A Deepness in the Sky

I honestly have no idea how to even rate this. Objectively, it's a very solid book. Vinge's prose is kind of dry and his habit of throwing a bunch of hints at you before really telling you what's going on is alternately effective and obnoxious.

I found the first few hundred pages terribly hard to read, though. It's not a pleasant story, and Vinge doesn't pull any punches. If you're like me and triggered by deception, manipulation, and oh, rape with bonus memory-erasure... buyer beware. Vinge also likes to do this thing where, not only is there dramatic irony because you know something the main characters don't, but he takes you inside the head of the villain. I hate this. Dramatic irony is hard enough for me, but something about seeing the innermost thoughts of the bad guy makes me feel complicit.

If you can make it through those bits, it gets a little better as the story progresses. I thought the ending, after all that had happened, was a little too pat. And I didn't really believe that, after all they had been through and suffered, Tomas Nau died and everyone was just magically OK again. It seemed to me that more of them should have been like Trixia and Anne, especially Qiwi. For all that the story and world were complex and interesting, Vinge seems to have been unable -- or unwilling -- to contend with actual emotional complexity.

In retrospect, I'm furious with Vinge for his treatment of women, and I think it's one reason I found this book so triggery. There are strong female characters (Qiwi, Trixia, Anne) at the outset of the story, but their agency is completely taken away. They're mind-controlled, subjugated mentally and sexually. Meanwhile, the men are merely physically enslaved. They get to stay themselves and plot the overthrow of the Emergents, they get to be brave and clever and bide their time and ultimately save the world. The women are reduced to pawns, used to keep the men in line (even among the Emergents, e.g. the pilot's girlfriend), the devices of Focus and mindscrubbing used to keep them from being able to contribute anything meaningful to the story. Even the strong female VILLAIN turns out to just be a strong female heroine whose mind has been subjugated by Focus.Even (or especially) poor Qiwi, who ultimately only got hers at the end by a combination of luck and Ezr Vinh's urging. She had such potential, but ultimately we never get any real insight into her character, and in the end it seems as soon as she finds the right guy to take care of her, all her problems are solved. It rang so false for me that she wouldn't be more deeply affected by losing years of her life as Nau's plaything. That, more than anything else, is what made me think "this could only have been written by a man".

So: points for world-building and the Spider culture. Bonus point for FLYING KITTENS. Demerits for sexism and not really understanding how emotions work. Points for pretty epic scale. Demerits for the "and then everything worked out and it was all fine" ending. That comes out to, oh I dunno, let's say two stars.