Ventus

Two things I'd add to the customer reviews already posted: Although it's an epic, it's told on a human scale. Little of the narration is from a god's-eye point of view; it's mostly from the point of view of people on foot or horseback, tired, cold, hungry, lonely and lost. Schroeder made me feel, hear and smell the planet Ventus. Also, there are deft "culture shock" touches which I enjoyed, like a nobleman laughing at (under-cover) off-worlder Axel's idiom, "I'm all ears."

A few years ago, back around 1999, I was throwing together ideas for a novel. It was going to be a fantasy that wasn't a fantasy, a hard sci-fi novel about agents of a transhuman "god" trying to bring down another such entity on a backwards planet impregnated with nanotechnology that seemed like magic to it's primitive inhabitants.Karl Schroeder beat me to it.This book is, to say the least, fantastic. Schroeder blends Vinge-esque transhuman themes and nanotechological "fantasy realism" with a coming-of-age quest reminiscient of Robert Jordan's "Eye of the World". (I have a suspicion that it's more than just coincidence that the main character's name is Jordan) Thrown into the plot are interesting characters- transhuman assassins, a cyborg demigod, noblemen and royalty who can communicate telepathically with nanotech devices, a sentient starship, a cosmopolitan anthropologist, and more, thrown together in a mission that could decide the fate of the galaxy. Schroeder's intense, fast pace writing style echoes the best cyberpunk, while never succumbing to that genre's attitude. Best of all, the last section of the book explores an interesting philosophical discussion of the relationship between man, science, and nature, one that will hopefully provoke dialogue between environmentalists and transhumanists alike.All in all, a fantastic book, and a worthwhile read for science fiction and fantasy fans alike.

Or maybe Philosophical and Romantic.When you start dipping into Karl Schroeder's _Ventus_ you'll probably think you've seen this kind of novel times before, but it's so expertly done that you're likely to follow along with Karl Schroeder's tour of a world apparently neglected by the galactic civilization that has retrogressed to the point that the natives fight battles with swords while offworlders walk this world checking things out. (And what _are_ these "wind" things?) But then, after not all that long a wait, the author blows it apart and the novel tumbles into a long, turbulent journey told from multiple points of view.Each of the major characters, the offworlders Calandria, Marya, and Axel, the cyborg General Armiger, and the natives--the "mad queen" Galas and her onetime lover General Lavin, and the coming-of-agers Jordan and Tamsin (playing with home field advantage)--discover part of the reasons why the terraforming, nanotechy "mechas" have become dysfunctional or perhaps even mad (instead of preparing the world for humanity they've turned against it), but it's not until the final battle royal in which it all comes together.It's expertly written and breathtaking in its conception (Ventus may be the most interesting world since Joan D. Vinge's Tiamat), and it's sure to give you a lot to think about. It's a romantically philosophical hard-science fantasy.

The planet Ventus is a marvel of the terraformer's art. Rather than shoving around great loads of soil, gasses and liquids to make the world hospitable, Ventus' designers deployed a mere 70 kilos of intelligent nanotechnology. When the nanos landed, they used the world's fabric to copy themselves, absorbing the world's foundations as a sponge absorbs a bucketful of water, until the very planet was intelligent -- or rather, intelligences, a collection of autonomous gods and demigods and sprites and spirits, collectively called the Winds.Ventus sings. The ocean sings, "I am an ocean," and the waves sing, "I am a wave." The Winds sing their songs as they negotiate among themselves for the preparation of the world for the human masters to come. The clouds negotiate with the crops to provide water, the earthmovers negotiate with the sod over mineral allocation. Ventus is a Garden, a jewel of a world in a universe populated with innumerable humans and post-humans, and machine-human intelligences that embody as entire planets.Ventus is a garden, fallen. A thousand years after the terraforming project, the Winds have forgotten their human masters. Now the Winds barely tolerate the fallen inhabitants of the garden world, capriciously manifesting as avenging angels that smash overly technological artifacts and their makers; manifesting as sinister morphs that maintain ecological balance by tearing bears apart to make gophers; manifesting as the attenuated, magnetic celestials whose Heaven hooks crush masonry and rend bone as they seek to expunge infectious humanity. Jordan Mason, the boy-hero of the story, has been unwittingly implanted with off-world technology that turns him into a spy for Armiger, the avatar of the fallen God/world 3340. It's this very technology that makes him a target of the ruling machines, who come to perceive him a foreign technology that must be eliminated by the world's all-powerful immune system. Aided by the bounty-hunters Caladria May and Axel Chan, Jordan learns to control his technology and finds that the world itself is alive, shouting and singing in a billion variegated voices. Gradually, the boy comes to communicate with the planet itself, and to discover the internecine battles that have turned Ventus from Heaven to Hell.Schroeder's a voracious autodidact, and he weaves his multifarious backgrounds into the storyline, burying clues to Ventus's mysteries in avant-garde linguistics, in pervasive computing theory, in cryptography, and in the theology of his apostate Mennonite forefathers. The book is as epic in scope as The Lord of the Rings, but more nuanced; it's as technologically daring as Snow Crash, but better controlled, with a narrative that makes its many pages fly past. Schroeder's created a startling, thought-provoking marvel of a book, a voice to equal any of the new guard that the Commonwealth has materialized of late: Scotsmen Ken MacLeod and Iain Banks and Aussie Greg Egan have a new contemporary.

Ventus could be heaven--every drop of water, grain of sand, flake of snow is created and shaped by the nanotechnology that has teraformed the planet and made it earthlike. Yet the self-replicating and fractally self-aware nanos that make up this world view humans with suspicion and bare tolerance. They may have been created to serve humans, but they have left this behind them.Into this world comes Armiger, once a part of a God (a self-programmed artificial intelligence with superhuman powers and knowledge). If he can subvert the nanotechnology to his own ends, Ventus can become a power base stronger than anything known in the Universe. Against Armiger stand a pair of off-planet near-humans who defeated the God he served before, and Jordon Mason, a local implanted with a portion of Armiger now turned to be a tool against him. All of their off-world powers offer little help, though, in a world where anything external is treated as a disease and eliminated.Karl Schroeder makes this intriguing concept a powerful reality. Both characters and philosophical arguments are fully developed and convincing. The growth of Jordon, as he discovers that easy answers don't answer, the humanization of Armiger against his will, and the parallel changes in Calandria May (the off-worlder who seeks Armiger's destruction) are all sympathetic and believable.Ventus is the best SF novel I've read this year.