Had a slightly bizarre experience with Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. I was just getting into the book when the name of one of the characters (Qiwi) struck me as oddly familiar. I flipped through it and realised that, yep, I'd read it before. But I couldn't have thought much of it then because I hadn't kept it - which didn't prevent me from unwittingly buying it again!
Vernor Vinge's writing seems to have a strange effect on me. A few months ago I re-read A Fire Upon the Deep, the Hugo award winner, for the first time in about 15 years. And I couldn't remember one thing about it - it rang no bells at all. I would have sworn I'd never read it, except that it obviously had been read, and was sitting in the "read" part of my bookcase. Anyway, for the record, I wasn't that impressed by Fire; some good ideas, but a messy and irritating book (see my separate review). I didn't read Deepness again this time because I remembered it, with a bit of effort (and life's too short to slog through a 750-page novel again unless it's absolutely brilliant), but from what I recall it is much better - a very good space opera - and I can't make out why I junked it before - I was probably going through a phase of being thoroughly tired of doorstop novels which I was never going to take the time to re-read. Oh well, I'll keep it this time, just in case...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment