Rating: 
Summary: Top-notch universe building. One of the best
Review: Man has arrived at the stars, but in two stages. First, he played hopscotch across a sea of brown dwarfs, almost-stars that fill the galaxy and provide energy through gravity. Second, through the discovery of faster-than-light (FTL) flight. Unfortunately for those who colonized the planets surrounding the brown dwarfs, FTL only operates near major gravity wells--true stars. Now, the lit stars have broken the compound that bound them to their weaker brothers and are leaving the billions behind as they expand.When Rue Cassels discovers an alien sublight spaceship, she dreams of using it to restore the compact, to bring space travel back to the abandoned planets. A team of scientists thinks only of the scientific benefits--the ship was built for multiple types of aliens while humans have never found a species that will even talk to them. Finally, an admiral from the lit stars can only think of the military implications. It is legally Rue's ship, but accidents have been known to happen. She will have to use every trick in the book to hold onto her property--and prevent a genocidal war. Author Karl Schroeder does a fine job creating a believable future society--and the inventions that tear it apart. The 'Rights Economy,' of the lit stars is a logical extrapolation of one of today's hot issues. Fortunately, Schroeder integrates this theme deeply into the story--I never felt like I was being preached to. With her history of abuse and willingness to fight anyone, Rue makes a sympathetic character. It is Schroeder's world-building, however, complete with warring economic systems, alien technologies and ecological niches, and religious/philosophical richness, that makes PERMANENCE the powerful and exciting book that it is. Highly recommended--this one has meat, and will stick with you.
Rating: 
Summary: A good, solid scifi read, but not very reader friendly
Review: My main criticism of this novel is similiar to the others: Schroeder's writing style is lacking. While the ideas are intriguing and his main characters convincing, the writing style is dull and anonymous. It seems that Schroeder's too caught up in his ideas and characters to bother writing good, accessible text. It's not an uncommon plight among scifi writers, but it's irksome in the case of Permenance, since it's a good enough storyline that you really wish you could sit down and sink into it for a few hours at a stretch. Unlikely that anyone could do that, though, with such uninviting text. It's not that I didn't enjoy reading Permenance -- I did, in a way, and I look forward to reading another novel by this author -- but as philosophy and theology scholar, I have experience with dense, unwieldy text and thus can be a far more patient and tolerant reader than many others. So if you're not so tolerant and patient, you're probably better to pass on this one. The other misgiving I have is that the storyline gets sidetracked by a lot of needless political fussing among the characters. In such a straight-forward plot, once the author has established the roles of protagonist and antagonist and who's allied with whom and so forth, it's best to keep any political dialogue pithy and concise. Otherwise the the story gets bogged down, as it down in this novel, particularly in the four section, just when you're really wishing for this thing to start wrapping up. Negative criticism aside, this novel offers a very engaging story that intertwines some current scientific speculations, provoking religious/theological concepts, and rather cool scifi imaginings (I particularly like the "ferrofluid" idea). Hey, Schroeder even throws in a curious explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs. These things are this novel's saving graces, which is usually enough to float within scifi circles anyways. I mean, what's the point of reading hundreds of pages of this stuff if it doesn't proffer any cool conversation tidbits you can discuss to exhaustion with your equally geeky scifi pals, right?
Rating:
Summary: tremendous futuristic outer space thriller
Review: On Allemage, three weeks have passed since her mother died. Now her brother Jentry plans to sell Rue Cassels into slavery as he claims their brown dwarf "Halo World" cannot sustain her with its dying Cyler Contract economy. Believing her dictatorial sibling would gladly rid himself of her while making money off her, Rue flees fortunate enough to escape from the mining colony. On Erythrion, she finds what she originally thought is a ship owned by the relatively new Rights Economy but is actually an alien vessel. However, Rue is forced to share the ship with the Rights Economy's Admiral Crisler and inter-galaxy renowned alien experts Herat and Bequith. Herat's thesis of civilization through the eons is that the strongest die from within with only two known exceptions: the Chicxulub and the Lasa. Everyone wants a piece of the action that is expected to gleam from revealing the secrets of the alien vessel so that once again Rue, beneath the bottom of the food chain, is being pushed aside for the so-called better good. PERMANENCE is a tremendous futuristic outer space thriller that provides incredible insight into the interrelationships between politics, social structure, and economics yet never slows down. The key characters are fully developed and all the varying species seem real including those that have bare remnants remaining of a once glorious civilization. Karl Shroeder combines a deep cast with a cerebral action packed plot that will permanently remain on the keep shelf of genre fans to reread over the eons. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: none
Review: Once again, Schroeder shows his deft storytelling prowess with a space opera chalked with suspense, intrigue, and the alien. A novel that catapults him into the ranks of Clarke, Bear, Benford, and Anderson. PERMANENCE should be required reading by every fan of SF... Gary S. Potter Author/Poet
Rating:
Summary: Interesting ideas, flawed execution
Review: Permanence offers the best and the worst of SF, all in one package. Schroeder compellingly explores the colonization of space, interaction with aliens, the future of intelligent life, and the search for meaning in a very large universe. He does so, however, with the flattest characters I've come across in some time, many of whom are completely useless to the story or the themes, a linear and ultimately disappointing storyline, some ham-handed attacks on capitalism, and a lack of depth in all areas. I'm glad I read Permanence, but I won't be passing it on to my friends.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting ideas, flawed execution
Review: Permanence offers the best and the worst of SF, all in one package. Schroeder compellingly explores the colonization of space, interaction with aliens, the future of intelligent life, and the search for meaning in a very large universe. He does so, however, with the flattest characters I've come across in some time, many of whom are completely useless to the story or the themes, a linear and ultimately disappointing storyline, some ham-handed attacks on capitalism, and a lack of depth in all areas. I'm glad I read Permanence, but I won't be passing it on to my friends.
