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fairymodmother 's review for:
A Fire Upon the Deep
by Vernor Vinge
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