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bloopbloopwilson's review against another edition
2.0
The entire first half the book is completely unnecessary and the whole book is incredibly hard to follow (a problem I had all previous books too). Niven doesn't have a great talent for clearly describing environments his characters are in. I found myself reading and re-reading and re-re-reading things over and over again. He seems to contradict himself in his imagery often and that causes my imagination to come to an aggravating halt.
The first half of the book barely involves the main characters for the previous book. It introduces about 15 new characters that have long forgettable names and you get about 3 chapters to learn about them all. The book does come with a glossary in the back of the book with all the new characters and their species. This glossary is entirely necessary if you want to have any iota of what's going on throughout this half of the book. In fact, I started to keep a separate bookmark back there so I could flip to it quicker. (SPOILER)And even when some of them die, it still felt like I was reading about them for the first time (/SPOILER). The first half comes to a boring and lame conclusion and then you finally get to the real interesting story....
You learn a lot about the protectors in this book which to me, is very exciting. You barely got to know anything about them in the last book which disappointed me greatly. Despite the protectors having enormous brains, Louis still outsmarts them almost every time. There's a lot of fights between protectors but they are described so badly that it's not until the fight is over and several paragraphs later do I know the outcome. I wish R.A. Salvatore would write a Ringworld book. He's amazing at writing fighting scenes.
Not a great review but I don' feel like writing more.
The first half of the book barely involves the main characters for the previous book. It introduces about 15 new characters that have long forgettable names and you get about 3 chapters to learn about them all. The book does come with a glossary in the back of the book with all the new characters and their species. This glossary is entirely necessary if you want to have any iota of what's going on throughout this half of the book. In fact, I started to keep a separate bookmark back there so I could flip to it quicker. (SPOILER)And even when some of them die, it still felt like I was reading about them for the first time (/SPOILER). The first half comes to a boring and lame conclusion and then you finally get to the real interesting story....
You learn a lot about the protectors in this book which to me, is very exciting. You barely got to know anything about them in the last book which disappointed me greatly. Despite the protectors having enormous brains, Louis still outsmarts them almost every time. There's a lot of fights between protectors but they are described so badly that it's not until the fight is over and several paragraphs later do I know the outcome. I wish R.A. Salvatore would write a Ringworld book. He's amazing at writing fighting scenes.
Not a great review but I don' feel like writing more.
powellki's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
djwudi's review against another edition
2.0
After the excellent first Ringworld book and a good sequel, this third entry takes a sudden detour into drudge and mediocrity. Boring sludge—large portions are essentially people describing what they see on monitors.
sleeping_while_awake's review against another edition
2.0
What did I just read? This story read like the wish fulfillment of a 14 year old boy who got laughed at because of his size.
Oh rishathra, that funny little word that Niven introduced in The Ringworld Engineers to substitute for interspecies sex. It takes front and center in this installment and it is apparently going to save the world.
The first part follows a group of aliens. There is only one character present we have met before, Valavirgillin, whose name is rather suggestive, if you ask me. She is the "Boss" of few wagons of Machine People that are supposed to be traders, but never actually do so throughout the entire book.
They meet up with a whole slew of differing species and I could not keep anyone straight. Why introduce 20 new characters and not distinguish well between them is beyond me. Every time the group met someone new, there was a deeply weird discussion of how everyone could risathra together. And different characters commenting on their size and whether they could do it underwater, blah, blah, blah.
Just about every character gives it up for anyone that walks within 10 miles. The two that don't end up reforming later and are posed to start some sort of risathra revolution when they realize the good and beautiful nature of sharing! I am not even joking about that.
The crew is hunting vampires that are naturally killing everyone, but the vampires lack intelligence, and they aren't interesting. These vampires don't just kill - their scent drives everyone totally horny. There is one scene where the crew successfully fends off vampires, but they are so horny they can't think straight, so they decide they just need to do it to get it out of their system, and focus on the next goal.
Yeah...this keeps happening through the entire book. Niven also seems to be arguing that having multiple hominid species means that everyone would be calm and wouldn't have to fight each other. This stated in some conversations between Louis and hominids, which really left me scratching my head.
Louis Wu and Hindmost reappear in the second part, and there's a whole bit regarding the Protectors. I liked these parts because I find Ringworld intriguing, but in the end Louis did not have a substantial storyline, and little was resolved regarding Ringworld's fate.
