Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep

Hi everyone

I saw this being read by someone I follow on Goodreads and it looked good so I wanted to try it for myself. A Fire Upon the Deep is the first book in the Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge.
I read this on my e-reader.

"Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.
Fleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle."

This was strange.
On the one hand I felt like I was reading a children's book and I didn't like that in this story, it didn't fit the story. The writing and the dialogue especially were childish. And on the other hand I didn't truly understand everything going on science-wise because some things got little to no explanation. I loved the concept of the Zones of Thought; that's an interesting idea but it wasn't used in a way that made me feel something more than wondering how life would be it this were true, so completely unrelated to the story. 

The book was way too long for the story it told. Multiple chapters where essentially nothing happened that was different from the previous chapters. There's no character development and no world-building anywhere. Endless talking about nothing or about the same things over and over. It was just boring.

It has also aged badly. The futuristic aspects are now completely dated and almost laughable.  

The moment I closed the book on my e-reader I forgot about it and I had to push myself to keep reading because I found it to be boring. I switched to reading other books while reading this one because my mind kept wandering while reading this one.

Interesting premise but not much more. 

So yes, another Award Winning Novel I didn't love or even truly liked. Sad but true.

Happy reading!
Helena