Karl Schroeder

Venera Fanning enters the artificial worlds of Virga far from her home and husband, where she is forced to decide who among her new allies is trustworthy while she protects the powerful Key of Candesce.

Book Two of Virga

Queen of Candesce

Sarah Sammis

For the 2009-10 Canada Reads challenge I started reading Karl Schroeder's Virga series. In typical fashion I read the series completely out of order. I stared with the final book, The Sunless Countries and went back to the beginning with Sun of Suns. Now I'm at the second book, Queen of Cadesce.

In the previous book Venera Fanning fell to her presumed death. Except she's living inside an artificial world. So instead of going splat, she's burned by a man made sun and lands on the crumbling remains of Spyre.

Queen of Cadensce certainly kept my attention better than Sun of Suns did. Venera on her own comes alive. We are left with her thoughts on revenge and survival as she explores the ruins of Spyre. Although falling apart, Sypre is inhabited. It's a ghost town in the making with the closed up estates of crumbling mansions of once great families.

Spyre is as much a character as her inhabitants and Venera Fanning herself. I love Schroeder's world building and I felt I had more time to explore in this book than in the first.

Queen of Candesce Book Two of Virga

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