, only wish, as so rarely desired- the book was longer!

010815 this is a much later addition: this is a book read the 3rd reread time, and while i do not remember the 2nd, i do remember the first. i had read it in ppbk, and later, it was something i could share with my new girlfriend when i was about 21, before we lived together for about 2 years. this is now many years ago, but my mother, who had hoped we would marry, and my father, who liked how hard she worked, had liked her so much they stayed in contact since. through them, gently, i found out last week she had passed from cancer this spring. in her memory, in memory of what we shared, i decided to read this book again...

this was a hard book to read. when we had read it, it had been easy. she was a geology student and part-time model, with a taste towards 'romance' fiction, and perhaps romantic ideas of my potential. i was unhappy at u, trying then to write, did not want to use my family history as subject... so i had read, by that time, about 300 books of all sorts. i have read a few more by now. i guess i was mostly reading sff, and 'literature', already many translations. this was my way to ‘escape’. i was innocent then in many critical strategies and did not much enjoy learning reading techniques at u, because it seemed to take out much pleasure, and too often the books read were... mundane. i did like the 'pomo' read, and genre fiction in general, and i think seduced her by giving the impression i knew how this book was written. though i had not read or remembered 'the snow queen' fairytale...

this is a book that hurts to read. it is not like we were ever going to get back together, it is not like we had undimmed flames for each other. it is hard because i see now, i can wonder now, at how well this answered her desires for romance and my idea of sff. maybe i was just blind, or distracted, or inattentive- but now i 'read' much more, i read reviews here on GR and reading this again, remembering its plot as i read it, i think of how this genre classic, this book that one never reads in u class- addresses literary questions, subverts expectations, delivers new sorts of ‘escape’. as in: how i could not have noticed, all the essential characters are women, archetypes yet rounded, antagonist and protagonist, subject to very contemporary emotional motivations and concerns. as in: this shows female empowerment that does not depend on men. as in: the men are 'rescued' by the women, the men are 'love objects' of little subjective being. as in: cultures, colleagues, entire worlds are depicted as oppressive of women, and a hero is one who can see past gender...

some have noted this parallels herbert's Dune, but i read this before that, i like this much more than that- romantic ideals trump eugenic nietzschean conspiracy, however it turns out. aside from the annoying but usual tendency of offering significant thoughts italicized, there does not seem too much stylistic similarity. so this is 'space opera'? i guess so. i had connected that subgenre to books i did not read, long, long books that were probably more, like this, on the fantasy end of the spectrum. that everyone does act for identifiable human emotions- love/hate, lust, jealousy, etc.- is, in this case, reflective of the romance style. this is indeed dune written as if by a female anthropologist. that emotional topography eventually reveals world-shattering plot... this is fine. these are humans dealing with humans about human concerns, at first personal but finally global. this is not engineering fiction written by engineers for engineers. if i want 'sf gun porn' there is Ender's Game by card Altered Carbon by morgan, if i want masculinist (or is that 'madculinist'?) future wars or societies, there is always heinlein…

how is it to read after these many years? well i feel old. i read it too educated by other books, other women, other life experience. maybe it is just right for then. when we were young and foolish and romance was guiding light. now, i should not denigrate our younger selves: i loved this book, for her i would have wanted to write a book like this, just a book, an escape, an involving, surprising, work of art that she and so many other women might love. is there anything else than pleasure i would offer her, even in memory? i had grown up in an unconsciously 'scientific' household, in which 'myth' was opposed to 'truth', rather slowly to come, years later, to find 'truth' something i can only offer as 'myth'... a friend tells me he enjoys talking to me because i am a 'storyteller'. i must learn to value that. i must learn to look at my past not in dismissal of ignorance, but in remembrance of innocence. reading this book reminds me of that.

.??? 2000s this is the first reread review:

this is another sentimental favorite: it brings together two genres in one, romantic fiction my then current girlfriend loved, and science fiction i loved. since reading it i have read much more of SF but this remains a particular ideal. ur-textes of romantic fiction- like jayne eyre- may not work for me, but this one always does, this first one of the three of the series. this one can stand on its own. since this review, I have read the Hans Christian Anderson version of the fairy tale and liked his book even more when read again. can see how core sf readers might be annoyed, as it does not follow any paradigmatic sf concerns, no big dumb object unless it is the world, no elaborations of cool weaponry, no first contact, no exciting physics or spaceflight- everything is used only in realization of fairy tale, magic made real, for entirely emotional- read romantic- payoff. I am a sucker for this romance, this sort of space opera...

ps if anyone wants to make a miniseries like game of thrones: do this book! (and sequels)

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm torn between three and four stars on this one. I greatly enjoyed most of the book, but it does take a long time to set all the events and characters in motion and then, because so much is going on, it takes longer than I'd like to conclude. On the other hand, after the action gets going and before it concludes the book becomes difficult to put down. I decided it deserves four stars because not only was it a fun read but it is a really interesting read in the following ways:

1) Without being overtly political, Vinge makes a feminist statement in this book. The fact that the world of Tiamat is ruled by women could cut both ways, but the Snow and Summer Queens are far from the only strong female characters. The ratio of strong female to strong male characters is probably pretty balanced, actually, which is a rarity in my SF reading up to this point. Prior to the 1970s, to find a strong female character in SF was a surprise and a treat.

