spaceisavacuum 's review for:

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

4.75

adventurous relaxing slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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Tomorrow I will be 32 years old. Strange it is, to remember, but time is slower for me, people always say Life is Short, but this passage has been lifetimes ago .. Actually, when I read the prequel, A Fire on the Deep, I was living in a different Town, now City, and a lot has happened since then .. I remember this time last year, I'd published my first book of pomes, then insurmountably as if by the hand of chance, bad luck struck and incidentally put me on a better path forward than if it had not. Seems like a lifetime since I was employed at Little Caesars, while I was having a grand time rolling dough balls and meeting some of the good people who effusively gratified my talent for showing up early, working late, they were happy I was there, & I was also happy to be there .. but something erupted into fire, it was my blanket, I was on the verge of packing up to leave for a new apartment, when at night the fire alarm blared stentorian warning, the neighbors were outside as I stood gazing on a floor of ash beneath me, thought it was the end of me, the last time I would have a home. I was packed behind a first responders police cruiser and met the folks aboard the Enterprise, for I had all but been abducted by aliens. Reading Star Trek novels pulled me out of myself, to my mind I was miffed, but comforting words in print are better company than clowns at the funny farm. Ever since I've lived in a boarding home that has a hasty turn-over rate, since they rotate out the bad seeds, and to fruition with the smart, & capable, it's better to smart than heedless, and I've lasted long enough on my wits & teetotaling is the one hitch; ergo, I don't drink anymore.

"You know what Daddy says: we can go down and inward-or we can stand on high places and reach out. I'm glad that's where I grew up, and I want that place to be my name."

This book inverts the foreign invader premise, so that colonizing humans are the real menace, they have discovered a planet of spiders, like Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, the home of Arachna which I thought was level 2 of Purgatory 'Envy' after Arachne challenged Athena. I love reading about other worlds, gets one believing...