Oooh boy.
I went into this one with a lot of expectations. It came highly recommended by one of my favorite booktubers and it sat in my to-read shortlist for a few months, during which I probably built it up in my head.
First of all, Vernor Vinge is certainly an accomplished sci-fi author, and he deserves all the praise bestowed upon him by the sci-fi community. I heard that he passed away 3 days ago. RIP.
The author exhibits incredible capabilities when it comes to worldbuilding, describing the fascinating inner workings of alien societies and physiology, coming up with concepts and rules of the world, and all the other things that make or break a good hard sci-fi novel.
There are concepts in this book that I've never come across anywhere else in my long journey through the genre, like the best-ever description of the hive mind, the idea of the Zones that regulate the natural laws in the Galaxy, etc.
However, despite all these positives, I didn't enjoy the read all that much. It is usually a given that the sci-fi novel doesn't have to feature high-quality prose or character-driven stories, but even with that in mind, this book was hard to read. I didn't relate to any of the characters and didn't care about them because none of them felt real. The Tine creatures were written especially cartoonishly. You have your "evil villain", "loyal brave friend", "adventurous hero" and "wise mentor".
The author likes using ellipses a lot, to the point that it gets annoying. Another thing I didn't like was one-word sentences to describe actions or emotions, like, instead of saying "She laughed", it's "Laughter."; "It confused him" - "Confusion."
There is a lot of repetition. For instance, we read how character A learns about X. Then character A tells character B about X. And we read the full description of X again. Then we are in character B's perspective and we read something like, "B thought about the conversation with A. A told him that X works in this and that way..." and there is another full description of X.
In short, the story is grand and epic and all, but the writing is not on a level to support such a great ambitious vision. I won't be reading the sequel. ( )

I loved the first 4 or 500 pages of this book, especially the big ideas: zones of thought, transcendence, FTL travel, AI, etc. Unlike some, I was somewhat disappointed in the conclusion. Part of it was that the whole dog race thing just didn't work for me, not sure why. I also had a hard time rooting for Jefri. I loved the skroderiders.

I'm still wanting to read the sequel because the book felt very unfinished to me, as I suppose it was meant to do. However, next on the pile is the conclusion to the Hyperion series, which is in my view a better written series. ( )

Good pulpy hard sci-fi. ( )

Story: 8 / 10
Characters: 10
Setting: 10
Prose: 8.5

Original review from 2013:
Profound. Definitely one of the best scifi books I have come across. The real key is the character design of the Tines and the setting, namely the "Zones of Thought". A Tine is a small group of separate entities with a local-based collective intelligence. Never come across another character like it, though there are not really that many collective intellect characters around. The Zones is a theoretical universe framework addressing both technology and intelligence. Everyone about the book was strong, but these two elements are especially unique.
Looking forward to reading the rest. ( )

enjoyed this, it was hard to follow at first but it starts to make more scene as you continue to read. great imagination. ( )