The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Many years ago I read the first two installments in this series, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Both of those are excellent and even enthralling reading experiences, especially if you love 90s space opera. Vinge is a masterful writer. So I remembered the books and looked up the third installment of the series, which takes place on Tine’s World ten years after the defeat of the Blight. This will be gobbledygook to anyone who hasn’t read the books but that’s how it goes in SF. This book finishes the tale of the godbuilding screwups from Straumli Realm who flee something they made that goes wrong, crash-landing on a world of intelligent dog-packs. The dogs are self-aware only when there are enough of them, from four to eight, and they bond into a self. There are mechanics to this process that make it fascinating and fluid. What this idea did for the earlier book was to delineate one of the most fascinating schemes for an alien species ever devised. What this idea does for the current book is to stand still and be exactly the same. This is not entirely true but it’s true enough that the book feels the flaw all the way through. It’s a book set on one world where two species are building some kind of synergetic civilization, and details a lot of politics among the rivals spurred by actions in the earlier book. Absent is the element of the Zones of Thought except as as threat to be explained over and over. The earlier book had a cosmological sweep. This book is narrow and relies too heavily on the novelty of the Tines. It’s not that they can’t carry a story, but it’s the case that I expect something else of Vinge. The book is weighed down by a back story that is barely relevant. This is not enough of an evolution for a sequel and not enough of a departure for a good novel. It was a slog to read though after about a third of it had passed I became more absorbed by it.