Tangled Up in Blue

Rating:
Summary: A 14 year old's review
Review: After reading The Snow Queen, I was a little disappointed at how this book did not carry the mythical mystique and mystery that I had hoped it would. It was pretty good, although some of the main characters I felt were underdeveloped, and that some of the terms used in the book aren't described in enough detail. (What is Survey?) However, The plot is original and well thought out, and I thought that the imagery was excellent. The descriptiveness of the settings surrounding the characters makes Tiamat come to life.

Rating:
Summary: Tangled Up In Blah
Review: After years of waiting for a new book from one of my favorite writers of science fiction, I was thrilled to learn of the publication of Ms. Vinge's new novel set on Tiamat, the world she first visited in "The Snow Queen" and then returned to in "The Summer Queen. For those readers who, like myself, fell in love with Ms. Vinge's flair for in-depth character development and poetic style, I have this advice: don't bother with "Tangled Up In Blue". There is more poetry, more characterization in one paragraph of her earlier novels that can be found in the entirety of her latest opus. Whereas in the earlier novels, Jerusha PalaThion and BZ Gundhalinu were living, breathing, psychologically complex characters, in "Tangled Up In Blue", a book that predates all others in the series and should therefore give us a deeper understanding of how they came to be the people we have met later in life, these characters are drawn without any depth whatsoever. It's as if Ms. Vinge wrote an outline for this novel and then handed the writing over to someone else, someone who was incapable of adding flesh to the skeleton she provided.

I expected to be disappointed in the prequel to the "Dune" series, because its creation was understaken by two men who were not the series' originator. For Ms. Vinge to produce a work so lacking in artistry is a tremendous and inexplicable disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Tangled Up in Blue
Review: I have read hundreds of science fiction and fantasy novels. However, this is my first reiview of any of these books. The extent of my disapointment in Joan Vinge's latest novel is so compelling, that I feel the need to express my thoughts to other potential buyers.
There is no depth in this book. There is an effort to make the characters complex and human, but they become predictable in a silly sci-fi channel manner. The protaganists all literally limp through the story with assorted injuries, never eating or resting, pushing onward with a sort of underlying dull resignation that they are participants in a story that has no more spark than they do. The dialogue between the characters is full of needless profanity that seems written to make the book sort of hip, but only serves to make the conversation inane and shallow. The story line itself is interesting, but there is little explanation of some important assertions. Again, there is no effort to give the story any depth.

Joan Vinge has written some terrific novels. This is not one of them. I look forward to her next book, if for no other reason than to erase the memory of this great disapointment. If you must read it, you can have my copy.

Rating:
Summary: Not as expected
Review: I will eagerly tell anyone to read the Snow Queen or Catspaw, but I cannot recommend this book. I was expecting another rich story set in the world of Tiamat, but was rewarded with just an average detective/buddy novel. This story could take place anywhere, at any time, just by plugging in different dates. Many things hinted at in the story are not developed enough, and it left a taste of promise unfulfilled. Vinge is a talented storyteller but this book comes across as a rushed contractual obligation.

Rating:
Summary: Tangled up in Noir
Review: In "Tangled Up in Blue," Joan D. Vinge returns to Tiamat, and creates a hard-boiled nourish tale with some of the same characters who appeared in "The Snow Queen" trilogy ("The Snow Queen," "World's End," and "The Summer Queen). This time out Vinge zooms in on what starts out as a personality conflict between police sgt. B.Z. Gunhalinu, familiar to Vinge's readers, and officer Nyx LaisTree. Eventually the two are forced to team up to thwart a conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels of the police force, and the Tiamat government. Other familiar characters from the "Queen" novels pass through--Jerusha PalaThion, Fate Ravenglass the Maskmaker, the Snow Queen herself, along with her consort Herne, but Vinge keeps her cold eye directly on the action at hand, which involves vital pieces of the "Maguffin" tech (never mind what--it hardly matters) that everybody wants.

With its naive, conflicted heroes, who never quite figure out what's going on, the tale owes as much to Raymond Chandler as to the "Masters of Science Fiction." Chandler once wrote in a letter that he was interested in "the strange, corrupt world we live in," and while Tiamat's world is hardly Chandler's LA, the same thing could be said of it.

