The Children of the Sky [Mass Market Paperback]

I consider Fire Upon the Deep & Deepness of the Sky to be among the greatest sci fi books ever written. So it was disappointing for me to see how inferior this book was. It is simply not in the same league.

Positives:
Hard Sci Fi: The world is interesting as always, and Vinge expands on the Tines by giving a variation of their species. That was well done. He further expands on the technology, its limitations in the Slow Zone and all the impossible technology the "Children" (survivors of the crash) miss so much. Also interesting. His creation of the alien Tines is thorough and mostly well done, although I felt their civilization bears far too much similarity to our own considering how very different they are from us. Still, I enjoyed them.

Plot: Plot was actually both positive and negative. Sometimes, the plot would race forward and you would hang on the edge of your seat. But other times - most times - it was a chore to read; all in all, very haphazard and amateurish. Many parts dragged, or were highly repetitive. It felt like a case of a lazy or indulgent editor. With top editing, Vinge would have been told to re-write much of it and scrap other parts. Many sections were utterly unnecessary - the same thing would be said later, or the conflict presented was repeated later - and this was especially frustrating given that IT DOESN'T HAVE AN ENDING!

Negatives:
The main negative was what I just said: No ending. I mean exactly what I say, not "no ending for some major points" I mean "no ending." It just ends in the middle of the major conflicts. Really this is just inexcusable, particularly since so much of the book could have been removed with zero difference in plot or conflict. I really, really, really resent books that end without resolution. It is supremely self-indulgent of the author - sorry, guys, I was just too lazy to finish this! - and it is dishonest to present the thing as a discrete book.

Rainbows End ALSO lacked an ending - no resolution of ANY of the main plot questions - and we still haven't seen a sequel. So it's especially annoying given that this is the SECOND book Vinge disappoints.

Characterizations: His villains are preposterous. They are just Evil in a silly, cartoonish bad guy way. As in, 'Bwa ha ha, I vill take over ze planet!' One of the humans is supposed to be some political genius simply because his parents were -- this was another very silly thing Vinge kept insisting that if your parents are x, you are x. He did this with every Child character. For instance, another child's parents were the equivalent of janitors, with practical hands on skills, so therefore, ipso facto, his son was exactly the same. I don't know where Vinge learned genetics, but he needs to go back to school for this one. Anyway, the character that was supposed to be this political genius plotted on a cartoonish level so that you could see his machinations a mile away. Actually, in some ways he exhibited the same foolish hubris the Straumli folks were supposed to have, but rather than pursue that angle, Vinge just kept asserting - via other characters - that he was a genius and also 'evil.'

Most other characters are the same level of shallowness, particularly the humans. (I was reminded of Asimov, whose robots often seemed to have greater depth than his humans. Here, the Tines were more complex than the humans. Back to the preposterous 'genetics,' Vinge makes this big deal that the Children's parents were supposed 'geniuses' so therefore the children are 'geniuses' too. This was cloying and not believable. Yes, if your parents are very intelligent, you stand a higher change of being smart too-but not a guarantee by any means. If you have a large enough sample, you should find a range of intelligence in the "Children" even if we accept the parents were all supposed geniuses. But even that assertion was just annoying. Who CARES if the parents or "Children" are all 'geniuses"? How does this forward the plot in ANY way? According to the previous book, they let loose the Blight due to Hubris. This has very little to do with "genius" and indeed the 'genius' part makes it less interesting as it is not universal (and anyway, their whole society funded their Lab so the hubris was in their civilization.)

Ravna was also really annoying to me. After Ravna does a series of stupid, passive things, another character tells her she's not a 'fool' but rather a pure heart. Um, where did this Ravna come from? She certainly wasn't like this in Fire. I felt like Vinge wanted her to act in such a way that would further the plot he wanted to write, so he changed her character. In other words, characters (also Jeff & Amdi) arose from plot necessity rather than the other way around as a pro should write.

I'd recommend the book but with the caveats that a) it has no ending b) large parts are very slow and weak c) some characters are really silly. You will need accept that this is not up to Vinge's usually brilliant standards. You can still extract an mildly interesting read, with some very good parts, and a few great parts.

I wish Vinge would get a better, more honest and brutal editor, someone who is willing to tell him the truth rather than merely flattering him. He has the potential to be an absolutely brilliant sci fi writer. It's painful to see his gifts so squandered.

Very little Science in this Science Fiction novel. The plot is all political scheming on the tine world between the humans and tines. I had a hard time slogging through it, the characters and actions are not typically believable (and typically act very stupidly even though they are all supposed to be geniuses. Most of the time I didn't care about characters or the plotting. There were some decently paced sections but most of the book is overly verbose and honest fairly boring - I had to force myself to read it in hopes it would get better. Some of the ideas about the tines group intelligence/personality were semi interesting, but really there wasn't much there. There is no ending to the book, just sort of stops in a pause in political maneuvering. The natural assumption/hope I had for the book was that we would find out what happens with the blights ships trapped 30 ly from the tine world. There are few hints early on that this was going to be the case. Nope. It mostly seems like a set up for the real follow up to that plot - one that could have been a chapter long and just explained the current political setup if it was needed.

I wouldn't bother reading this one unless a sequel comes out that is good, otherwise there isn't much point.

A Fire Upon the Deep is one of my favorite SF books, so it was never really in question that I'd read this. Kindle delivery was instantaneous as usual, and I read it in one long sitting on my day off. If you like Vinge's work or the earlier books, it's a given that you'll enjoy it.

However, it's not of the same caliber as the earlier books in the series. The characterization in particular is just all over the place, and a lot of the motivations seem to be more of the "because the story needs it" than organic development. The Tines are as devious as you'd expect, but their machinations are haphazard and occasionally veer into the absurd. The big revelations about what was going on were obvious far in advance. Several times there was an inexplicable jump in sequence or point of view to create drama or uncertainty that just felt cheap. It would be expected of a younger author, but this is VV we're talking about, and it felt like this book needed to cook a little longer or be tended by a harsher editor.

Also as has been mentioned, the Blight threat is not resolved in this book and if that's what you were reading for, you'll have to wait for another book.

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