Much of the story made me laugh out loud, not because it was comedic, but because the risathra is absolutely ridiculous.
"Mating has consequences. A hominid's response to mating is not of the mind. Rishathra has no consequences, and the mind may remain in command. Embarrassment is inappropriate. Laughter is always to be shared. Rishathra is entertainment and diplomacy and friendship, and knowing that you can you always reach your weapons in the dark."
Oh rishathra, that funny little word that Niven introduced in The Ringworld Engineers to substitute for interspecies sex. It takes front and center in this installment and it is apparently going to save the world.
The first part follows a group of aliens. There is only one character present we have met before, Valavirgillin, whose name is rather suggestive, if you ask me. She is the "Boss" of few wagons of Machine People that are supposed to be traders, but never actually do so throughout the entire book.
They meet up with a whole slew of differing species and I could not keep anyone straight. Why introduce 20 new characters and not distinguish well between them is beyond me. Every time the group met someone new, there was a deeply weird discussion of how everyone could risathra together. And different characters commenting on their size and whether they could do it underwater, blah, blah, blah.
Just about every character gives it up for anyone that walks within 10 miles. The two that don't end up reforming later and are posed to start some sort of risathra revolution when they realize the good and beautiful nature of sharing! I am not even joking about that.
The crew is hunting vampires that are naturally killing everyone, but the vampires lack intelligence, and they aren't interesting. These vampires don't just kill - their scent drives everyone totally horny. There is one scene where the crew successfully fends off vampires, but they are so horny they can't think straight, so they decide they just need to do it to get it out of their system, and focus on the next goal.
Yeah...this keeps happening through the entire book. Niven also seems to be arguing that having multiple hominid species means that everyone would be calm and wouldn't have to fight each other. This stated in some conversations between Louis and hominids, which really left me scratching my head.
Louis Wu and Hindmost reappear in the second part, and there's a whole bit regarding the Protectors. I liked these parts because I find Ringworld intriguing, but in the end Louis did not have a substantial storyline, and little was resolved regarding Ringworld's fate.
Much of the story made me laugh out loud, not because it was comedic, but because the risathra is absolutely ridiculous.
judetheunbeliever's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
jeromy's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
2.5
Struggled through it, distracted by excessive rishathra and vampires.
fmedlin's review against another edition
2.0
The series started out as pretty good sci-fi, but vampires? C'mon...
tachyondecay's review against another edition
1.0
Once upon a time, a science-fiction author wrote a novel about a Big Dumb object. It would go on to win the trifecta: the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for best novel, not to mention become the iconic novel about Big Dumb Objects. It is now, essentially, a classic.
Fans with engineering degrees from MIT decided to crunch the numbers and ask difficult questions about how this Big Dumb Object could actually work the way the author said it works. Because that's what fans do. However, the author decided to address these questions by writing a sequel. He included several retcons and focused a great deal on recreational sex conducted between hominids of different species for the purposes of trade negotiations (rishathra). Although it received nominations for the Hugo and the Nebula, this sequel did not win any awards.
Still the author was not satisfied! He wrote a third book in the series, introducing still more retcons and still more rishathra. He continued tweaking and modifying both the story and the physics underlying it, not recognizing all the while that, in this relentless pursuit of perfection, he was cheapening something that had once been great.
That's pretty much the story of the Ringworld trilogy, which is now a tetralogy. Although I won't rule out the possibility that I'll read Ringworld's Children, nothing could be further from my mind at this moment. The Ringworld Throne so thoroughly turned me off both the series and Larry Niven's writing in general that I am in no mood to pick up yet another sequel.
At first, this book was so uninteresting that I had to force myself to read it. For the first hundred or so pages, I seriously entertained the notion of setting it aside. However, I've only abandoned four books since joining Goodreads 3 years ago, and I did not want this to be number five. So I persevered, and while I don't regret the decision (I think it might have haunted me otherwise), this book was far from satisfying.
Seriously, what is it with Niven and rishathra? Dude, I get it: you like talking about hominids having sex. Most of the first part of The Ringworld Throne consists of people from various Ringworld species—Machine People, Grass Giants, Red herders, etc.—leading an expedition to wipe out some vampires. (Vampires, in Niven's world, are sub-sentient hominids who release pheromones that cause other hominids to have sex with them while they drink their victims' blood.) Among the expedition is Valavirgillin, one of the people Louis Wu met and befriended during The Ringworld Engineers. In between discussing tactics for killing vampires, Valavirgillin and her allies have rishathra and talk about rishathra endlessly.
