What do Lord of the Rings, Barbarella, The White Goddess(?), The Plumed Serpent, Hans Christian Anderson's works and Buck Rogers all have in common? Well, per the blurb from The Denver Post at the beginning of the book, they are all amalgamated into Joan Vinge's The Snow Queen. I don't agree. I don't know what book The Denver Post was reading, but I'm pretty confident that it wasn't The Snow Queen. (An aside: Who picks the blurbs to use for a book? And why in the world would they think that I'd want to read an amalgam of those books? Yecch.)

It took me forever to struggle through this book, and what made it all the worse is that the book was really good. The characters were well drawn, the setting was great, the prose was good and I had trouble struggling through large chunks of it. I even tried a several week break, and still struggled. Much of the time I'd say that if I can't get into a book, it's the author's fault for not drawing me in. That's not the case, here. I just wasn't in the mood for this book.

I'm going to cop-out and give it 2 stars. This really isn't fair since I just skimmed large sections equalling about half of the book. I'm sure it deserves more, but until I reread it (and I intend to)...

The Plot (note that there may be some inaccuracies here, since I skimmed large sections):

The planet Tiamat has two cultures: The Summer People and the Winter People. The Winter People, led by the Snow Queen are technophiles and trade an immortality drug, which can only be made on Tiamat, with the Hegemony for high tech gadgets. The Summer People are anti-technology types. However, the Winter People's rule only lasts as long as the interstellar gate is accessible. Another star (the Summer Star) has an orbit that disrupts the stargate for 150 years. Because Tiamat is an embargoed world, the Tiamatians haven't been taught how to make or repair their technology. When the gate is closed, the machines will run down and the Winter People's reign will end and the Summer People will take over (ecological changes help spur this process too, as the Summer People's have to migrate into the Winter People's land when the Summer Star rises)

Every generation there's a festival. A woman from the Summer People went there and got pregnant, but, was impregnated with a clone of the Snow Queen. She returns home and has the kid who she names Moon. Moon grows up with a boy who was also conceived at the festival: Spark. The kids pledge their love to each other, but an ancient quasi-religious order called Sybils offers Moon a chance to be one of them. Since this has been her lifelong dream, she accepts. (Note: Sybils have the power to answer any question).. While Moon is getting trained, Spark runs off to Carbuncle (the Winter Queen's capitol). He's introduced to the Snow Queen who begins grooming him to be her right hand man and chief stud.

Meanwhile, Moon decides that she wants to be with Spark after all and follows him to the city. She gets shanghaied and ends up on another world through the stargate. She learns that Sybils can telepathically tap into an ancient computer (one of the remnant artifacts of a long-since fallen empire). A bio-virus allows them to telepathically tap into the computer. The only information that the computer won't reveal is it's location. Anyway, Moon gets trained correctly, which none of the Sybils from Tiamat have ever been. She gets returned to Tiamat, in defiance of the embargo, but due to time dialation, it's 5 years later.

During the five years that Moon has been gone, the Winter Queen has been trying to stave off the inevitable fall of her people. She's gotten ahold of a technical library and is going to bioengineer a plague that Winters have been inoculated against but Summers will be vulnerable to. She's also been grooming/corrupting Sparks to the extent that Sparks, somewhat reluctantly helps her plan the genocide of his people.

After returning home, Moon discovers that the aquatic creatures who are killed to produce the immortality drug are bio-engineered sentient creatures. Right about then, one of the big sea-creature massacres occurs. Moon tries to stop it and discovers Spark is one of the people leading the slaughter. Spark hits Moon and has an alien killed. He leaves her on the beach, injured. Moon is captured by and escapes from a slaver and returns to the city with a friendly interstellar cop.

Towards the end of the book, Moon decides she 'can't help lovin' dat man of mine' (see the musical "Showboat") and despite all the horrible things that Spark has been doing, boinks him, (tarnishing my opinion of her). After, she confronts the Snow Queen and refuses to aid her. Moon leaves, after discovering that the giant computer that Sybils tap into is under the city. Moon figures out that the old Empire was trying to bioengineer imortallity through the sea-creatures, but fell before the process could be perfected. The Mer-people were made intelligent so they could help with the research.

The cops foil the plot to unleash the plague on the Summer people. Moon wins a contest at the festival and is crowned as new Summer Queen: the first Sybil to ever do so. With the knowledge from the ancient computer, she may be able to stop the fall of civilization on Tiamat. She oversees the execution of the Winter Queen and an old consort of hers who's volunteered to die in Spark's place. The book ends with Moon as queen of Tiamat, and still in love with Spark as the stargates close and the aliens leave Tiamat to stand or fall on it's own.

• It's beneficial to read Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen before reading Vinge's since she clearly parallels the original story.
• The boy in Anderson's version falls under the Snow Queen's spell because shards of enchanted mirror pierce his heart and eye and change his character. Spark has no such excuse. The only possible excuse is that he's much younger than the Winter Queen (she's at least a century old) and she's a master of manipulation. But that's not the way it seemed to me. Spark just seemed weak.
• I am truly unimpressed with Moon's continuing fixation on that twerp, Spark. The plot kept building towards Moon's realization that she had become an adult, Spark had become a spoiled, evil person, and that she had grown beyond him, but instead we get a lesson in how to make bad spousal choices. True-love is nice, but it only goes so far. Vinge, to her credit, admits that any relationship Spark and Moon have is going to be tainted by Spark's actions.
• I really like the universe that Vinge created. Other than the obvious The Summer Queen, does Vinge have any other stories set in this universe? (I've been told that World's End is also set here).
• Moon is a fantastic character and Jerusha (the police captain) is too. I'm hoping that The Summer Queen focuses on them.
• The one thing I wanted to know, but didn't catch in skimming the book was an explanation for why Tiamat wasn't being helped to become a technological society. One of the cops comments about exploiting the people of Tiamat, but the Hegmony doesn't seem as concerned about ethics. Did it have something to do with the immortality drug? The Sybil's computer?

Next up: C.J. Cherryh's: Downbelow Station which I'm excited about: I've never read Cherryh before and I've heard good things.