I'm a fan of Vinge's work, and I've had to wrestle a little with the idea that my dislike for this book might just be the result of it being different from the other things he's done. On balance, I don't think that this is the case. This is a book with serious flaws in both credibility and storytelling. On the credibility side, Vinge creates horrific inconsistencies in his visions of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and augmented human interaction which he doesn't even try to paper over. Ultimately, we're left with a world where everybody behaves in outlandish and dangerous ways out of something like inertia, with technological threats that the author doesn't seem willing or able to explain. The initial promise of YGBM almost immediately meanders into garden variety mind control. The AI that's wandering around is such a cliche that half way through the book a bunch of characters have to have a conversation about why they're so sure that an AI can't exist (by the end of the book there might be two AIs wandering around, but Vinge doesn't give any clarity).

But that's not the worst part of the book. In fact, more stress on the technology and international espionage would have been welcome. The vast majority of the book is given up to the dysfunctional family life of one Robert Gu, and how he goes back to high school as a ninety year old man who medical science has rejuvenated. We hear about shop class, term projects, high school teachers... but it's all just flashy nonsense (wouldn't it be cool if...) without any development of the rationale behind the teaching method or the results on society of this weird and utterly implausible school system. In fact, the society is a lot like the technology: it doesn't make any sense on its own and Vinge can't be bothered to explain anything.

But that's still not the worst thing about this book. The worst thing is how completely unsympathetic all of the characters are. They veer wildly between pathetic and pretentious, Vinge can't seem to decide whether any given one of them is a earth-shaking genius or a total idiot, so every character is both, with irritating and incomprehensible results. The plot is mostly driven by mind-bogglingly bad decisions, most of which are never recognized as possibly sub-optimal by the characters (as master spy with a super secret project that I'm trying to hide from my compatriots who trust me implicitly, is putting together an investigation of the lab where the project is being developed, outsourcing all of the work to an unknown quantity and creating a ridiculously convoluted plot involving literally thousands of players really the best way to allay suspicion?) Actually, the actions of all the characters are a lot like the society and technology for the same reason cited above.

In summary, there is no part of this book that makes a lick of sense. There are no characters in this book that I care about. I'm honestly not sure whether there's any reason for the book to exist... a lot of it reads like Vinge had a bunch of random notes about futuristic high schools and being a Terry Pratchett fanboy and decided to round it out with some unpleasant characters being snippy with each other.