Joan D Vinge

[Aun Doorback]

Hi all, not certain if this is the right place to post a thread but I am interested if anyone has read the Snow Queen cycle.

If so, what did you think?

What's her style like?

What else have you read by her?

Thanks

 

[J-Sun]

I think this is the right place.

I read the first book, The Snow Queen, a long time ago. I didn't like it. Kind of flowery (so to speak), long, and dull. Felt like a fantasy in SF clothing. But it won a Hugo and is very well regarded by most, so I'm in the minority there.

I've also read Psion waaay back, which I think was a YA book and I think I liked it at the time but I lost it and never tried to recover it. I've also at least read "Eyes of Amber" in the Hugo anthologies, but I don't recall it.

In the 70s she was an esteemed author but, in the 80s, turned into a tie-in novelizer sort of extra-commercial writer. She was married to Vernor Vinge during the peak period and divorced in '79. She married the editor Jim Frenkel after that, but still writes as Vinge. That's about all I know.

Vernor Vinge, on the other hand, is one of my favorites.

 

[Aun Doorback]

Thanks for that J-Sun appreciate the reply. She was mentioned in a book about writing and I couldn't place her (Could have googled but its more fun this way)
Many thanks

 

[iansales]

Here's a review of her Outcasts of the Heaven Belt. There's a review of The Snow Queen scheduled to appear there in July too.

 

[nightdreamer]

Well, unlike J-Sun, I rather liked The Snow Queen. I don't remember a whole lot about the plot because I also read it a long, long time ago, but there is one thing that stands out in my mind. The novel followed, I think, three plot lines, which seem to be isolated, but at the end, they all come together like magic and you see that they were parts of the same story after all. I referred to it as a zipper, because my mind sort of traced the plot(s) backwards and suddenly saw how everything meshed together. Love that in a book.

 

[clovis-man]

I've read the first three of the series. I thought The Snow Queen was quite good. Along the way, it required a fair amount of "suspension of disbelief", but worth the effort. The other two were also fine, but not quite on the same level. I have not yet read Tangled Up In Blue.

Her "Cat" series is also good.

 

[Parson]

I've also read the Snow Queen a long, long time ago; and embarrassingly the only thing I seem to remember is the cover, and that it took some slogging to get through.