Lady of Mazes

Mass market paperback, 384 pages

English language

Published June 27, 2006 by Tor Science Fiction.

ISBN:
978-0-7653-5078-7
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (1 review)

Karl Schroeder is one of the new stars of hard SF. His novels, Ventus and Permanence, have established him as a new force in the field. Now he extends his reach into Larry Niven territory, returning to the same distant future in which Ventus was set, but employing a broader canvas, to tell the story of Teven Coronal, a ringworld with a huge multiplicity of human civilizations. Brilliant but troubled Livia Kodaly is Teven's only hope against invaders both human and superhuman who would destroy its fragile ecologies and human diversity. Filled with action, ideas, and intellectual energy, Lady of Mazes is the hard SF novel of the year.

2 editions

Hard Sci-Fi Done Right

4 stars

One of my pet peeves with most futuristic science fiction is that it's peppered with this fantastic and miraculous technology, yet the presence of that technology doesn't change the day-to-day lives of the characters. They wander around the story and generally act like us clods from the early 21st century. It leaves me feeling like the technology is there to aid the plot rather than be part of any kind of organic world building. Such is definitely not the case in Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder. In this hard sci-fi prequel to his debut novel, Ventus, the futuristic technology is the lives of the characters. It dictates who they see, what they see, and who they interact with. And like a lot of great futuristic sci-fi, the reader can see how this technology grew out of our own contemporary technology. In this case, filter bubbles. Inscape dictates every …