A WHILE BACK, I mentioned I was reading Vernor Vinge’s forthcoming novel, Rainbows End. Several readers have emailed demanding a review, so here goes.

I finished it, and it’s very good. It’s absolutely an Army of Davids world in 2025, according to Vinge, and he does an excellent job of painting the up- and down-sides of that.

Beyond that, it’s quite a good novel. I don’t want to give too much away, but it doesn’t have quite the sweep of such earlier Vinge works as A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, and it’s not, as I had initially thought, a sequel to those books. It’s more of a Neal Stephenson or Greg Egan near-future science fiction novel, with a (somewhat) smaller scope and scale. But it’s very good, and every bit as enjoyable as his other work. I highly recommend it: Vinge fans won’t be disappointed, and people who have never read Vinge may find it a bit more accessible than some of his earlier works.