Scan barcode
A review by sleeping_while_awake
Betrayer of Worlds by Edward M. Lerner, Larry Niven
2.0
Betrayer of Worlds is the fourth book in the Fleet of Worlds prequel series to Ringworld. Out of the four books, it's the laziest one and was rather boring.
Nessus, the Puppeteer, decides to rescue a young Louis Wu from the dangerous civil war raging on Wunderland. He tells Louis he needs him to help stop a plot by Achilles, a power hungry Puppeteer, to destroy the Gw'oth, an alien race that has a colony right in the middle of the Puppeteer homeworld flight path.
Betrayer follows where Destroyer of Worlds ends. However, Sigmund has a smaller role. Louis is promoted to main interesting human character, but unfortunately he is not very interesting.
Neither are really any of the characters in the book. It's surprising, since some of them have been around for multiple books and have established backstories and personalities. All the characters are flat on the page. Even Nessus, my favorite, felt like a pale imitation.
Much of the Fleet of World series involves a lot of ret-conning. Ringworld was written in 1970, and since then Niven has had new ideas about the characters, and he's tried to put it all in the Fleet of World series with an attempt to match it up to the original source material.
It works with the alien characters, since they are generally mysterious, but the human characters it doesn't work so well. Louis Wu, as an adult, is the main protagonist of Ringworld.
In Betrayer of Worlds he goes on a grand adventure with Nessus when he is younger, but his memory gets wiped at the end, so that's why in Ringworld Louis has no idea. Very convenient. Louis's parentage is also ret-conned a lot in the series, but it didn't seem as bad as making up a whole adventure to be forgotten.
The writing style felt especially choppy and short. I don't know if Niven was maybe less involved in the writing in this one, and Lerner took on most of the duties? At times it was really hard to read because there was no flow. Just short, punctuated sentences.
I'll be glad to finally get to the last book in this Ringworld extended series. Known Space is a great universe, but it doesn't seem like Niven wants to explore new characters and places so much, and instead keeps recycling back what he has already used.
Nessus, the Puppeteer, decides to rescue a young Louis Wu from the dangerous civil war raging on Wunderland. He tells Louis he needs him to help stop a plot by Achilles, a power hungry Puppeteer, to destroy the Gw'oth, an alien race that has a colony right in the middle of the Puppeteer homeworld flight path.
Betrayer follows where Destroyer of Worlds ends. However, Sigmund has a smaller role. Louis is promoted to main interesting human character, but unfortunately he is not very interesting.
Neither are really any of the characters in the book. It's surprising, since some of them have been around for multiple books and have established backstories and personalities. All the characters are flat on the page. Even Nessus, my favorite, felt like a pale imitation.
Much of the Fleet of World series involves a lot of ret-conning. Ringworld was written in 1970, and since then Niven has had new ideas about the characters, and he's tried to put it all in the Fleet of World series with an attempt to match it up to the original source material.
It works with the alien characters, since they are generally mysterious, but the human characters it doesn't work so well. Louis Wu, as an adult, is the main protagonist of Ringworld.
In Betrayer of Worlds he goes on a grand adventure with Nessus when he is younger, but his memory gets wiped at the end, so that's why in Ringworld Louis has no idea. Very convenient. Louis's parentage is also ret-conned a lot in the series, but it didn't seem as bad as making up a whole adventure to be forgotten.
The writing style felt especially choppy and short. I don't know if Niven was maybe less involved in the writing in this one, and Lerner took on most of the duties? At times it was really hard to read because there was no flow. Just short, punctuated sentences.
I'll be glad to finally get to the last book in this Ringworld extended series. Known Space is a great universe, but it doesn't seem like Niven wants to explore new characters and places so much, and instead keeps recycling back what he has already used.