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.

vacation book review: Ringworld Engineers

by: Larry Niven

Yes!  I am/we are on vacation.  On the road even.  Many miles from home in cities we haven’t visited in years and all that.  So.  Not much time to read BUT I did manage to squeeze in one chunk of classic sci-fi over the course of a week.

I don’t know what happened in this book.  I mean.  The first book was decent.  Not great, but not terrible.  Most things followed from other things and you know, it was OK.  This one was all over the place.  There were lots of good ideas but most of them were just set out without any kind of proper foreshadowing or setup.

Take the origins of humanity (and the creators of Ringworld) – what would be a huge, fascinating reveal in any well-written tome – it’s a huge flop here, an afterthought.  AND I get how that might work – “Oh, everyone knows where humanity came from, ho-hum!”  A better written book could pull it off, but this one just can’t.  And I actually LIKE the idea – it sets up lots of interesting potentials.  Gene Roddenberry should have swiped it for the Star Trek universe.  Seriously.

Anyway.  Lots of stuff like that just gets laid out and then kinda flops around with no real meat.  Again, most of the ideas are fascinating, but the execution tends to feel half-assed, like this was just a ‘phone it in’ book.    Like, if you just looked at the plot outline you might see a brilliant book – a better author (or a more motivated one, who knows what happened here) could have done something much better meatwise.

TWO AND A HALF STARS

Mostly for ideas, as the execution was unimpressive.

I’m going to keep reading the series (I think there’s only one more?) because I am curious about the world and the settings and they read pretty quickly.  Maybe the next one will pick up a bit.

book review: Ringworld

by: Larry Niven

Another book I’ve meant to read for most of my adult life, but never gotten around to it until recently reminded of it by a friend.

I don’t think the writing quite lived up to the plot.  It was serviceable, but still felt rough in some areas.  However, I really liked the setup for the story, and the way all the little details circled back around.  I think that some of them could have been better addressed (hence, my comment on the writing) but for the most part everything worked.   Not to mention all the cool science!  Duh.

I liked all four of the main characters well enough (and hope/expect to see them again), but wished the two late additions had a little more fleshing out.  Although, perhaps, one was destined to be something of a cutout anyway by nature of his…umm… nature.

I also get the sense that either this is the setup for something potentially better, or rather that it *could* be such a thing.  There are lots of good ideas flowing here – a hallmark of some of my favorite sci-fi – and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go.  Hopefully somewhere.  There are 2 (?) more books in the series….

THREE AND A THIRD STARS

Because it was interesting, but not quite gripping.