A Deepness in the Sky

I am fully ready to admit that this rating is a 'me' problem, since I've enjoyed Vinge's other work. It has all the trademarks: brilliant ideas, a few quirky characters. I'm personally not a fan of cyrosleep as a plot device; this (along with the use of seconds as a unit of measure) made it very hard for me to follow how far along the humans were. The plot has a lot of repetitive beats, which makes the first 392 feel over long. Other than Pham, most of the characters don't change throughout the narration: Ezr is mostly single-minded, Qiwi is mostly childish, the Focused are plot devices. The spiders are indeed interesting, but they have much the same problems as the human characters. I am fully ready for the rating to go up in the future. The final reveal and the action scenes (specifically the debate) are unique and riveting. For now, I'm content to call this my least favorite of Vinge's Hugo Winners.