It all feels rather pointless, especially because I thought I was getting another book about Louis Wu and Chmeee. Louis does play a larger role as the story progresses, but we don't see Chmeee after the prologue. We meet his son, Acolyte, who is endearing after the Kzinti fashion but otherwise essentially another set piece for Niven's increasingly-bizarre chess game among Louis, the Hindmost, and his Protector-Antagonist-of-the-Week.
The original Ringworld fascinated because it was, well, original. The concept was new, and Niven had assembled an eclectic ensemble of humans and aliens to explore the Ringworld and get into trouble. And it had a textbook example of the sense of wonder that good science-fiction novels, especially those with Big Dumb Objects, can evoke. Niven, if nothing else, is great at discussing scale, and the Ringworld can make one feel small and insignificant.
Even The Ringworld Engineers had its strong points. Niven upgraded the Ringworld's backstory, positing a new species as the engineers and giving Louis a truly enormous problem to solve. Though he is successful in the end, he does so at (he thinks) a terrible price. And so when The Ringworld Throne opens, we see a tired Louis Wu ready to retreat into his autumn years. He is going to strike off across the Ringworld alone, without any boosterspice to keep him young, determined to age and die normally. This story alone would be intriguing, but Niven does not leave well enough alone and insists on including the parallel story of Valavirgillin's Vampire Slayers.
In addition to the unnecessary emphasis on rishathra, this storyline feels so out of place in a science-fiction novel. Yes, there are various non-human species, but most of the technology is medieval or just barely industrial, and the threat is just vampires. If the book had been published last year, we might be able to accuse Niven of riding the vampire craze set off by those novels you've all heard about. As it is, I have trouble understanding the point to this entire storyline. And I don't know if it's just because the story failed to entice me whatsoever, but I had a very difficult time following the order of events and keeping track of who was who. There were times when I just skimmed the pages until I reached a chapter with Louis Wu and read from there.
Unfortunately, Louis' story doesn't make much more sense. He enters into some sort of contractual arrangement with yet another Protector, and they then engage in a test of wills/minds, jockeying for superiority while the Hindmost whines about stepping discs. Although more nominally science-fictional than Valavirgillin's story, this plot also fails to pass the "Make Me Care" test. The Protectors are an intriguing alien species, but Niven relies far too much on speculation among his characters as a form of exposition. While it might make for a lighter touch when it comes to narration, this has the one drawback of allowing Niven an easy way out when it comes to retconning in later books: the characters were mistaken, or lying, or both. So I just don't feel like investing much time or effort into learning about a backstory that is just going to get revised anyway.
I wish, having now read these three books, that I could somehow take everything I like from each of the books and mash it up into a single, coherent Ringworld narrative. There's something good in each of them—yes, even in this one—but it's lost in a lot of mediocre and downright awful stuff. Niven shares a problem all-too-common among other science-fiction writers: his ability to come up with big ideas far exceeds his mastery of the actual craft of writing. Niven is a good writer, but he is a good writer with awesome ideas, an essentially disappointing combination.
The Ringworld Throne is, as I said earlier, likely the conclusion for me of the Ringworld series, at least for now. And if you are considering the series, consider reading only the first book; it did earn its place in the canon of classical science fiction. I cannot say the same for its sequels, particularly this one.
Lastly, for Terence:
My Reviews of the Ringworld series:
← The Ringworld Engineers
Fans with engineering degrees from MIT decided to crunch the numbers and ask difficult questions about how this Big Dumb Object could actually work the way the author said it works. Because that's what fans do. However, the author decided to address these questions by writing a sequel. He included several retcons and focused a great deal on recreational sex conducted between hominids of different species for the purposes of trade negotiations (rishathra). Although it received nominations for the Hugo and the Nebula, this sequel did not win any awards.
Still the author was not satisfied! He wrote a third book in the series, introducing still more retcons and still more rishathra. He continued tweaking and modifying both the story and the physics underlying it, not recognizing all the while that, in this relentless pursuit of perfection, he was cheapening something that had once been great.
That's pretty much the story of the Ringworld trilogy, which is now a tetralogy. Although I won't rule out the possibility that I'll read Ringworld's Children, nothing could be further from my mind at this moment. The Ringworld Throne so thoroughly turned me off both the series and Larry Niven's writing in general that I am in no mood to pick up yet another sequel.
