Rate this book

The Children Of The Sky (2011)

by Vernor Vinge(Favorite Author)

3.55 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0312875622 (ISBN13: 9780312875626)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Tor Science Fiction

series

Zones of Thought

review 1: Overall I enjoyed reading this book. The good aspects are similar to the previous two books in this series. I only gave three stars for the following reasons. There was so much misdirection in this book; the author repeatedly highlighted details that were completely superfluous, making me think they were significant to some part of the plot. Aaaaaaand nope, they never played a part in the story. The end of this book didn't feel like an ending and some of the characters were amazingly, stupidly naive.
review 2: The Children of the Sky is a sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep and picks up shortly after the advance of the blight is stopped by countermeasure. The book covers a long and winding political and technological intrigue as Ravna strives to awaken and teach th... moree cargo of surviving human children and drag them up into a technological society. Co-queen Woodcarver struggles with internal (to her pack) problems and external assaults on her domain involving technology thefts and foreign spies. Some old villains come into play to take their revenge.The pace of this book was good and it kept me reading straight through. At times, however, the events as they unfolded made me angry. This is not an emotion I seek in books and not one I attempt to elicit from readers. The waste of precious time and resources on political infighting was maddening even though somewhat realistic. I was disappointed in some of the character development especially of Ravna and Woodcarver, they were portrayed as hapless and ineffective leaders, a complete change from A Fire Upon the Deep. Woodcarvers security was inept, something completely out of character for her, and the Ravna who stood up to Pham was gone, for me this undermined the believability of the plot arc. The most likable and believable characters were the tines. In fact, I found the tines to be more human that the humans. There was not a single warrior among the children, no one had any kind of killer spirit except through political backstabbing. And there were no real consequences to the backstabbing. The humans acted like a bunch of detestable wimps. Perhaps Vinge is portraying the advancement of humans where violence and revenge have been bred out of the race, if so, I see it as a loss of what makes us human and it kept me from liking and connecting to the characters. In the galactic world he created, certainly humans could not have survived without the capacity to fight and prevail. It is also about the inner struggle of individual characters fighting and yielding to the urge to kill. Some very large issues were raised regarding the stability of the slow zone, the return of Greenstalk, and the god of the tropical choir. By the end of the book, however, Chekhov’s gun did not go off for any of these, leaving me dissatisfied and a bit disappointed. Clearly the state of things at the end of the book begs for another volume. In the next book, I hope to see the unfolding and resolution of the big problems that Vinge left thundering on the horizon. I still recommend this book, but be prepared for some frustration. less

Download links for: The Children of the Sky

Advertising