The action moves along swiftly, convincingly, and skeptically. (That's hardly a surprise, as most of Vinge's later work has turned more cynical. She's surely unafraid to give her loyal readers something they haven't expected, and her chance-taking is to be admired.) While "The Snow Queen" novels (and they're surely among sci-fi's masterpieces), are epic and mythological, this time out, Vinge is more detail-oriented.

Imagine a Bosch canvas with a corner blown up and tricked up as a miniature portrait.

Rating:
Summary: Vinge has written another winner
Review: In Tangled Up In Blue, Joan D. Vinge returns to the universe of her Hugo-Award winning novel, The Snow Queen, with another top-notch adventure. Set on the world Tiamat, the book takes place in the city of Carbuncle during the reign of the Snow Queen. Several officers in the police force carry out an unauthorized raid on a warehouse chock full of forbidden smuggled technology. Unexpectedly, two other groups of officers show up--and what should have been a simple raid goes explosively wrong.

It fast becomes clear that far more is going on here than your garden-variety smuggling. The complications faced by the officers in blue are soon folding one on top the other, all of it tangled up in the machinations of the Snow Queen and the intrigues of enigmatic offworlders.

Tangled Up In Blue is a stand-alone novel, so you don't have to know the other Tiamat books to enjoy this one. New readers may find it a bit hard at first to follow the world-building, but it comes together fast. The story pulled me in and kept me reading all night. It also made me want to read The Snow Queen again.

However, comparing Tangled Up In Blue to the The Snow Queen is like comparing a sapphire to a diamond. Both are gems, but different. The Snow Queen is a sweeping adventure in the tradition of The Heritage of Hastur, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Lord Valentine's Castle, by Robert Silverberg. Blue retains the emphasis on character and world-building of those books, but with less of the planetary sweep and more focus on the events unfolding in Carbuncle. It also has an edgier feel, bringing forward the action and mystery aspects of the plot.

This book combines a sensibility of today's science fiction with the best of the qualities that brought many of us to the genre. Vinge's work takes the sense of wonder that defines the top science fiction and blends it with a depth of world-building. At the same time, she has a gift for characterization. She can catch the bittersweet quality of human interaction and make a reader care about the people she creates. Subtly worked into the weave of her stories, those threads offer thoughtful insights into human nature.

If there was anything I wanted to see more of in Tangled Up In Blue, it was, well -- more. The story is complete, but the novel is on the short side. It leaves some tantalizing loose ends, encouraging the reader to hope that more of Vinge's rich Tiamat stories are yet to come.

Tangled Up In Blue has it all: a fast-paced plot that won't let go until its thrilling climax, clever ideas drawn from science, romantic interludes, a great cover by Michael Whelan, and a plot with more twists and turns than the exotic alleys of Carbuncle. Vinge has written another winner.

Rating:
Summary: Minor new Entry in Vinge's Tiamat series
Review: Joan D. Vinge won the Hugo Award for her big 1980 novel The Snow Queen, set far in the future on the planet Tiamat, source of the immortality serum called the Water of Life. Two more novels followed, World's End (1984) and The Summer Queen (1991), and those seemed to neatly round out a trilogy. Tiamat was a primitive planet, only valued for the Water of Life, and only accessible to the rest of the human-colonized Hegemony planets during the "Winter" period of its orbit. The original trilogy eventually told the story of great changes for both Tiamat and the rest of the Hegemony. The three novels were quite enjoyable, and all three differed greatly in style and structure.

Now Vinge has chosen to return to Tiamat for a sort of pendant to the original trilogy. Tangled Up in Blue is set parallel with the earlier part of The Snow Queen. Indeed, if reading the Tiamat books in internal chronological order, it would have to come first. That said, I'd say it's best left to last: it isn't spoiled by reading the other books, but there are some things revealed here that might affect the reading of, in particular, The Summer Queen.

This book is about the Hegemony police force in the Tiamat capitol city of Carbuncle. One main character is a young policeman name Nyx LaisTree, who is involved in some illegal activities. Before long the stiff Police Sergeant BZ Gundhalinu (a major character in the original trilogy) is involved, and so is a "whore with a heart of gold": a Tiamatan named Devony Seaward. Devony is a spy for the Snow Queen, but she finds herself falling for LaisTree. Soon the three of them, unsure if they can even trust each other, are forced into an alliance against unknown enemies: possibly even higher-ups in the Police force, but certainly underworld figures controlled by the mysterious man called the Source. And into the mix steps the offworld woman Mundilfoere, who seems to want the same thing the Snow Queen wants, and LaisTree's superiors want, and the Source wants.

