The good always die young, even if they live to be a hundred.

The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There's more to me, more to the universe, than I suspected. Room for all the dreams I ever had, and all the nightmares... heroes in the gutters and in the mirror; saints in frozen wasteland; fools and liars on the throne of wisdom, and hands reaching out in hunger that will never be filled... Anything becomes possible, after you find the courage to admit that nothing is certain.

The Snow Queen is about change crashing against the bulwarks of stability. It's about a heart freezing over and struggling to thaw. It's about a planet on the cusp of new politics and climates. And it's about an anthropocentric value system buckling under the weight of the universe's unfathomable diversity.

Like its fairy-tale inspiration, the story begins with a girl and a boy, Moon and Sparks, who seem inseparable. But as they reach adulthood, Moon's seemingly oracular gifts pull her in one direction, while Sparks's ambitious curiosity pull him in another - into the distant, technologically advanced land of Winter. There, he meets a woman who, though 150 years old, has a youthful face and a striking resemblance to Moon; her name is Arienrhod, and she is the Winter Queen. Mesmerized, Sparks is drawn deeper and higher into Arienrhod's court as a predatory cynicism subsumes his personality - and he's not going to fight it.

"We all choose our own paths to hell. But some of the choices are easier to watch than others."

Arienrhod, meanwhile, has her own plans to stay queen even longer than her prolonged life has enabled her, and it's bad news for much of the planet's population.

Before long, Moon realizes that Sparks needs her help. Her journey to find him brings her into the heart of the interplanetary Hegemony that temporarily controls her planet - and there's a lot that they're keeping hidden about the world that she thought she knew. Meanwhile, a female police commander fights for the right to do her job, a gentle aquatic species is butchered for the sake of human immortality, and a long-dead empire whispers its last secrets.

There is a lot going on here. Personal and political storylines are woven together seamlessly. It's a delight to watch Vinge unpack the nested tales of Andersen's Snow Queen and re-sculpt them into something new and epic, but unmistakably sharing the heart of the original. Striking physical resemblances play a part in one of Andersen's sub-stories, but here it becomes a factor spanning the entire book. A mysterious old woman from the fairytale becomes a smuggler working for social change, and a kind reindeer is transfigured into an idealistic police inspector. Most importantly, the enchanted mirror that darkens people's perspectives becomes the very real phenomena of desensitization and disillusionment. It's depicted in a bruisingly believable way through Sparks's behavior.

"I know people have to change. But I wonder if they know when to stop."

Another way in which this book bridges myth to reality is the recurring pattern of mystical occurrences that have concrete explanations. One non-spoilery example is when a group of animals flock around Moon, in what seems like a moment of Snow White magic - but the real reason is that she's the only human to have offered them kindness and proper food. And it's no less wonderful because of that.

However, this book isn't restricted to fairy tale references. Vinge examines the question of nature vs. nurture through the characters of Moon and Arienrhod, who are genetically identical but separated by age and upbringing. Their differences are as fascinating as their similarities, and their goals undergo a gradual reorientation as they each struggle with a faceless political system that holds their world hostage.

"Are we forever doomed to repeat the errors of our ancestors? Is history hereditary, or environmental?"

They're also noteworthy in that Arienrhod is a villain whose actions are ruthless but whose motivations are completely understandable: she wants to pull her planet out of the Hegemony's manipulation. Meanwhile, Moon is a big-hearted hero whose behavior is bound to cause a lot of exasperation. The concluding unification of their storylines actually made me cry, and it's been a long time since a book did that.

And I can't end this review without saying something about the aliens in this book, especially Silky and the mers. They have no need of being anthropomorphized, because their complex intellectual and emotional lives don't rely on a human mold in order to be meaningful.

Finally, I'm left wondering why this book isn't more well-known and why it's been out of print for so long. If it had been written by, say, someone called George Vinge and had been given a tougher-sounding title, would it now be a widely-read classic? Or, if it had been published recently with a cover illustration to match those glamorous sci-fi heroines that are so on-trend, would it have its own fandom? I guess we'll never know, but I'm glad I found my way to it. I'm also super glad that the book is finally getting a shiny new reprinting this October.

View all my reviews