Another vote for Vernor Vinge here - Loved a Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep. Lately it has taken me AGES to get through any fiction, but I read b

Another vote for Vernor Vinge here - Loved a Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep. Lately it has taken me AGES to get through any fiction, but I read both of them in short order - really compelling SciFi with interesting ideas, and presented in a great way (where you often don't know the details of the protagonists and assume they are human initially until details progressively inform you otherwise).