Reviews

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

alexthealdrich's review against another edition

adventurous informative medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

owook's review against another edition

4.0

A classic I put off reading for a while. Some very interesting ideas in here. Will probably read next in series.

thomasin2's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

gbaty's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.25

neartaking's review against another edition

adventurous challenging medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

o2ymandias's review against another edition

adventurous challenging inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Epic science fiction, far ahead of its time. One of my all time favorites. It can be challenging to parse some of the moment to moment scenes - probably by design as Vinge peels back the layers of the onion - and the characters aren’t particularly interesting - but the worldbuilding is god-tier and makes it all more than worthwhile.

idlehabitat's review

Couldn't get over some of the main characters 

rbixby's review against another edition

3.0

I like this one. I had a weird love/hate relationship with it, though. I really got sucked into reading it when I was reading it, but if I stopped reading, I really had to force myself to start up again. As a consequence, this one took a bit longer to read than others of similar style and theme. I really don't have a reason why this is, and it should not be construed as a knock against the book or the author, but a co-worker who started reading it after I told him about this novel also expressed a similar feeling. I tell you this because it seemed odd, and such oddities should be shared precisely because they are odd.

Anyway, there is a lot of genius in this one. At first the Zones of Thought seemed a bit too contrived, but that lasted only a short time into the novel.

Spoiler

I especially enjoyed the consequences of the Slowness on high tech during the space battle at the end of part two.

I think his concept of the Net of a Million Lies and how messages are relayed is one of the best elements tying the story together.

Don't listen to me. Read the book, already.

mialeyden's review

I tried to give it a fare chance, but after 6 hours I still couldn't connect with any of the characters or storylines.

susanneanette's review against another edition

adventurous challenging hopeful inspiring slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5