This is the direct sequel to Vinge’s earlier Hugo Award-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep. He wrote a prequel of sorts to that which also won the Best Novel Hugo. This one is, however, not even on the ballot, making it his first novel since 1976 not to be nominated (he works slowly, at least in part due to being a full-time academic – I barely understand how he could write even the small number of novels he has while being an academic, to be honest). <lj user=”autopope”> expressed surprise at its omission from the ballot on the grounds that there seemed to be some kind of “grandfather clause” ensuring that Vernor always gets on the ballot (along with Connie Willis who won last year for a pair of books she asked people to nominate as a single work and which I was surprised even made the ballot given the slating I’d seen it given online by many fans). Having read it myself, however, I am not in the least surprised that it’s not on the ballot. The trouble is that he has to try way too hard to get an interesting storyline going from the human’s he insists on having as the viewpoint characters. To me, it just doesn’t hang together. I think if he’d focussed purely on politics and economics within the Tines World he could have made this a brilliant book. Unfortunately he insisted on undermining the successful conclusion to A Fire Upon the Deep in two ways (desperately trying to avoid spoilers) and presenting some very intelligent characters as highly stupid for plot purposes.

Very disappointing.