The Children of the Sky, by Vernor Vinge

In 1992, Vernor Vinge won the Hugo Award for best novel for A Fire Upon the Deep.  In 1999, he published a prequel, A Deepness in the Sky, which also won the Hugo Award.  In 2011, he published a third book in the "Zones of Thought" series, The Children of the Sky, which was met with more tepid praise but still won a couple awards.

Unfortunately, Children of the Sky does not measure up to the first two books in this series.  The only thing epic about this third book is its length.  The children who were on the stranded ship from A Fire on the Deep have been revived and have established a community of sorts among the dog-pack natives of the planet.

In Children of the Sky, the humans and the dog packs form alliances, using the ship's technology and the dog packs' medieval technology to develop civilization.  Their alliances split and butt heads, vying for dominance.  I kept waiting for this growing culture clash to impact the larger movements around other planets and interplanetary civilizations, but Vinge keeps it all on planet.

The story goes on and on, doing little to keep my interest and become engaged in the story and the fate of the characters.  It only briefly and tangentially makes reference to the larger narrative introduced in the first two books.  So the result is an overly lengthy, dull, inconsequential story.