egemonic Police officer Nyx LaisTree and his partner and half-brother, Staun LaisNion, are bad cops.
They're stationed on the planet Tiamat, the sole source of the immortality drug known as the Water of Life. The Snow Queen Arienrhod rules Tiamat and controls the drug supply. She knows very well that the Galactic Hegemony, which is supposed to limit technological development on Tiamat, is desperate for the drug.
Queen Arianrhod plays a calculated game with the Hegemony, with her planet's technological progress as the stake. She harbors interstellar criminals in return for gifts of contraband technology. For its part of the bargain, the Hegemony has hamstrung its police force on Tiamat. Legal restrictions keep the police force from apprehending criminals who are under the Queen's protection.
In boredom and frustration, Nyx, Staun and a few other police officers have gone rogue. They sneak into warehouses after hours and destroy shipments of contraband technology that they are forbidden to confiscate on the job. The sideline is a lark that makes them feel as if they're doing something to fight crime on Tiamat. Then a deadly encounter in a warehouse leaves Nyx hospitalized, fighting for his life and his badge. He learned something horrible that night, he knows that much; but why can't he remember any of it?
Nyx's nemesis on the police force is a young, starchy sergeant named BZ Gundhalinu. Gundhalinu plays strictly by the book and is determined to see Nyx jailed for his actions. But the more Gundhalinu investigates, the murkier the truth becomes. Who is the shape-changing prostitute named Devony who seems to be Nyx's only friend? Why does she visit the Snow Queen's palace so regularly? Where does the sinister Mundilfoere fit in, and can anyone believe anything she says? Only Nyx can begin to untangle the many threads of conspiracy surrounding the Snow Queen in her capital city of Carbuncle. Can BZ trust Nyx to know right from wrong this time?
The League of Competent Women
Tangled Up in Blue is a thriller, the fourth novel in Vinge's Snow Queen universe. The first in the series, the Hugo Award-winning Snow Queen, was published in the 1980s, one of the many exciting periods for feminist science fiction and fantasy. Almost a decade before writers Karen Joy Fowler and Pat Murphy would create the James R. Tiptree Award for science fiction and fantasy that explores gender and gender roles, it was a political act for Vinge to write a science fiction epic that featured a fully realized, active and central female protagonist.
Tangled Up in Blue works on a smaller scale than the first novels in the series. It's more concerned with the individual problems of relatively minor characters than with the macro issues of government, immortality and ownership of technology. It's a treat to see a younger BZ Gundhalinu, familiar and beloved from the earlier books. Nyx LaisTree's fight to retain his principles and reclaim his life is quite compelling.
But it's the women who provide the twists to this tale: Police Inspector Jerusha PalaThion; shapeshifter and prostitute Devony; double agent squared, the sexy Ondinean Mundilfoere; and Arienrhod, the Snow Queen herself--rootin', tootin', gun-totin' babes who can lead an interrogation one minute and body-tackle a crook the next. The final confrontation scene just cracks along.
Because of its brevity and the relative sketchiness of the world-building compared to that of the previous books, Tangled Up in Blue feels like a less ambitious novel than its predecessors. It's a quick and pleasing read that can stand on its own or can serve to add complexity to the characters from previous novels in the series.
