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3.56 AVERAGE
3.56 AVERAGE
Just as good as it was 30+ years ago when I read it the first time. I had forgotten a lot of the details yet remembered the name Nessus and some of what they found in Ringworld.
I'm not a big fan of the manga-style artwork but I did enjoy seeing Larry Niven's universe brought to life. I'm curious to see if Amazon moves forward with their plans to make it into a television series. I'd love to see the Kzin in action. Imagine Klingons but as badass cat people.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
We're back to the roots of science fiction with a world exploration novel. Ringworld builds a great world to investigate and while some of the characters and situations aren't perfect I thought Ringworld was an imaginative story. I did prefer the idea of Ringworld over the less valuable character development, but I thought it was a really good science fiction book.
Nice idea, but when I got to the last page, it felt like the last few chapters were missing from the book.
I gave this book a high rating in spite of Niven's complete lack of character development. I did it because the concepts and plot make up for any deficiencies. If you read a lot of SF, you'd better read this one.
It's hard sci-fi written with poor prose. I'm sorry, I just don't get why this is a classic.
Ringworld is Rendezvous with Rama meets Political Thriller. Well, "thriller" may be a bit much. I loved the depiction of the several major races that populate the story - humans, puppeteers, and kzin - as three very distinct types, with different priorities and characteristics. No one group was ever given the benefit of being "best", not even the humans who, though most sympathetic to us human readers, had flaws and problems of their own. Even more, I enjoyed the depiction of an alien landscape, technology, and extra-terrestrial phenomena that Niven creates and describes with delightful logic and detail. This is what science fiction is all about - imagining the impossible, then coming up with a way that it just might be possible after all. Snugging the plot together with the tale of the relations of the three species through history was a nice touch, and the final result of it was quite satisfying. A good read.
I have one nice thing to say about the audio book: the narrator was talented and made it a bearable experience.
The story was flat, the characters were one-dimensional, and the misogyny was out of this or any other world. This novel is supposed to be one of the great sci-fi novels. I'm so glad I have read others, because if this is what I expected sci-fi to be, I would probably never read another.
The story was flat, the characters were one-dimensional, and the misogyny was out of this or any other world. This novel is supposed to be one of the great sci-fi novels. I'm so glad I have read others, because if this is what I expected sci-fi to be, I would probably never read another.