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Finished A Deepness in the Sky. Liked it a lot, though I grumble at the authorial tactic of hiding information from the reader in a very sneaky way. Specifcally, having characters we know everything about secretly make a discovery and then conspire to work behind the reader's back! There is a "clue" in the fact that, from that point (whose location is spelled out at the very end of the story), we never see the story from those characters' points of view again. But still... argh, tricky!
While I really enjoyed the villains, who are some of the nastiest bad guys I've ever met in a novel, I dunno how I felt about them both being sexual predators on the side. I mean, in literature, that's kind of a cheap way to make a character completely despicable. A killer, no matter how brutal, still has shades of gray to play with, machiavellian ideals and whatnot. A rapist, on the other hand, really has nowhere to go. It was perfectly fitting with how they thought of everyone below them, though... hmf.
The ending actually becomes a little depressing, since we know from Fire what ultimately happens with Pham's mission to explore the galactic core... not only did it end in disaster, but the entire excursion was, in retrospect, based on an ill-informed jump to conclusions. I guess it was done for the right reasons, but the inspiration that Pham means to engender with his speech at the end hangs heavy with unwitting, and most unfortunate, irony.
Unanswered question, at the meta-plot level: I can't think of a reason not to recommend that a new reader read this book before A Fire Upon the Deep. What am I forgetting about?
One thing I have forgotten: do the Spiders appear at all in Fire?
While I really enjoyed the villains, who are some of the nastiest bad guys I've ever met in a novel, I dunno how I felt about them both being sexual predators on the side. I mean, in literature, that's kind of a cheap way to make a character completely despicable. A killer, no matter how brutal, still has shades of gray to play with, machiavellian ideals and whatnot. A rapist, on the other hand, really has nowhere to go. It was perfectly fitting with how they thought of everyone below them, though... hmf.
The ending actually becomes a little depressing, since we know from Fire what ultimately happens with Pham's mission to explore the galactic core... not only did it end in disaster, but the entire excursion was, in retrospect, based on an ill-informed jump to conclusions. I guess it was done for the right reasons, but the inspiration that Pham means to engender with his speech at the end hangs heavy with unwitting, and most unfortunate, irony.
Unanswered question, at the meta-plot level: I can't think of a reason not to recommend that a new reader read this book before A Fire Upon the Deep. What am I forgetting about?
One thing I have forgotten: do the Spiders appear at all in Fire?
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"Sherkaner's reaction ("even the---") when he first learns that the antigravity dust is real."
"Anne's belief that someone was interfering with the Focused."
And, my all-time favorite hidden meaning in any story ever (well, mostly) -- in the middle of chapter 33, Trixia says out loud: "Really? I'm not a machine?" And Ezr thinks she's responding to *him*.
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Very tricky. (Not sure why she spoke it out loud, but whatever.)
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