All plays out in a fast moving and fairly enjoyable fashion. The story is a good enough read, though its reliance on coincidence and such cliches as Devony and LaisTree falling instantly in love make it a bit contrived at times. Also, the whole thing is somewhat uneasily shoehorned into the existing structure of the trilogy. This turns out to be a story about something that gains great importance in The Summer Queen, but that importance is not clear to anyone who reads just this book. Which is to say, the mystery here is something of a McGuffin chase, absent knowledge of the events of The Summer Queen. At the same time, this book's use of, in particular, Gundhalinu and Mundilfoere, major characters in The Summer Queen, constrains both the author's choices and the reader's expectations (for those who have read the earlier/later book). In summary, I'd rate this as enjoyable light reading, an interesting addition to a fine series, but not an essential book.

Rating:
Summary: Minor new Entry in Vinge's Tiamat series
Review: Joan D. Vinge won the Hugo Award for her big 1980 novel The Snow Queen, set far in the future on the planet Tiamat, source of the immortality serum called the Water of Life. Two more novels followed, World's End (1984) and The Summer Queen (1991), and those seemed to neatly round out a trilogy. Tiamat was a primitive planet, only valued for the Water of Life, and only accessible to the rest of the human-colonized Hegemony planets during the "Winter" period of its orbit. The original trilogy eventually told the story of great changes for both Tiamat and the rest of the Hegemony. The three novels were quite enjoyable, and all three differed greatly in style and structure.

Now Vinge has chosen to return to Tiamat for a sort of pendant to the original trilogy. Tangled Up in Blue is set parallel with the earlier part of The Snow Queen. Indeed, if reading the Tiamat books in internal chronological order, it would have to come first. That said, I'd say it's best left to last: it isn't spoiled by reading the other books, but there are some things revealed here that might affect the reading of, in particular, The Summer Queen.

This book is about the Hegemony police force in the Tiamat capitol city of Carbuncle. One main character is a young policeman name Nyx LaisTree, who is involved in some illegal activities. Before long the stiff Police Sergeant BZ Gundhalinu (a major character in the original trilogy) is involved, and so is a "whore with a heart of gold": a Tiamatan named Devony Seaward. Devony is a spy for the Snow Queen, but she finds herself falling for LaisTree. Soon the three of them, unsure if they can even trust each other, are forced into an alliance against unknown enemies: possibly even higher-ups in the Police force, but certainly underworld figures controlled by the mysterious man called the Source. And into the mix steps the offworld woman Mundilfoere, who seems to want the same thing the Snow Queen wants, and LaisTree's superiors want, and the Source wants.

All plays out in a fast moving and fairly enjoyable fashion. The story is a good enough read, though its reliance on coincidence and such cliches as Devony and LaisTree falling instantly in love make it a bit contrived at times. Also, the whole thing is somewhat uneasily shoehorned into the existing structure of the trilogy. This turns out to be a story about something that gains great importance in The Summer Queen, but that importance is not clear to anyone who reads just this book. Which is to say, the mystery here is something of a McGuffin chase, absent knowledge of the events of The Summer Queen. At the same time, this book's use of, in particular, Gundhalinu and Mundilfoere, major characters in The Summer Queen, constrains both the author's choices and the reader's expectations (for those who have read the earlier/later book). In summary, I'd rate this as enjoyable light reading, an interesting addition to a fine series, but not an essential book.

Rating:
Summary: TUiB: "Buddy Cop" Noir set in the Tiamatan Underworld
Review: Returning her focus to the planet Tiamat at the end of the Snow Queen's reign, Joan D. Vinge provides a bittersweet vignette of pain, loss, vengeance and recovery that will no doubt leave many loyal readers ecstatic that they are allowed to glimpse some of their favorite characters in action again, while simultaneously saddened that the trip is over all-too-quickly after such a long wait.

