Elitist Book Reviews

Confession time. I had never read A FIRE UPON THE DEEP until now. Please don't think less of me. The thing is, and I've mentioned this before, I'm not a big SF reader. In general, I think most writers of SF are far more interested in showing how intelligent they are rather than telling a good story. It's a personal opinion. Every now-and-then I fins an SF novel that I really enjoy, but it just isn't my thing. That's why I let my reviewer, Shawn, handle most SF novels that are sent to me.

Anyway, back to my startling revelation. I'm sure tabloids are going crazy somewhere. I happened to mention to a publicist at Tor that I hadn't read the Vernor Vinge classic, and he freaked out. A week later I had a copy in my PO Box from that same publicist. Likewise my good reviewer, Shawn, was a bit surprised at this glaring hole in my reading background. He had just sent me his review for Vinge's THE CHILDREN OF THE SKY, and I thought, "Hmm. Maybe I should really read the original. See what all the fuss is about." After all, A FIRE UPON THE DEEP is considered one of THE classics in SF.

Honestly I was prepared to be totally let down, but I pressed on so that I could give a newbie's view on the novel.

First impression? I read the prologue and absolutely hated it. I wanted to put the book down and go read some James Barclay. But I had made promises, and I keep my promises at least 50% of the time.

The good news is that the next 80 pages were completely fascinating. The odd tone of the prologue vanished (later I came to understand it...still hate it, but understand it), and I was left discovering an enthralling universe filled with odd aliens and a very small cast of humans. The main story revolves around a civilization of humans unearthing an entity (the Blight) that spreads throughout the galaxy taking over nearly everything. I am paraphrasing there and not using the correct terms, but using those terms would make me have to describe the whole effing book so that it all makes sense to the reader who hasn't experienced this novel.

A small ship with very few humans on board escapes the Blight and crashes on a medieval world inhabited by a race of creatures soon dubbed the Tines. The Tines are dog-like creatures that are separated into small packs of 3-6 (generally) individual "dogs" making up a single hive-mind personality. They are super intelligent, and are one of the most fascinating parts of this novel. In a way, the Tines and the world they live on make a good chunk of the novel almost a Fantasy novel rather than SF. These portions of the story focus on two human children, Jefri and Johanna, and a variety of Tines.

The other characters firmly ground the novel as SF. Ravna and Pham (along with two plant-like aliens) end up on a mission to save the two children and their ship which may have a way to destroy the Blight.

So here's what I ended up liking about this novel. While it is SF, it doesn't feel like it the entire time. As I mentioned before, there is a nice mixture of SF and a little fantasy mixed in here. This slight genre blending made the novel far more enjoyable than I expected. For some reason I was expecting to need multiple PhDs in physics and rocket-science to understand anything happening in the novel. Instead, the novel came across as fairly accessible. I felt the characters acted in believable ways. I thought the writing was clear. The concepts surrounding the way the universe is set up is really freaking awesome. I was really diggin' the whole thing.

And then the novel got REALLY slow. After the first 100 pages, the novel was a lot of people sitting around punctuated by brief moments of "stuff happening". It wasn't a bad "slow", but it did kill some of the excitement for me. Momentum faded away. I put the book down for a few days. Really, I just wanted something to happen. Something big. 2/3 of the way through the novel a lot of stuff did happen, but I wished it would have all come about a little sooner.

I realize I'm talking very vague here, and I apologize. A FIRE UPON THE DEEP is a complex novel. For me to explain all the details would 1) take for-freaking-ever, 2) be boring as heck, and 3) ruin a lot of the fun discovery. If you've already read this novel, you know what I'm saying. If you haven't read the novel, then the best thing I can recommend is buying the book. The book lays it all out for you.

There is a lot of good here. The ending makes up for most of the extreme slowness of the middle of the novel. Everything is wrapped up a tad too neatly for my taste, but it was still cool to see the convergence of technologies in an anti-Prime Directive sort of way.

So did I like this book? Yeah, I actually did. Vinge is a great writer. His ideas are sweet. His alien characters are awesome (his human ones are solid, but not amazing). It's a slow, dense Space Opera. If you are into Alastair Reynolds, you'll dig Vinge a lot I think. I liked the overall accessibility of the novel. Yes, I liked this book quite a bit. From a guy who doesn't really like SF that much, I think this says a lot. I can easily see why people who love SF--and thus my reviewer, Shawn--are absolutely entranced by this novel. I'll definitely read the prequel and sequel(s). I'd totally consider this an Elitist Classic and put it in the Science Fiction 201 level, and I'd recommend it to all you SF lovers who have somehow missed it until now.