2) Vinge raises questions of ethical behavior toward not only other human beings but toward nonhuman creatures as well in the relationship between the mers--intelligent waterdwellers on Tiamat (basically merpeople) who, as it turns out, had been created by the Old Empire as part of a scientific experiment--and the human inhabitants and visitors of Tiamat. The mers are regularly slaughtered for their blood, which has life-preserving qualities that allow the humans who use the "water of life," as it is called, to stay young and live forever--as long as they keep ingesting this substance. Vinge asks us to consider whether this is justifiable, even if the mers are not intelligent creatures, and this echoes real-life issues of animal rights and anti-colonial movements.

3) Although The Snow Queen, based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, is in some ways very much in the tradition of epic fantasy, complete with royalty, palace intrigue, and apparent magic, Vinge refigures the fantastic in favor of the scientific. Here, fantasy is transformed into science fiction by simply providing an explanation for the magic of Tiamat. The sibyls, who are worshipped as specially able to communicate the words and knowledge of the Lady, a goddess, turn out to be able, instead, to communicate with a computer system because they have been genetically engineered to be able to do so. The mers aren't fantasy creatures divorced from reality but are the result of scientific experimentation that have a purpose. And the central issue of the book is that of progress through technology and the rights of the people of Tiamat to improve their lives through technology. The goal is not to return to a primordial time of innocence and wonder but to change the world for the better. As Moon, the protagonist, says, "Change isn't evil--change is life. Nothing's all good, or all bad. . . . What you choose to do with your life doesn't matter, unless you have the right to choose anything" (489).

4) Vinge explores quite thoroughly the various ways in power can change those who hold it. Arienrhod, the Snow Queen, is completely corrupted by her absolute power over her subjects, and Sparks is changed from an innocent and good young man to an executioner and murderer at the hands of Arienrhod and with the power their relationship gives him. Jerusha, the police inspector who becomes commander, is changed by the power she gains as well; although she does not become corrupted herself, she does lose a great deal of herself to the position she has taken on. Even Moon, the most good-hearted, well-informed, and well-intentioned character in the book risks losing that. As she realizes when she becomes Summer Queen, "becoming Queen did not mean absolute freedom, but the end of it" (528). As we see in Jerusha and Moon, however, power does not have to mean corruption. Jerusha resists that corruption and her position and prestige in order to do the right thing and we can only hope that Moon, in the following books of the series, will be able to do the same.

5) The concluding chapter includes a couple of statements that I, quite simply, really liked and was moved by. BZ Gundhalinu, a police inspector, tells Jerusha what he has learned through the painful experiences he has endured and says,

"A man without armor is a defenseless man. . . . But maybe he's a freer man for it. . . . Anything becomes possible, after you find the courage to admit that nothing is certain" (532).

In the same conversation, Jerusha tells Gundhalinu that the real danger of the world is indifference. It is, she says,

"the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hatedon't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't at, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power" (533).

These two concepts play a huge role already in my personal philosophy and it's nice to have them articulated so well here.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Expansive political space opera. Immersive world building. A female hero goes on an epic hero's journey in this sci-fi reimagining of the classic fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen. Joan D. Vinge develops themes of colonialism (working together with capitalism), classism, and feminism in this novel. There is also light discussion of science and religion. There is excellent character work and we follow multiple POV characters. The pace is slow and reflective but when the action happens it is intense. The prose is wonderful to read. My only nitpick is that a couple of connections and revelations seem perhaps a bit convenient. Given the breadth and wonder of the whole, that seems like a tiny imperfection. There are follow-up books, but you could read this as a stand alone if you want to. The ending is not a huge cliffhanger and it is natural stopping point. I read this going back and forth with one of the books in Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy. I could not help seeing parallels in the traumas and emotional sacrifices that the characters are made to endure by both authors. Also, the complexity and depths of the politics and court intrigue.

[Dawn F]

DNF at 34% I used to finish any book I started, because I felt otherwise the time spend on it was wasted, but even though I’ve spent 6 hours listening to this, I knew the next 13 could be better spent. I honestly wanted to give it a chance but the things that annoyed me kept annoying me, and then more things were added that also annoyed me, so yeah, time to move on.

