book review: Ringworld Throne

by: Larry Niven

This wasn’t quite as hard to read as the last book – at least the parts without the standard cast actually felt like a book that was going somewhere… until they stopped going somewhere.

I don’t get it.  This is not a good book, by any standards I can apply to judge it.  So much shit just happens with only half-assed explanations afterwards that, I mean… ABULAOELAE.  What?  That’s how my brain feels.

I had hoped that, after a couple decades, his writing skills would become more palatable to my reading tastes.  They have not.  His plotting is interesting, as are some of the characters but it’s like everything connecting them never quite reaches the other hand.  I’m done.

I mean, it’s not terrible… it’s just not good (to me!).  The first one was forgivable given the time period, and because the ideas were big enough to make the book memorable with a unimpressive writing.  But the second… and then the third… this feels like pulp sci-fi in the derogatory sense: loose plot, shit happening and lots of (off camera, although some of it is on-in-book-camera yet off-camera, if that makes sense) sex.  Don’t get me wrong – I find it fascinating the way sex is a part of Ringworld culture – the ideas behind it are … believable in context.  Sure, why not.  And, like I’ve said before, I really like the Pak Protector as ancestor idea and how it works for (sub) species diversification but, again – good ideas, mostly sub-par execution.

TWO STARS

Not terrible, but not for me.   I know some people love this but I just don’t get it.  I guess it’s like the Elric of sci-fi for me…

The weird thing is, I actually felt like I enjoyed parts of this book much more than the previous book but, taken as a whole, it just fizzleflops.