technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge (Zones of thought series)
closure and non closure for A Fire Upon the Deep, and of course, puppies!
4 stars
Although technically the third of a trilogy (but the end leaves plenty of room for more), this is really a direct sequel to the first book, A Fire Upon the Deep, which was somewhat hazy in my memory. So at the very least, this installment provides a valuable service in reminding me of the cool worldbuilding - all three stories are based in the clever Zones of Thought universe, but the first two books have different sets of aliens. Or rather, humans are the aliens, since they're the ones who drop out of the sky on these worlds. The native species here are the warm fuzzy doggy telepathic group intelligence type, which I might have found a bit confusing if I hadn't read the first book, and it's hard to read without constantly thinking "puppy! puppy!" but just like my neighbor dog who's always trying to take a bite out …
Although technically the third of a trilogy (but the end leaves plenty of room for more), this is really a direct sequel to the first book, A Fire Upon the Deep, which was somewhat hazy in my memory. So at the very least, this installment provides a valuable service in reminding me of the cool worldbuilding - all three stories are based in the clever Zones of Thought universe, but the first two books have different sets of aliens. Or rather, humans are the aliens, since they're the ones who drop out of the sky on these worlds. The native species here are the warm fuzzy doggy telepathic group intelligence type, which I might have found a bit confusing if I hadn't read the first book, and it's hard to read without constantly thinking "puppy! puppy!" but just like my neighbor dog who's always trying to take a bite out of my shin there's not all nice, the villains resembling a mixture of Cujo and a Bond villain. So there's some violence, not graphically depicted but pretty clearly stated, and, now I remember this from the first book, since most of the protagonists (and some antagonists) are youngsters, this did bother me (ever since the Hunger Games, it seems all YA novels are like The Purge). And there are huge stretches of everyone's falling for the villain's lies like they're a bunch of dummies, which is also irritating in real life. In fact, if I didn't know the publication date, I would have assumed the story's broad strokes were directed at the current political situation (there's even a group called The Deniers). So I wonder if the author was still with us today, what would he be writing?