Rating:
Summary: Exhilarating in parts, frustrating in parts
Review: Permanence, is at once exhilarating and frustrating. Exhilarating because it attacks a truly worthwhile larger SFnal theme in an original fashion, coming to original conclusions; and because it is packed with clever technological and scientific notions, and with some awe-inspiring vistas. Frustrating because much of the impact of this is dissipated by the unconvincing characters, and by an overwrought plot complete with sneering cardboard villains. The good outweighs the bad, I think: this book is fun to read and thoughtful, and its resolution is believable. But it falls short of its potential. The two main characters are Meadow-Rue Cassels, a young woman from a poor comet-like world who stumbles across a valuable object that may be of alien origin, and Michael Bequith, a scientist and monk who helps study the ruins of alien races. The book also concerns some political machinations between the richer worlds linked by Faster-Than-Light travel, and the older, decaying, "Halo" worlds linked by Slower-Than_Light "cyclers". Also central to the book is the pursuit of the goal of "Permanence": the formation of a culture with the prospect of permanent existence. Rue's discovery, of a hitherto completely unknown alien artifact, may be a key to this goal. The eventual explanation of the nature of the artifact is very interesting. Furthermore, the conclusions reached about the prospects for true "Permanence", and about the differences between an STL culture and an FTL culture, are also nicely handled. In addition, there is a neat alien race, and a fair amount of very clever tech. Set against these positives is a set of villains who seem mostly motivated by the generalized desire to oppress and kill other people, the rather fuzzily described "Rights Economy", a not quite convincing or sufficiently involving love story, characters that don't quite come to life, a rather flabbily-structured plot, and some annoying woo-woo mysticism in the description of Michael Bequith's "kami". In other words -- Permanence has got many of the strengths of the best Hard SF, and many of the weaknesses as well. Which means, if you're a fan of Hard SF, this book is definitely for you. Schroeder is playing in Vernor Vinge's league, and if Vinge is still the champ, Schroeder is definitely a promising newcomer.
Rating:
Summary: Not As Good As Ventus
Review: Schroeder's Permanence is about a young woman's discovery of a cycler -- a ship that goes a significant fraction of the speed of light while it travels in a big loop and is used for trade -- of mysterious origins. It doesn't take long for Rue Cassels and a handpicked, though motley, crew to discover that the mysterious ship is of alien origin...and that she's not the only one that wants to gain control of it. Schroeder's Permanence leaves something to be desired, though not in the story itself. The story itself -- the alien ship and all the resulting discoveries relating to it -- is reminiscent of a Jack McDevitt novel. Where Schroeder's Permanence doesn't muster up is in the way the prose itself was put together. The first hundred or so pages the pacing feels all wrong...kind of fast, like Schroeder was rushing to get to the meat of the story. The characterization of the more minor characters leave quite a bit to be desired. I never got to know much of the crew Rue picks to join her in her rush to discover the alien ship's secrets. You just kind of meet them and then they become cardboard, shrinking into the background until Schroeder needs them to pop up occassionally. The novel's title, Permanence, comes from a future religion/social structure in which humanity is trying to put together a civilization that will survive the eons. But Schroeder only uses one primary character (Mike) to let us into this unusual idealogy of Permanence. While Mike does give us much to think about, I didn't really feel like it was enough to really get the overall picture of what Permanence really was supposed to do/be about. Overall, this story was not nearly as good as Schroeder's previous book, Ventus. Ventus was wonderfully original; and the prose seemed much better structured as well. Ultimately, this novel feels like it was written in haste to meet an editor's deadline and if one chooses to read this book one should keep that in mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but choppy
Review: So, she steals a spacreship and gets away to this planet, and she's rich, except that she isn't and has to get a job, but she can't. Then she does, and then she's rich again but has to go off on this mission before these heavies can kill her, and then it's not quite what it seems to be... Shroeder has a lot of cool ideas, so this is fun to read, but it's much less coherent and innovative than Ventus. Which still makes it worth my time and money.
Rating: 
Summary: good, bad and ugly
Review: The author is intellectually entertaining with the cultural background of this novel, if you like that sort of thing, and I do, but that was also the novel's downfall.
As others have discussed here, the two human civilizations were separate because FTL ships couldn't be launched from brown dwarf stars, where the cycler humans live. Without revealing the ending, the author built a scaffold that supported the cycler civilization as "better" than the FTL civilization, then ...
No, I can't say anymore, except that, in the end (to solve a plot problem he had painted himself into,) he tried to have it both ways, and I can't image human beings accepting his solution when another exists.
All of the criticism from others about flat characters and "deus ex machina" solutions to problems, I agree with. Actually, the solution to the plot problem that I can't go into without revealing the ending is classic "deus ex machina."
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