Reviews

The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven

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mrlmnop's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No

2.0

andgineer's review

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2.0

Довольно быстро бросил читать - отсутствие новых идей уже во второй книге серии удручало, а тут еще странная идея сосредоточиться на самой спорной идее первых книг - вампирах.
В какой-то момент стало просто неприятно и бросил читать.

sylda's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

jonathanpalfrey's review

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2.0

This is the third book in Niven’s occasional Ringworld series.

The odd thing about this book is that the first half of it is taken up with preliminaries and irrelevancies; if you want to follow the continuing story of Louis Wu (the main protagonist of the whole series), you can skip Chapters 1–4, 6–8, 10, 12, 14–17. In fact, if you’re in a hurry or rereading the book, I think you could simply start reading at Chapter 18 without missing anything essential.

The real story of the book (as opposed to the sideshow in the first half) is about the problem of looking after the Ringworld and saving it from potential disasters. There’s already a protector attempting to do the job, but he may not be up to it on his own, and his relationship with Louis Wu and his companions is uneasy.

There are various other protectors operating on the Ringworld, but protectors don’t usually get along with each other unless they’re from the same base species.

(If you don’t know what a protector is, it’s a good idea to go back and read [b:Protector|100344|Protector (Known Space)|Larry Niven|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403179200l/100344._SY75_.jpg|2576385] before starting on the Ringworld series.)

I find it implausible the way the main characters in this story draw up contracts with each other. A contract has value only if it can enforced in some way on both parties. But, on the Ringworld, there’s no way these contracts can be enforced.

This book doesn’t really make sense as standalone reading. You’ll read it only if you want to know what happens between the second and fourth books of the series.

(Review written in 2009)

ultimatumman's review

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1.0

Terrible. The first two books in this series were great. This book took an unexpected twist early on when the focus became the vampires that apparently live on the ringworld. It was a little weird, but it could have played out well had it been relevant. On the ringworld there are various humanoid species that have evolved individually. Between these species there is a custom called rishathra, which is sex with another intelligent species. Though introduced in the previous novel, the author became OBSESSED with rishathra in this book. It seemed like you couldn't go five pages without talking about or performing it. It started with the vampires which used pheremones to attrach their victims to mate with them. This could have made sense since this would provide the vampires with additional future food, but it turned out not to be a different spin on vampires, but just another part of the author's obsession with sex. There wasn't any point to this book besides aliens hooking up.

zimb0's review

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2.0

Could not bring myself to read the final 100 or so pages, it just became so boring. Hard to follow, despite a narrative that has a lot of potential. I hear the fourth book is better!