Book two of Joan Vinge's beloved
Snow Queen cycle of classic science fiction, back in print after a long absence
"World's End is Joan D. Vinge's first sequel to her Hugo Award-winning novel The Snow Queen. In World's End, the police officer, BZ Gundhalinu, has put his adventures on Tiamat behind him while living and working on Foursgate. Gundhalinu's brothers visit him to let him know they have lost their family estate and honor and are going to World's End, a badlands which has a tendency to drive men crazy. Eventually, Gundhalinu decides to go in search of his older brothers.
Vinge follows Gundhalinu as he travels into the wasteland called World's End with Ang and Spadrin. The former a prospector who needs a guard and a mechanic to help him recover a mineral find he made years earlier, the latter a career criminal who turns his sadistic mind towards tormenting Gundhalinu. As the party gets deeper and deeper into World's End, it becomes clear that there is something in the region, probably at the legendary Fire Lake, which causes the terrain to alter and people to go mad. In many ways, their journey seems to be one of people on an acid trip.
Although Gundhalinu has left his Tiamat assignment behind him in a way which precludes his returning (there is a time dilation problem), mentally his adventures in The Snow Queen and with Moon, the sybil of Tiamat, are still affecting him as he tries to come to terms with his current life. When Gundhalinu finally does meet another sybil at Fire Lake, he sees her as a manifestation of Moon."
(Temporary copy from a review by Steven H. Silver.)
