A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought series Book 1)

A Fire Upon the Deep is a Hugo Award-winning novel set thousands of years in the future. In this universe, a mind's potential depends on its location in space, ranging from superintelligent entities in the Transcend to limited minds in the Unthinking Depths. The cause of these "regions of thought" remains unknown. When the Straumli realm weaponizes an ancient Transcendent artifact, they trigger a catastrophic force that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Ravna flees this threat and crash-lands on a strange world carrying cryogenically frozen children—the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. The children are captured by the Tines, an alien species with a harsh medieval culture, and become pawns in a brutal power struggle. This is the first book in the Zones of Thought series.