I read the first few pages of Children of the Sky, the recently released third volume in the Zones of Thought trilogy and realized right away that I wanted to re-read the first volume, A Fire Upon the Deep, before I took up the story again. Now that I'm halfway through CotS, I don't think my concerns about getting lost in the plot were valid—Vinge does a fine job of easing back into the plot, characters, and even the nature of the weird aliens, the Tines. (The Tines are dog-like creatures who only achieve sapience in packs of 4 or more.) But I am glad I re-read AFUtD, because it's a really good book. Half the story is a space chase, trying to outrun a vengeful god-like artificial intelligence. And the other half features the children of an advanced technology crash-landed on the world of the Tines, who have their own politics and complications in play. And are super-weird (the whole hive-mind thing is very hard to wrap your head around).
FuzzyCo grade: A+
