“A Princess of Roumania,” by Paul Park (Tor, 368 pages, $24.95)
Paul Park’s novel about a girl who really is a princess in a foreign land goes far beyond the fairy tale aspect. Multiple complicated characters make a rich tale of a girl growing up and a dark alternate history.
Miranda Popescu is a Romanian orphan in New England. She treasures her few homeland mementoes, including a book in Romanian titled “The Essential History.” It contains the history of two worlds – one invented only to protect a young girl from her enemies. It’s one of two copies; the other exists in a very different Romania than the one Miranda knows. In the other course of history there was no Industrial Revolution or settlement of America after the British Isles were flooded. Romania is one of the main powers in Europe, once ruled by Miranda’s father.
When the strange new kids in town threaten Miranda, she enlists her friends Peter and Andromeda, to help. Miranda and altered versions of her friends go from modern comfort to an American wilderness. Modern America was only a hiding place for Miranda where her aunt was protecting her.
Much of the story takes place in Romania as Baroness Ceaucescu searches for the secrets of “The Essential History.” The baroness is a social climber who uses magic to achieve her ends. The Elector of Raisbon is a German alchemist holding Miranda’s mother prisoner. They are in a battle to find Miranda and use her to control Romania.
“A Princess of Roumania” puts Park into the top ranks of modern fantasy writers.
“Accelerando,” by Charles Stross (Ace, 390 pages, $24.95).
Last month, I reviewed Charles Stross’ version of the fairy-tale princess story. His focus was on changes and the impact of change. His second book of the summer is a science fiction novel that accelerates change to the blurring point.
The Singularity is a point where our computing power and capacity for change is so large and so fast we move past being human and is usually considered impossible to describe. Charles Stross has no such qualms and describes three generations that zoom through and out the other side.
Manfred Macx is a high-tech man of ideas living off the goodwill he gets from the wealth-making ideas that he gives away. His girlfriend describes him as “on the edge of acute future shock the whole time.”
The first part, “Lobsters,” has Manfred fighting with his wife Pam while juggling everything else, including a novel organism for the first species to live in outer space. It’s the beginning of challenging what it means to be human.
Manfred’s daughter Amber grows up in boarding schools carefully kept from her father who still provides the covert aid she needs to escape her mother to a space-based school. Taking after her father, she leverages that position to becoming queen of a region around Jupiter. She leaves this for the first interstellar mission.
When she returns, her son is a throwback to the confrontational ways of her mother in a solar system that is dismantling itself to provide more computing power.
Despite all the changes, Singularity is all about acceleration of change and Stross sizzles with ideas as the world changes beyond recognition. Many of the ideas are whimsical and funny as well as challenging and thoughtful.
“The Light-Years Beneath My Feet,” by Alan Dean Foster (Del Rey, 245 pages, $23.95)
Foster writes old-fashioned science fiction. In “Light Years,” a plucky human makes his way through space worlds among a lot of aliens with strange names in an adventure of the “Wizard of Oz” crossed with “Iron Chef” and “Farscape.”
Marcus Walker is a Chicago commodities trader kidnaped by alien slavers. In the second volume of the series Walker and the friends he made, one alien of strength, one of brains and a dog enhanced to talk, are free of the slavers but stuck on an alien planet. To relieve his boredom, Walker studies cooking. He discovers a hidden talent and becomes a sought-after master.
He accepts an offer to use his new skills for the Niyyuu. He hopes it will take him and his friends closer to their homes. They end up on a world that is deliberately not helping them leave.
The strange practice of the society is the way it fights wars. Combatants are limited to primitive weapons and instead of conquering the enemy the winner gets a better trade deals price. The constant media coverage makes the wars into entertainment.
Fred Cleaver writes a monthly column on new science fiction releases.
