World's End

by Joan D. Vinge

Book Overview

Hot on the heels of The Summer Queen, this novel is a must-read for fans of Vinge's Hugo Award-winning series. BZ Gundhalinu, a policeman who became an outcast after saving the future Summer Queen, quits his job to follow his ne'er-do-well brothers into the godforsaken waste, World's End, to prospect. BZ's odyssey will set the stage for The Summer Queen.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312944683
• ISBN13: 9780312944681
• Release Date: June 1984
• Publisher: Bluejay Books
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.

Customer Reviews

BZ's Gone Mad

I will echo what I have read in the other seven reviews here. Worlds End is almost essential to understanding The Summer Queen to it's fullest extent. It can be skipped, sure, but I don't recommend it. I'm afraid I read Ms. Vinge's books totally out of order, Summer first and then Snow and then Worlds End. So you can see how much I could have used the insight as to what was going on. As far as World's End goes, I felt that it was great as a short. BZ Gundalihnu is a failed suicide, a social outcast for the strictly heirarchal world in which he is from. Following his harrowing experience on Tiamat, and the unrequited love with it's new Queen, BZ is forced to leave along with the rest of the Hegemony. Though he tries to fit back in, he can't, his society is too steeped in their prejudices. He is led by his misfortune and his squandering brothers to World's End a place that is literally crazy...even the earth and the sky follow no known physics. BZ comes across the land's leader, a woman of incredible power, who is positively insane. She wants him to remain with him, and infects him with the Sybil virus. And yes BZ literally goes mad. But being a learned man, he figures out how to contact the Summer Queen, and with her help he gains on his sanity once more. The molten lake at World's end is more than it seems, and it want's BZ's help to cure itself. It is a breakthrough that will forever change BZ's life and the face of the Hegemoeny. It may even get him closer to his Summer Queen once more. BZ Gundalihnu is a character I fell in love with from the very first time I read him. He is devout to his job, tortured inside, a good man to a fault. He oftens judges those around him just by their social stature. But for all his flaws he is endearing and charming. I always thought him older than he truly was just because of his demeanor. Worlds End is definitely a good bookend to your collection if you can find it!

In its own way, oddly amazing

As the out of print sequel to the "Snow Queen" "World's End" it is an out of print, underappreciated little sci-fi novel that you can totally skip if you want and just read a shorter version of it's major events in the "Summer Queen" which is too bad, because this is one good book. Readers of the snow queen will remember the lost star drive that once allowed people to cross space-something the galactic hegemony cannot retrieve and rebuild without. Well this book is that about that, insanity, being sane, duty, not doing your fu*king duty for once and finally forgiving yourself. There is also something wonderful in this book about chaos and what is really chaos and the desire to find order in crazy places. It's really veryu cool if you can wrap your mind around it. Starring in a very good first person narrative lieutenant BZ from "The Snow Queen" this is a short little shocking thriller that is in the end, quite inspirational. If you can find inspiration in this kind of sci-fi. Four stars.

Better than Snow Queen

I read this as a break from Snow Queen (which I'm almost finished as I write this). I thought this would be in the same vein as Snow Queen and Summer Queen but the story and style is completely different. The book is told throught the eyes of BZ Gundhalinu, who was, admittedly, my favorite character in the other books, and the reader becomes deeply immersed in his thoughts and memories, which are fragmentary and not altogether sane. The setting is fantastic and seems much more alien and alive than Carbuncle and Tiamat. The characters are far more three dimensional and believable than those in the other 'Snow Queen books', and BZ becomes far more sympathetic than any of Snow Queen's protagonists ever did (I found Moon a real pain to read about...). This book is also much more sci-fi than it's predecessors, which were more fantasy in my view. The bok only gets four stars because some things it relies heavily on, such as sibyls and the Old Empire, aren't explained ebough if this is to be read as a stand alone, however if you have read Snow Queen or Summer Queen or posess a particularly fertile imagination you sould be fine with World's End. the ther reason for the slightly lower rating is that I thought that the background of Song, who is otherwise a fully realised character, could use more explaination. This is one of my favorite books and I would highly recommend it to anyone who lieks sci-fi books or books based on interior dialogue and highly character centric story lines.

Diary of a Madman (cue maniacal laughter)

Let me start by saying that if you ever want to read this book, you'd better have read Vinge's award winning epic "The Snow Queen" first (and if you haven't read that yet, you don't know what you're missing). There are a lot of references to the previous novel, so if you don't have that background, you'll likely have no idea what the premise of "World's End" is. "World's End," taking place directly after the events in "The Snow Queen," is a journal-style, first-person narrative chronicling the exploits of BZ Gundhalinu as he treks into the horrifically inhospitable planet of World's End, and his descent into insanity as he is infected with the sybil virus. And such wonderfully wrought insanity it is! If there's one thing that Vinge is perfectly adept at, it's characterization. You really get the feeling that Gundhalinu's brain is slowly being turned inside-out. If you were locked behind four walls with this guy, you'd find yourself slinking to the opposite side of the room, all the time keeping him in your line of sight. The inside of his head is just that creepy."World's End" is very short, and one reviewer stated that it seems like editorial clippings from the next novel in Vinge's cycle, "The Summer Queen" -- which may or may not be true. I'll tell you this -- I read "The Summer Queen" before I had any knowledge that "World's End" even existed, and I wish I hadn't. All the important happenings in "World's End" were covered in brief in "The Summer Queen;" all the surprises and plot twists were ruined for me. But "World's End" was an enjoyable read regardless. Anything by Joan D. Vinge is.