A Fire Upon the Deep

This is another one of those books that makes me happy I joined Sword and Laser. From the cover and the description, I would've shelved this under “Dad Book” and moved on. Boy, would I have missed out. This book is vast. The scale goes from a small, medieval society all the way up to incomprehensible transcendant superintelligences. Yet, both ends of the civilization scale and everything in between are treated as viable peoples with genuine concerns. There is no stomping about by superhumans in the stone age, and in fact the stone age poses its own threats.

Its also vast in its ideas of consciousness and thought. I don't think many would disagree that the best part of this book is the Tines, a pack-minded species of sentient dogs who are only intelligent in groups of 3 or more which make up an individual person. It is one of the best reveals of a concept I've ever read, and I ended up caring for these characters so much. Maybe too much as I was always a little disappointed when POV switched back up to space opera.

The scope made me feel like I was reading a little Redwall and a little Ringworld at the same time, and that is really all I every wanted out of a book. I have a large stack of must reads on my shelf, so it may be a bit before I get to the sequels, but I definitely plan to get to them.