A group of the cops (known as Blues for their uniforms) that serve as the peacekeepers between the Tiamatan natives and the offworlders have turned vigilante -- the only method left to them for serving justice while their official capacity is left impotent by the local politics. Their actions land them in the middle of a literal crossfire between two warring factions of a secret society, and the criminal underworld manipulated by the Snow Queen herself. Two survivors from different elements of the bloody massacre, Patrolman Nyx LaisTree and Sergeant BZ Gundhalinu (!), must come to grips with their far-reaching political and societal differences in order to solve the mystery of exactly who the other participants in the slaughter were, and what they were after. The story follows them on their journey through the spectrum of grey that is life in the criminal underworld of the city of Carbuncle.

"Tangled Up In Blue" is an expertly solid retelling of vice cop drama set in the lavish reality that Vinge created over the course of the original epic. The brilliant rookie officer from high society, our young Sergeant Gundhalinu from the original stories, must begin to apply his theories of justice to the realities of law enforcement. The more weathered beat cop with a tragic past, Tree, plays the loose cannon as he goes on a regulations-be-damned trip through the seedy side of Carbuncle to determine who is responsible for the death of his older brother. While running headlong down his suicidal path, Tree also finds himself under the spell of the wildly attractive Devony Seaward, a shapeshifting, prostituting informant for the Snow Queen. The questions become: Is it remotely possible Dev has fallen for Tree as well? Can these loners overcome their hardened fears and distrust and bridge the gaps between them? Will they even survive the climactic fray?

While some readers may argue that not much new ground is covered in terms of the basic elements of noir storytelling, it must be argued that Vinge is a mistress of playing the heartstrings to full effect. There is something to be said for taking a formula and executing on it so well.

The feel of the book is a particularly enjoyable blend of the lonely desperation and longing that permeated the mood of the second installment in the Hegemony books, "World's End," and the grittiness of the Cat stories, set in another of Vinge's realities. Readers who are familiar with the previous books in the "Snow Queen" cycle will be more than rewarded with a solid taste of the same magnitude of emotional undercurrents that were so prevalent in those books -- despite the shorter nature of this story.

While this is more or less a complete storyline that transpires early in the overall chronology (contained entirely in the space between a couple of the opening chapters of the first novel, in fact) first-time visitors to the Hegemony should reconsider before beginning here. The layers of political intrigue are peeled back so deftly in the previous books, and the timings of those revelations are chosen with such great effect, that it would be a shame to read this first and see what cards everyone is holding so early in the game. Also, new readers may find themselves overwhelmed by the several brief but dense explanations of the greater forces at play. It wouldn't do if a reader's attention was to wane whilst attempting to keep track of the political background to the tale, merely chalking the story's scope up to "the bad guys versus the less-bad-guys." The format is exactly what it needs to be, however, in allowing returning readers a refresher without having to break out the older books.

Furthermore, the exquisite warmth (or dread) provoked by cameos of certain original supporting characters will also be lost to the new reader. And it would be something of a small tragedy if even one of these were not appreciated -- even if it were something as atmospheric as a half-sentence allowing us to glimpse in passing a youth on a streetcorner playing his flute.

On a personal note, I was introduced to "The Snow Queen" at just the right time in my younger days, and it left an indelible impression on me and my outlook on life and relationships. Years and years later, they still hold a most special place in my heart and serve as a bond between myself and my closest friend. Thank you, Mrs. Vinge, for allowing us to visit Tiamat again. Here's to hoping that we might make another trip back someday...

Warmest Regards, Gray G. Haddock [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Police Action on a wonderful world
Review: Tangled up in Blue describes this fine novel to a 't'. The police are frustrated by the rules that prevent them from stamping out crime on Tiamet (home of Vinge's Snow Queen novel) and take the law into their own hands. Their vigilante justice backfires and the only survivor is injured and suspended from the police. Tree believes, however, that there is something more complex here than a raid-gone-bad. He's got to find the answer despite official warnings.

In this small (235 pages in the hardback version) there isn't time to develop a rich range of characters, but Tree and his Sergeant Gundhalinu have fully realized back stories that motivate and drive their actions. Forced to work together (sometimes), but unwilling to trust one another, both Tree and Gundhalinu begin to realize that the problems come from within the police department as much as from outside. All of the problems of Tiamet are 'tangled up in blue'.

The Snow Queen Arianrod is largely behind the screens, but she is intent on saving her culture from the summer barbarians no matter what the cost. The mysterious factions of the Survey too have left morals behind in their search for the greater good. Only Tree, Gundhalinu, and a few others must continue to wrestle with morality. Whether this strengthens or weakens them determines the outcome of this intriguing novel.