As the first part of the series the book was tricky to understand, Vernor Vinge talks about a universe with humans involved but the world is not like ours. The author takes us on a tour of thousands of years when the world was divided into two groups. One group was with all the intelligence and the second group comprised of the ordinary people with simple or common sense. No one knew when the partitioning was made but they had to follow the partitioning at any rate.
Everything was going properly and there was peace all around, people from both sides knew what their duties were and then calamity struck the entire universe. From another realm, a powerful force came with a legendary weapon that had the power to destroy everything and everyone who comes in the way.
Soon everything whether it was natural or had artificial intelligence linked to it was under the control of the invaders and the problem seemed to have no solution at all. A family of scientists thought of an escape plan for themselves but they were caught in the middle and were taken as hostages. The family had two young children too which made the situation quite serious.
It was feared that the aliens could use the family for the achievement of their own goal so the humans and other species devised a plan to save the family. Quite later in the story we are told about a secret which the abducted family was keeping and this makes the story appear like A Deepness in the Sky and Rainbows End. As for the narrator Peter Larking, the job was not easy because there were a lot of ups and downs in the story. Peter coped with the situation well but the voice troubled at some states.