[Jersy · Rating 3 out of 5]

What makes this book truely special is the world and its presentation - how you feel like your reading a fantasy book and suddenly you're on a space ship and totally taken aback by it. Or at least that's how I felt. For me, the book was full of little surprises, from worldbuilding details to where any of this was going. The characters worked less for me, though. There were interesting side characters but it took me some time to warm up to Moon and I never really got to care for Spark, despite the interesting situation he was in. The biggest problem is that the whole premise is built on the love these two share - and I didn't even like them together. It didn't feel like a deep connection and their expressions of "love" often made them seem very childish. I still enjoyed reading from both POV's. They balance each other out nicely.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's more to me, more to the universe, than I suspected. Room for all the dreams I ever had, and all the nightmares... heroes in the gutters and in the mirror; saints in frozen wasteland; fools and liars on the throne of wisdom, and hands reaching out in hunger that will never be filled... Anything becomes possible, after you find the courage to admit that nothing is certain.

The Snow Queen is about change crashing against the bulwarks of stability. It's about a heart freezing over and struggling to thaw. It's about a planet on the cusp of new politics and climates. And it's about an anthropocentric value system buckling under the weight of the universe's unfathomable diversity.

Like its fairy-tale inspiration, the story begins with a girl and a boy, Moon and Sparks, who seem inseparable. But as they reach adulthood, Moon's seemingly oracular gifts pull her in one direction, while Sparks's ambitious curiosity pull him in another - into the distant, technologically advanced land of Winter. There, he meets a woman who, though 150 years old, has a youthful face and a striking resemblance to Moon; her name is Arienrhod, and she is the Winter Queen. Mesmerized, Sparks is drawn deeper and higher into Arienrhod's court as a predatory cynicism subsumes his personality - and he's not going to fight it.

"We all choose our own paths to hell. But some of the choices are easier to watch than others."

Arienrhod, meanwhile, has her own plans to stay queen even longer than her prolonged life has enabled her, and it's bad news for a lot of the planet's population.

Before long, Moon realizes that Sparks needs her help. Her journey to find him brings her into the heart of the interplanetary Hegemony that temporarily controls her planet - and there's a lot that they're keeping hidden about the world that she thought she knew. Meanwhile, a female police commander fights for the right to do her job, a gentle aquatic species is butchered for the sake of human immortality, and a long-dead empire whispers its last secrets.

There is a lot going on here. Personal and political storylines are woven together seamlessly. It's a delight to watch Vinge unpack the nested tales of Andersen's Snow Queen and re-sculpt them into something new and epic, but unmistakably sharing the heart of the original. Striking physical resemblances play a part in one of Andersen's sub-stories, but here it becomes a factor spanning the entire book. A mysterious old woman from the fairytale becomes a smuggler working for social change, and a gentle reindeer is transfigured into an idealistic police inspector. Most importantly, the enchanted mirror that darkens people's perspectives becomes the very real phenomena of desensitization and disillusionment. It's depicted in a bruisingly believable way through Sparks's behavior.

"I know people have to change. But I wonder if they know when to stop."

Another way in which this book bridges myth to reality is the recurring pattern of mystical occurrences that have concrete explanations. One non-spoilery example is when a group of animals flock around Moon, in what seems like a moment of Snow White magic - but the real reason is that she's the only human to have offered them kindness and proper food. And it's no less wonderful because of that.

However, this book isn't restricted to fairy tale references. Vinge examines the question of nature vs. nurture through the characters of Moon and Arienrhod, who are genetically identical but separated by age and upbringing. Their differences are as fascinating as their similarities, and their goals undergo a gradual reorientation as they each struggle with a faceless political system that holds their world hostage.

"Are we forever doomed to repeat the errors of our ancestors? Is history hereditary, or environmental?"

They're also noteworthy in that Arienrhod is a villain whose actions are ruthless but whose motivations are completely understandable: she wants to pull her planet out of the Hegemony's manipulation. Meanwhile, Moon is a big-hearted hero whose behavior is bound to cause a lot of exasperation. The concluding unification of their storylines actually made me cry, and it's been a long time since a book did that.

And I can't end this review without saying something about the aliens in this book, especially Silky and the mers. They have no need of being anthropomorphized, because their complex intellectual and emotional lives don't rely on a human mold in order to be meaningful.

Finally, I'm left wondering why this book isn't more well-known and why it's been out of print for so long. If it had been written by, say, someone called George Vinge and had been given a tougher-sounding title, would it now be a widely-read classic? Or, if it had been published recently with a cover illustration to match those glamorous sci-fi heroines that are so on-trend, would it have its own fandom? I guess we'll never know, but I'm glad I found my way to it. I'm also super glad that the book is finally getting a shiny new reprinting this October.

[Read Harder Challenge: a re-telling of a classic story]