After A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, I was so impressed that I decided to go back to re-read The Snow Queen, the 1981 Hugo Award Winner that I read as a kid. I had vague memories of it being good.
Unfortunately, some books don't age as well over time, and this is one of them. The analog with the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale was well done --- I have no issue with that, but the idea of a trans-star wide computer that uses humans as input output mechanism (but that results in the human medium unable to even recall what was transmitted through them) doesn't work as well. (For one thing, where does the power source come from?) I did enjoy the use of the biological hazard symbol and the virus-infection method of transmission, but again, that doesn't seem very robust, and then there's the old trope of ancient mechanisms still working hundreds or thousands of years in the future without bugs seems very unlikely.
The characters now feel like they were jerked around like puppets on strings. I can see how at the time the book was written female protagonists that rescued the male would have been considered innovative.
I don't think I'll bother with the rest of the series.
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