Just finished Vernor Vinge’s The Children Of The Sky, a direct sequel to the events from A Fire Upon The Deep, one of my favorite Sci-Fi books.
Sigh. I wanted to like it more. We’re back with the Tines, where Ravna (and Jeffri and Johanna) are working to slowly revive the orphans not killed by Steel from their cold sleep and trying to get Woodcarver et al to be technologically advanced enough to handle all the Blight ships that are still stranded 30 light-years away by the Countermeasure, but surely are on their way.
The main problem for me: too much Tines, no Blight stuff. I liked the Tines in the first book, but it worked way better as a diversion from all the other awesomeness. This whole book is about Tine politics with Woodcarver, Vendacious, a new super-rich Tine called Tycoon, plus a new plot involving a sect that thinks the Blight ships are coming to save them.
Aside from a temporary Zone shift that brought Tine world within 20 light years for a few minutes, (never resolved), there was nothing beyond Tine world.
All told, I’m certainly glad I read it, and it was good to revisit those characters, but I was hoping for more. I’d rather read a sequel that glossed over the Tines and focused more on the returning Blight, Vimri, Old One, High Lab, maybe check in on Greenstalk. I’ve read that there’s talk of another sequel that will wrap all of that up - if so, that’s the one to wait for.
Yeah, the problem is that it’s now the middle book in a trilogy. So it sets up a whole lot of stuff for the next book, but in this book it comes across as something that is dropped and never returned to. Obviously the Blight fleet will be in the next one, but also Greenstalk and whatever is up with the tropical Choir as well.
So not only did he cut out the interesting action in the Beyond we got in A Fire Upon the Deep, but he teased interesting plotlines that didn’t get resolved. Disappointing.
The problem is, writing a sequel to one of the best huge-scale space-operas ever is always going to be difficult … but I think he made several unreasonable mistakes: restricting the action so narrowly to the Tine’s world, and leaving all of the really major plotlines unresolved. It is like this book was, in terms of the main plot, a mere time-filler.
I saw this @ B&N the other night and ranted to my wife about this very issue: that the book (judging by the cover, blurbs, and what I previewed) focused on the Tines and didn’t touch-all about the Blight, the Zones, etc. There’s nothing I can’t stand in science fiction more than an author setting up a really cool universe, then spending 90% of the novel avoiding it - Brin pulled this crap as well in his Uplift novels.
Actually, I don’t like medieval settings in science fiction as well. I don’t know if Laura totally followed me, but she did have a good laugh when I said “… and the last thing I’m interested in is industrializing dogs! Who gives a shit that dogs discovered steam power?”
It was a fun rant.
OTOH, A Deepness in the Sky was a great book. So perhaps I just like industrializing spiders. Sue me.
It occurred to me that what disappointed me about Children of the Sky was what disappointed almost everyone who read A Dance With Dragons: it’s like watching the dominoes being set up but not getting to see them knocked down.
It’s even worse for me because I had NO. IDEA. that this book didn’t complete the story!! I got to the end and was all “Jeezopete, nobody warned me this would be a TRILOGY!!!11!!!”
I did like the book though. I liked the Tines, and I think VV has set it up so some Really Interesting Things could happen if the Zone surges again, for longer this time.