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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I wanted a space opera, I got medieval hive-mind dogs in a fantasy world. The exobiology of hive-mind dogs and trees on wheels may be mildly interesting, but it doesn't need to be tread out in bloated 579 pages. It is a space opera in some sense, but everything is so small, you encounter more diversity of life in any Russian 19th century classic without leaving earth. Also, this is often described as if it were hard SF. Well, hard SF traces in a fantasy novel with 90s internet vibes. Really not a recommend. It was a slog.
One last positive thing: Vinge pulls it off without any exposition dumps, so this is an aspect of the book which is admirable.
One last positive thing: Vinge pulls it off without any exposition dumps, so this is an aspect of the book which is admirable.
This reads like a datasheet. I have no trouble reading a 50-page intro on some Dostojevski protege, but after 40 pages of this I was bored stiff.
Probably the enticing cosmic enormities are just around the corner, but after 5 tries I just couldn't keep up the power to read any further and abandoned this book.
Probably the enticing cosmic enormities are just around the corner, but after 5 tries I just couldn't keep up the power to read any further and abandoned this book.
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Mildly disappointing. The scale of the novel appears to be galactic at the beginning, but the story only focuses on a very small part of that. It's engaging enough, even if it is a bit of a macguffin hunt, but it seems to fizzle out at the end without really living up to its potential.
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I will be the first to admit a bias against the so-called SF greats, especially those that a certain group of people call "hard" and "classic". I freakin' loved this.
Things to love:
-The universe. I see the comparisons to the golden era books with there cognitive realms. This builds on that, in an actually more grounded-seeming way--If you've read books about entities that live/see faster than us, or have thought about the universe being too vast in all senses for normal comprehension, this sort of hangs together for me, and I liked the nod to metaphysics without becoming terribly involved in that space.
-The aliens. SO ALIEN. Delightful to see how wrong they get each other, and the different avenues of first contact.
-Gripping story. I was captivated. So much plot, so little backtracking or recounting what had just happened. Quite taut for a larger book.
-Cool main characters. We come at this book a bit sideways, and I enjoyed that immensely.
-Limitations explored. Yeah, there's psi-like powers, strange alien configurations and so on, but you can tell that Vinge really thought about what this would mean and how the different peoples would interact. Quite clever.
The small detractor:
-Moustache twirling. One of our bad guys, who, admittedly, cannot grow a moustache to twirl, still does so convincingly. Alas.
On TSG I gave this a 4.5, but here, being that I'm stingy enough with 5's, this gets full marks.
Things to love:
-The universe. I see the comparisons to the golden era books with there cognitive realms. This builds on that, in an actually more grounded-seeming way--If you've read books about entities that live/see faster than us, or have thought about the universe being too vast in all senses for normal comprehension, this sort of hangs together for me, and I liked the nod to metaphysics without becoming terribly involved in that space.
-The aliens. SO ALIEN. Delightful to see how wrong they get each other, and the different avenues of first contact.
-Gripping story. I was captivated. So much plot, so little backtracking or recounting what had just happened. Quite taut for a larger book.
-Cool main characters. We come at this book a bit sideways, and I enjoyed that immensely.
-Limitations explored. Yeah, there's psi-like powers, strange alien configurations and so on, but you can tell that Vinge really thought about what this would mean and how the different peoples would interact. Quite clever.
The small detractor:
-Moustache twirling. One of our bad guys, who, admittedly, cannot grow a moustache to twirl, still does so convincingly. Alas.
On TSG I gave this a 4.5, but here, being that I'm stingy enough with 5's, this gets full marks.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Torture, Violence, Death of parent, War
Very well done. The Tines are a really interesting race, and I really liked the concept of the zones. I found the ending a little bit dissatisfying, but it fit. I'm not sure a more satisfying ending would not have been as good. At the same time though, I feel like while the Countermeasure clearly eliminated the immediate threat of the Blight fleet following them, it's really not clear how this stops the blight as a whole. It can still exist, just not spread?
I agreed with what one critic said: that he could have rested on his laurels after creating a world where the inhabitants have sort of "pack minds" - the creatures don't have full sentience unless they get together in packs of 4-6 individuals. But he didn't- he went on to create several other races and a fully-realized strange future world where people in the "slow zone" have very primitive technology, the Beyond have faster-than-light travel, and the "Transcend" has races who have passed beyond high technology into near-godhood. Sometimes sci-fi authors are good at world building but not at character development or vice versa, but Vinge did both really well. I loved this book so much.
My husband and I pick a few books each year to read out loud to one another, and we picked this for one of our books in 2015 and I enjoyed it as a re-read as much as when I first read it.
My husband and I pick a few books each year to read out loud to one another, and we picked this for one of our books in 2015 and I enjoyed it as a re-read as much as when I first read it.
