Sun of Suns

"Sun of Suns", Book One of Virga, is a science fiction novel by Karl Schroeder, published by Tor in 2006. It is set in the fictional world of Virga, a world of multiple artificial suns, a fullerene sphere filled with air and full of drifting rocks and nations floating around Candesce, (the eponymous "Sun of Suns"). The story focuses around three main characters, Hayden Griffin, Adm. Chaison Fanning, and his wife, Venera. The sequel to the book, Queen of Candesce, was released in August of 2007.

Slipstream's sun is tethered to a migrating asteroid that has provided the nation with its wealth, though what is on the asteroid is never actually revealed. As Slipstream follows its sun, it occasionally moves through other nation's territories, as it does with Aerie, Hayden Griffin's home nation. In these cases, it uses its military to make this nation a client nation of Slipstream, only to leave these nations again when the asteroid moves far enough. Slipstream is headed by a leader, whose method of nomination is never actually discovered, referred to only as the Pilot.

Hayden Griffin is a young, fatherless boy living in Aerie. Though exactly when or how his father died is never discovered, Hayden continually says that he was murdered by Slipstream. His parent's ambition was to liberate Aerie from Slipstream's rule by constructing their own sun in secret. After his father's death, Hayden's mother made this her final goal in life. At the opening of the story, Aerie's sun is nearly finished, and the construction team was planning a test to assure of its functionality. Hayden gets out of his job as an apprentice in a kitchen, intending to watch the test from a jet bike. However, airships flying Slipstream's flag appear on the horizon and begin to attack the new sun. Aerie's resistance starts to defend themselves from the assault, but don't appear to be a true match against the highly trained Slipstreamer's. In a suicidal last ditch effort, Hayden's mother and the construction crew start the sun while inside of it, incinerating the ships attacking the sun itself but allowing at least one reported Slipstream ship to have escaped. During the fighting, Hayden was thrown off the town's spinning wheel and, as the first chapter leaves him, floating weightlessly in the darkness, where pirates call home and no suns or true governments have been established.

Years later, the story picks up again with Venera Fanning and her page walking down the hall to the office of the Admiralty. Venera reminisces on another times, years ago, when she was walking down this hall and a bullet ripped through her jaw line, and she was left bleeding on the floor with no one around. She enters the office, and then continues to the bathroom, where she holds a secret meeting with an informant and a few others. Bleeding and exhausted, the informant shows Venera pictures of a secret dock and ship building facility of a rival nation, Falcon Formation, in a sargasso, which is an area where their is a build up of toxic gases that no one can enter without a specially designed sargasso suit. One of the pictures shows a frightfully large dreadnought approximately 3km in length, as well as many other warships. Venera leaves the meeting and returns to her waiting page. As they walk out of the crowded office, the page accidentally bumps into Venera, knocking the pictures out of her hands. Venera then catches the page staring at the pictures of the dreadnought as they collect them off the floor. After she dismisses it as awe, they step outside, when the page gives his approximation and explanation of the length of the dreadnought. After the page flies Venera back to the Fanning household, he curses himself for his failure to get inside the house, and the page is revealed to be Hayden Griffin, who intends to kill Adm. Fanning for revenge.Little does he know that it was not the admirial but in fact the Pilot of slipstream that planned the attack on Gavin Town.Unfinished Page

"Sun of Suns" is a 2007 Aurora finalist [http://www.canadiansf.com/node/15 ] and a Kirkus Best Book of 2006 [http://www.kirkusreviews.com/kirkusreviews/images/pdf/Bestof06.pdf ] .