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Sep 07, 2011

Stephen rated it:

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 c More...

10 comments like (48 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Aerin rated it:

This may be the best science fiction book ever written.

By "the best", of course, I mean "my favorite". I can't name any objective parameters that would scientifically prove its superiority, or anything, and my overwhelming love for it probably blinds me to whatever flaws it may have. Nonetheless, I'll stand behind my opinion: this is the best science fiction book ever written.

There are a very few books that can take my breath away, keep me up all nig More...

6 comments like (25 people liked it)

Jul 05, 2011

Joel rated it:

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.

More...

11 comments like (20 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2012

Apatt rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2009

Patrick rated it:

Lovely, Organic, Classic

Snow Queen is a beautifully written and absolutely amazing piece of science fiction. I'm not a fan of "hardcore" scifi novels that read as though technical manuals had been taken and turned into stories. Yes, I enjoy descriptions of a story's technological aspects, but not to the point where it becomes the story, and the characters merely its automated operators.

Vinge has melded science fiction, drama, and poetry in a way that breathes More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 15, 2008

Swankivy rated it:

I enjoyed reading this but found it a bit confusing. Ms. Vinge is my favorite author, but sometimes her plots and huge cast of characters become overwhelming. The basic gist of it began with two opposing cultures--the Summers and the Winters--and how the queen of the Winter culture has to be destroyed when it's time for the Summer Queen to rise. It follows the life of Moon Dawntreader, who's got a curious connection to the reigning Queen, and the culture of the "sybils" who can answ More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 15, 2008

Kirsten rated it:

I've owned this book for a very long time, and actually started reading it twice, only to get distracted. This time I finished it, and I was not disappointed. It starts off kind of slow, but then Vinge gets all of her different plots going and the thing sort of gathers this incredible momentum. It's an sf novel about a world called Tiamat, which orbits two stars and a stable black hole. Due its idiosyncratic orbit, every 150 years Tiamat's atmosphere radically changes. During the cold years, the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 08, 2008

Christy rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jul 05, 2011

Nathaniel rated it:

This is another winner of the Hugo aware for best science fiction novel (1981). Based on those high expectations, it was a disappointment. Some of the problems had to do with the time when it was written, I think. One of the protagonists is a woman police officer, and she has serious doubts as to whether or not she is capable of doing a "man's job". The angst seems overwrought and silly. I suppose it may have seemed like cutting-edge feminism in 1981, but in 2011 it's just weird. More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 23, 2011

Eloketh rated it:

This novel was a bit of a frustrating read for me.

On the one hand, there is a lot to commend. The world-building is quite well done, the societies and cultures interesting and well thought out, and the background - both in terms of history and the actual physical settings - are never anything less than fascinating. None of the characters were boring, and even some of the incidental people had lives of their own.

On the other hand, the story didn't really engage me until th More...

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Aug 13, 2011

Richard rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 29, 2011

Kiersten added it

A novel possessed of a beautifully epic feel. Light travel, long words that don’t exist in real life, long half-pronounceable names, an array of unique cultures, high class characters, low class characters, characters in between, characters with disabilities, different planets, imprisonment, intrigue, politics, simplicity, complexity, contrast. Superbly, masterfully done.

Very solid character development. There was a pretty good array of personalities and motives throughout Vinge’s cast, and a More...

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Jul 12, 2011

Kim rated it:

My thoughts on this book are quite tangled.

On one hand I loved the sci-fi elements of this book. A world which is periodically reduced to a "primitive" state, controlled by the Hegemony for the purpose of harvesting it's most precious resource.

On the other is the drama surrounding the Winter Queen, her Summer clone and their joint love.

Honestly I would have enjoyed the book with far less of the latter and more of the former. The dramatical parts of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Jessica rated it:

I think I was in junior high the first time I picked this book up off my mother's book shelf. I must have really liked it because I took it with me when I moved out (shh, don't tell!).

I reread it again after college, and thanks to this website I just discovered it is part of a series of books that I have now added to my to-read list.

Although my mother had read both The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia to us when I was a child, The Snow Queen was my first independent fo More...

0 comments like

Apr 10, 2009

Caitlin rated it:

This one won the Hugo Award in 1981 & with good reason. Someone in another review I read said that this book was what Dune would be if it had been written by a female anthropologist.

I read this when it first came out - loved the doomed love story at its core with its echoes of the Hans Christian Anderson story. Reading it now I'm more drawn to the politics and culture of the world & to the notion of the sibyl mind - a huge networked database containing all of the knowledge of the Old More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 09, 2011

Carson rated it:

I liked the Snow Queen because the setting and conflicts were constantly changing, although the end dragged a bit.

The novel starts with a boy and a girl in a fishing village, and I was worried that the story was going to hang around there for longer than it needed to, introducing me to lots of boring fishing folk and their banal fishing lifestyles. However, the plot never stays in one place for long. It goes to the world’s capital, a village of savages, a wildlife refuge, and eventuall More...

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Dec 13, 2010

Maggie rated it:

The Snow Queen has a fantastic premise but it chokes on itself - Vinge's writing style is very heavy, weighted down with flowery descriptive passages and melodramatic soliloquies, which is great if you like that sort of thing. This book was just too long and too heavy; if 100 pages and 10,000 adverbs were cut, it would be much stronger. The omniscient narration provides too many thoughts, and it was just exhausting to try to invest interest in all of them. That said, I did like it quite a bit. T More...

