Tangled Up In Blue - Joan D. Vinge
Nov. 26th, 2021 01:10 pmA long time ago, when I was but a teenage ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sholio, I read and really enjoyed Joan D. Vinge's Snow Queen, and at some point after that, I obtained the sequel (Summer Queen) from a used bookstore ... and never read it. I have literally dragged that book all over the country with me, always meaning to read it and always bouncing off the first couple of chapters whenever I tried.
However, at some point in one of my used book dives I obtained another book in the series, Tangled Up In Blue, which is significantly shorter and more straightforward with less of a barrier to entry than the sprawling epic nature of the other book, so I decided to see if I still enjoy the series by using this one as an entry point. I remember Gundhalinu was my favorite from the original book (though I don't remember why) and he's featured pretty heavily in this one.
Honestly my biggest takeaway from this book is how much it feels like a Cherryh pastiche. Partly it's just that the whole plot is very Cherryh (corrupt and uncaring Powers That Be, mostly powerless characters buffeted by fate and disillusionment, clinging to their basic decency and each other in the face of it) but most particularly because of the damsel-in-distress-ish young male protagonist who spends most of the book miserable, depressed, and high on painkillers. Even the writing style reminds me of it a little bit, especially the dissociating-on-painkillers-and-depression parts of Tree's POV. (Yes, his name is Tree.) I'm honestly not sure if Vinge just shares a lot of narrative kinks with Cherryh or if she had binge-read a ton of Cherryh before writing this book. The main thing that does not feel Cherryh-like is Tree's waifish hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold love interest. In a Cherryh book she would probably be fifty, cynical, and vaguely predatory. I don't think Cherryh has a waif setting.
Anyway, I enjoyed this enough to be engaged to the end, though I think I would have liked it better 20 years ago. The worldbuilding is really gorgeous, and I particularly enjoyed one scene in which protagonist no. 2, straight-laced aristocratic Gundhalinu, falls in with Tree and Tree's girlfriend Devony right after he's been dosed with a truth drug that makes him babble whatever comes into his mind, and he gets sort of gently interrogated while they're trying to burn the drug out of his system in a sauna. That was delightful. I OT3 it.
I don't remember enough about the original book to know how sympathetically the two sides of the planet's central conflict between the technology-averse Summer people and the technology-phile Winters was developed, but I found myself coming down pretty hard on the Winter side here, even though they're technically the baddies. I mean, okay, there is the whole genocide of gentle sea beasts to drink their blood and live forever, which is definitely a problem, but I'm not sure if the "let's chuck our technology into the sea" hippie cult comes across as an improvement. (I do remember the original book was at least somewhat about that, but it's also been thirty years since I read it, my memories of it are extremely vague, and I think I was a lot more on board with the anti-technology hippie cult when I was 17.)
But I also wasn't engaged enough to go ahead and read Summer Queen. I decided to skim the last couple of pages to see how things turn out for everyone, and then place it gently in the box of books to go to the used bookstore.
sholio, I read and really enjoyed Joan D. Vinge's Snow Queen, and at some point after that, I obtained the sequel (Summer Queen) from a used bookstore ... and never read it. I have literally dragged that book all over the country with me, always meaning to read it and always bouncing off the first couple of chapters whenever I tried.However, at some point in one of my used book dives I obtained another book in the series, Tangled Up In Blue, which is significantly shorter and more straightforward with less of a barrier to entry than the sprawling epic nature of the other book, so I decided to see if I still enjoy the series by using this one as an entry point. I remember Gundhalinu was my favorite from the original book (though I don't remember why) and he's featured pretty heavily in this one.
Honestly my biggest takeaway from this book is how much it feels like a Cherryh pastiche. Partly it's just that the whole plot is very Cherryh (corrupt and uncaring Powers That Be, mostly powerless characters buffeted by fate and disillusionment, clinging to their basic decency and each other in the face of it) but most particularly because of the damsel-in-distress-ish young male protagonist who spends most of the book miserable, depressed, and high on painkillers. Even the writing style reminds me of it a little bit, especially the dissociating-on-painkillers-and-depression parts of Tree's POV. (Yes, his name is Tree.) I'm honestly not sure if Vinge just shares a lot of narrative kinks with Cherryh or if she had binge-read a ton of Cherryh before writing this book. The main thing that does not feel Cherryh-like is Tree's waifish hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold love interest. In a Cherryh book she would probably be fifty, cynical, and vaguely predatory. I don't think Cherryh has a waif setting.
Anyway, I enjoyed this enough to be engaged to the end, though I think I would have liked it better 20 years ago. The worldbuilding is really gorgeous, and I particularly enjoyed one scene in which protagonist no. 2, straight-laced aristocratic Gundhalinu, falls in with Tree and Tree's girlfriend Devony right after he's been dosed with a truth drug that makes him babble whatever comes into his mind, and he gets sort of gently interrogated while they're trying to burn the drug out of his system in a sauna. That was delightful. I OT3 it.
I don't remember enough about the original book to know how sympathetically the two sides of the planet's central conflict between the technology-averse Summer people and the technology-phile Winters was developed, but I found myself coming down pretty hard on the Winter side here, even though they're technically the baddies. I mean, okay, there is the whole genocide of gentle sea beasts to drink their blood and live forever, which is definitely a problem, but I'm not sure if the "let's chuck our technology into the sea" hippie cult comes across as an improvement. (I do remember the original book was at least somewhat about that, but it's also been thirty years since I read it, my memories of it are extremely vague, and I think I was a lot more on board with the anti-technology hippie cult when I was 17.)
But I also wasn't engaged enough to go ahead and read Summer Queen. I decided to skim the last couple of pages to see how things turn out for everyone, and then place it gently in the box of books to go to the used bookstore.