I picked up this book for the premise - a girl from a barbarian planet is super smart, realizes that her people came from the stars, and contacts them.

Unfortunately, the plot doesn't work. It has Tatja Grimm able to learn incredibly complex theories and work out how it fits together. For example, early on in the book, Tatja is exposed to telescope. With a few minutes of observation, she is able to understand the theory of light.

The culture of world doesn't fit with the early settlement - There should be at least a few creation myths where people originate from the sky. The ending was also a big let down - the early part of the story played out heroine as a super smart person who walks over people (the less intelligent) in her quest to get to the stars. I would have liked to see Tatja learn her humanity from within, instead of having all her scheming make her into a planet saving hero. ( )

(Amy) Sometimes, when the selection on the shelf set aside for books to be read soon grows thin, I embark on a tour of our bookcases, selecting one volume from each shelving unit to bulk up the piles again. If you haven't seen our library, this may sound trivial, but to provide a bit of perspective, we have 14 six-foot-tall bookcases of varying widths (3-4 feet wide, for the most part) to hold our fiction, and another three for nonfiction. It certainly makes quite a difference in the size of the to-read pile, to be sure, and is a good method to ensure I at least look at the entire library periodically, to help avoid getting in a rut.

The last time I did that, I ended up with a few books to re-read, which I usually do, but also quite a few books we'd owned for some time that I'd never read, such as this one. I haven't the faintest idea why I hadn't read it, as Vinge writes incredible books (well, actually, I wasn't a huge fan of Rainbows End, but it was pretty good by non-Vinge standards). And sure enough, this was an excellent read, though I thought the story that provided the first 70 or so pages was far stronger than the subsequent chapters, and indeed I think was initially published as a standalone tale. Even the latter chapters are well worth reading, though.

Recommended, as much for the worldbuilding as anything: It's a fantastic imagining of a resource-poor world's progress toward the stars, even aside from the prodigy that sprang from its darkest interior...

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ze... )

An interesting series of stories about a seemingly primitive world finding its way back to technology, and a extraordinary woman trying to move the process along much faster. As usual, anything by Vinge is worth reading, though this is very low tech compared to his usual novels. ( )

Vinge tells the story of a girl that is born in an aboriginal culture that is very low tech. An opportunity arises for her to enter the society of a floating city and become more educated. She is hyper-intelligent, and ascends swiftly to a position of power and influence. A look at whether her origin will make her act differently in such a situation. With a few SF magazine jokes thrown in here and there, as one of the elements of the story is a publication of that type that has been running for centuries.

http://superprose.blogspot.com/2007/0... ( )

The book is in three parts. The first is an ok story, which was written a while ago for Analog ("The Barbarian Princess", Analog, September 1986.) It's a kind of tribute to science fiction and fantasy magazines, written as an adventure story.

The second and third parts are rewritten versions of much older stories, from 1968 and 1969. I thought they were pretty flat, it's clear Vinge has improved much as a writer since then. The second two parts also fit rather awkwardly with the first. ( )