At first, this book was so uninteresting that I had to force myself to read it. For the first hundred or so pages, I seriously entertained the notion of setting it aside. However, I've only abandoned four books since joining Goodreads 3 years ago, and I did not want this to be number five. So I persevered, and while I don't regret the decision (I think it might have haunted me otherwise), this book was far from satisfying.
Seriously, what is it with Niven and rishathra? Dude, I get it: you like talking about hominids having sex. Most of the first part of The Ringworld Throne consists of people from various Ringworld species—Machine People, Grass Giants, Red herders, etc.—leading an expedition to wipe out some vampires. (Vampires, in Niven's world, are sub-sentient hominids who release pheromones that cause other hominids to have sex with them while they drink their victims' blood.) Among the expedition is Valavirgillin, one of the people Louis Wu met and befriended during The Ringworld Engineers. In between discussing tactics for killing vampires, Valavirgillin and her allies have rishathra and talk about rishathra endlessly.
It all feels rather pointless, especially because I thought I was getting another book about Louis Wu and Chmeee. Louis does play a larger role as the story progresses, but we don't see Chmeee after the prologue. We meet his son, Acolyte, who is endearing after the Kzinti fashion but otherwise essentially another set piece for Niven's increasingly-bizarre chess game among Louis, the Hindmost, and his Protector-Antagonist-of-the-Week.
The original Ringworld fascinated because it was, well, original. The concept was new, and Niven had assembled an eclectic ensemble of humans and aliens to explore the Ringworld and get into trouble. And it had a textbook example of the sense of wonder that good science-fiction novels, especially those with Big Dumb Objects, can evoke. Niven, if nothing else, is great at discussing scale, and the Ringworld can make one feel small and insignificant.
Even The Ringworld Engineers had its strong points. Niven upgraded the Ringworld's backstory, positing a new species as the engineers and giving Louis a truly enormous problem to solve. Though he is successful in the end, he does so at (he thinks) a terrible price. And so when The Ringworld Throne opens, we see a tired Louis Wu ready to retreat into his autumn years. He is going to strike off across the Ringworld alone, without any boosterspice to keep him young, determined to age and die normally. This story alone would be intriguing, but Niven does not leave well enough alone and insists on including the parallel story of Valavirgillin's Vampire Slayers.
In addition to the unnecessary emphasis on rishathra, this storyline feels so out of place in a science-fiction novel. Yes, there are various non-human species, but most of the technology is medieval or just barely industrial, and the threat is just vampires. If the book had been published last year, we might be able to accuse Niven of riding the vampire craze set off by those novels you've all heard about. As it is, I have trouble understanding the point to this entire storyline. And I don't know if it's just because the story failed to entice me whatsoever, but I had a very difficult time following the order of events and keeping track of who was who. There were times when I just skimmed the pages until I reached a chapter with Louis Wu and read from there.
Unfortunately, Louis' story doesn't make much more sense. He enters into some sort of contractual arrangement with yet another Protector, and they then engage in a test of wills/minds, jockeying for superiority while the Hindmost whines about stepping discs. Although more nominally science-fictional than Valavirgillin's story, this plot also fails to pass the "Make Me Care" test. The Protectors are an intriguing alien species, but Niven relies far too much on speculation among his characters as a form of exposition. While it might make for a lighter touch when it comes to narration, this has the one drawback of allowing Niven an easy way out when it comes to retconning in later books: the characters were mistaken, or lying, or both. So I just don't feel like investing much time or effort into learning about a backstory that is just going to get revised anyway.
I wish, having now read these three books, that I could somehow take everything I like from each of the books and mash it up into a single, coherent Ringworld narrative. There's something good in each of them—yes, even in this one—but it's lost in a lot of mediocre and downright awful stuff. Niven shares a problem all-too-common among other science-fiction writers: his ability to come up with big ideas far exceeds his mastery of the actual craft of writing. Niven is a good writer, but he is a good writer with awesome ideas, an essentially disappointing combination.
The Ringworld Throne is, as I said earlier, likely the conclusion for me of the Ringworld series, at least for now. And if you are considering the series, consider reading only the first book; it did earn its place in the canon of classical science fiction. I cannot say the same for its sequels, particularly this one.
Lastly, for Terence:
My Reviews of the Ringworld series:
← The Ringworld Engineers