0 comments like

Aug 05, 2011

Kerith rated it:

This book was a delicious surprise! A friend recommended it long ago, so my husband bought our first copy used at the Book Nook in Atlanta. I finally read it, and what a treat. It really is Andersen's fairy tale, too -- in that there are two cousins who love each other,
and one gets "bewitched" by the Snow Queen Arienrhod. That's simplifying the plot a bit, though.
Here, Winter people equal technology and progress; Summer people equal faith, tradition and living off the land. Offworlder More...

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Nov 12, 2011

Mike rated it:

A masterful migration of the themes of the fairy tale from which it takes its name, and a solid piece of space opera. I have no strong criticisms of this book, it is well crafted and beautifully executed. Yet, despite my affection for space opera and fairy tales, the book didn't resonate with me as strongly as I might expect. One reason may be how female-centric the book is (something that can hardly be considered a drawback for a work of early-80s sci-fi). However, I think a larger reason More...

0 comments like

Feb 01, 2010

Gia rated it:

Oh sigh. I REALLY wanted to like this book more than I did. I was hoping for something like Dune, maybe a bit of Mists of Avalon tossed in, and instead it just seemed to skim the surface of greatness. The dialogue was clunky, the premise was so-so. I guess I went in with high expectations, remembering how much I loved Foundation and that series. I read it because I have a lot of respect for Hugo winners and found myself wondering how it won a Hugo. I wanted to stop reading it several times but f More...

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Jul 15, 2011

Cecile rated it:

It's been a long time since I've last read this story, so I didn't remembered much when I started it again two weeks ago. But as the story was unfolding, I began to have glimpses of what laid ahead for the characters. At first distant memories of what seemed to be part of another strange story. Then bits and pieces that started to make sense and fit together, revealing hidden or long forgotten secrets.

This is a powerful story, with strong characters, each nurturing secrets while tryi More...

0 comments like

Jul 05, 2011

Ana rated it:

It was an okay book. The character of Aryenhord was interesting but not enough and her clone was flaky at best and too much good luck, didn't cared enough about her "love" to want to continue to read the second part.
The world was marvelous though, the ships, the other characters were very good as well. I could say she should had written the books from the others POV, but that is cliché and most of the time the reason other characters tend to look more important than the leads is b More...

0 comments like

Jul 19, 2011

Sharon rated it:

This is the beginning of a fantastic space opera--an interesting planet with its own well-developed culture and customs that fits into a much grander hegemony that is mostly hinted at...at least in the first book. Characters are not what they seem and definitely mature with the books. One of my old favorites--I've read the Snow Queen many times through. The sequel "the Summer Queen" is very good as well and there is also at least one ancillary book "Tangeled Up in Blue" se More...

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Jul 15, 2011

Andrea rated it:

This book was on this month's "Sci-Fi and Fantasy Club's" list for discussion, so it prompted me to pull out my old dusty copy, nestling comfortably next to her ex-husband's "Fire Upon The Deep".
A revisit 20 years after my first reading brought back the same sense of wonder and delight. It's hardly aged, this is definitely a classic. Not quite a masterpiece, there are definitely flaws (Moon is too perfect for one, and it dragged a sad slowly in places), but a novel to be More...

2 comments like

Apr 19, 2011

Linda rated it:

Good plot -- very complex and original, and the worlds were fully realized. For the most part, the characters were not black and white but more realistic shades of gray; even the evil Snow Queen had some redeeming qualities . . . which made for an interesting read. But the main character, Moon, could have been more strongly delineated -- I never got a good sense of who she was in the innermost recesses of heart and mind. Fun book, though, and it got harder and harder to put down as the end ap More...

0 comments like

Dec 27, 2011

Jeff rated it:

3.5 stars (i can't round up)

I tried more than once to read this in the ~20 years since a former coworker highly recommended it after i'd lauded Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness as one of my favorite books of any kind of all time. These two works have many similarities, not the least of which being a kind of mild feminism. But Le Guin achieved something tremendous while Vinge "merely" tells a better than average tale. The Snow Queen is neither poorly nor well writt More...

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Sep 23, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

It really irritates me that I can't remember why I sought out this book. I have made a concerted effort recently to find SF written by women, but still, some one or some article must have recommended this book in particular, and I don't remember what that was. It was a like a mosquito buzzing around my head the entire time I read this book.

But onto the book itself! Like Dune, the planet of our particular interest (in this case, Tiamat), is the only source of an amazing substance with p More...

2 comments like

Apr 26, 2011

James rated it:

Vinge won the 1981 Hugo with The Snow Queen. There's no way to really provide a synopsis for this book, and therein lies my real problem with it. Here's a quick stab: Tiamat is a world that orbits a binary star system, which itself orbits a black hole that's used for interstellar travel. But the star system's orbit takes it out of range of the black hole for periods of time during which "offworlders" can't access the planet. When they can, they bring their technology, and set up a More...

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Oct 18, 2010

Darcy rated it:

The Snow Queen sets up a very detailed and intricate world. This story focuses on the planet Tiamet and in particular on the city of Carbuncle. A change in leadership is coming. Arienrhod, the Snow Queen, a Winter, is about to end her 150-year reign. Her immortality and the immortality and wealth of the Winters, is derived from the slaughter of the gentle sea mers, whose blood holds the key to extended life. The hunt for the mers is led by the queen's lover, the ever-changing Starbucks, a man More...

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Dec 28, 2010

Paul rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like