[bkcooper]

Well, the characters are stuck on a primitive planet in the Slow Zone so if you go in expecting Space Opera then you’ll be disappointed.

Except half of Fire Upon the Deep was characters on the same planet but it was actually cool. The first two books are definitely among my favorite sci-fi of all time, the third one was a dud.

My main gripe is that these three books all share the same trope that underpins one of the major subplots: glib, charming politician type is scheming, eeeeevil. In the first two books, there's enough novelty (how the Tines and Spiders work, programming as archaeology, localizer mania) to make up for that. But I don't really think the third book adds much in the same way, and it is also very clearly building to a confrontation that will happen in a future book. So the staleness is much more noticeable

[throw1234651234]

Does anyone know if he got started on another book in the series?

[db48x]

Yes, I recall that he started writing one about the invasion of the Emergency, but it was too depressing and he abandoned it.