Recommended Age: 16 and up mostly for comprehension.
Language: Hardly any.
Violence: Not much.
Sex: Mentioned, but never detailed.

HOLY CRAP!

What a year for Science Fiction it's been. I mean we've had LEVIATHAN WAKES by James S A Corey that was excellent. China Miéville's EMBASSYTOWN was weird, wonderful and brilliant. Robert Charles Wilson finished up his Spin trilogy in fine form with VORTEX. And now along comes Vernor Vinge to show us all again how this is really done with CHILDREN OF THE SKY.

I'm going to be perfectly honest here from the beginning. A FIRE UPON THE DEEP (also by Vinge, and actually CHILDREN OF THE SKY is a sequel to it), is one of my favorite books of all time. Around these here parts (and by these here parts I mean amongst us reviewers at EBR), I'm kind of the Science Fiction guy. If an SF book comes along, most likely I'm the one reviewing it. The reason I read SF--and love it so much--and the reason I look at all those SF books and go through the pages of science and weird inventions and sometimes crappy aliens, is so I can find a book like A FIRE UPON THE DEEP. FIRE, along with DUNE, in my opinion, are the standards upon which all other SF must be judged.

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), when I heard that Vinge was writing a sequel to A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, I was thrilled. When Steve called me and told me he had a ARC for it I did a little happy dance. (He's lucky he didn't tell me in person. I'd have kissed him full on the mouth.)

Were my expectations high for this book? Absolutely. Did Vinge meet every one of those expectations? No. Did he give me something else instead that was wonderful and amazing and still one of the best books of the year (if not the best)? Yes.

The book picks up where A FIRE UPON THE DEEP left off, or rather, ten years after Fire left off. Ravna, Jefri, Johanna, all of the rest of the children and all of the tines, are still stuck in the bottom of the slow zone. The Blight is still out there (supposedly) and is slowly making it's way towards the world. Ravna has been seeking the fastest way to build up the technology of the burgeoning world to have a fighting chance when the blight arrives. Meanwhile the other children are growing up and starting to question the stories they have been told about what has happened since they were put to sleep at the start of FIRE. Complications ensue, alliances, betrayals. Along with all of that is an ever widening view of the tines world and society. Things I had never thought of or considered before were given the spotlight.

CHILDREN OF THE SKY, in short, was brilliant. No one out there does space opera like Vinge. There are books who have great plots with well thought out ideas, but normally characterization suffers because of it. The book is a showcase for a thought experiment. Other books showcase great characters but the plot is quite as intricate; isn't as cool, isn't as mind blowing. Vinge does it all. the characters are real and you feel for them. The book is a page turner. And the ideas are wonderful (the Tines are still up there as my favorite aliens I've ever met in a book).

I loved it. I loved it. I loved it.

I needed to get that out of the way before I mentioned a few things that bummed me out about the book. I don't want you all thinking the book wasn't great. It is. It just wasn't perfect, nor was it A FIRE UPON THE DEEP again. The thing that I felt the lack of in this book was the rest of space. In A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, the story was split between the turmoil on the Tines world, and then what was happening in the rest of the universe with the blight and the zones of thought. There were aliens and Powers and space battles and ships. I loved how the two stories came together. I loved watching it build up to an amazing conclusion. This book focuses on the Tines world and the struggles there. It was brilliant, but I missed being in space and I thought we would see more of it.

The only other thing I can think of that bothered me is that this is obviously a middle volume in a trilogy. Something I didn't know before. There are still questions left unanswered (now more so than at the end of Fire). The problems still approaching our heroes seems even larger now. This is a great book, but the story is not done yet. The problem is, I WANT TO KNOW THE REST, DARN IT! Now we have to wait for Vinge to finish the story.

If CHILDREN OF THE SKY is any indication, the wait will be well worth it in the end.

Age Recommendation: There's some hard science stuff so I'd say 14+, but really as soon as you can understand it and enjoy it, go for it.
Language: Very Little
Violence: A little bit, nothing too gory.
Sex: A few references but nothing shown or talked about.