Ringworld's Children

Rating:
Summary: The most disappointing Ring World book
Review: This trip to Ringworld was a disappointment. The character and the plot development was weak and shallow. Niven had the material to flesh out the story, but, for some reason failed to use it. When I reached the end of the book I wondered where the rest of the story was. This is definitely not his best effort. (...)

Rating:
Summary: Not up to his standards
Review: This was not a great read. The first half of the book read like someone with ADD describing a video game. The last half of the book is wildly disjointed. Not a great way to end the Ringworld series.

A big part of the disappointment is missed expectations. I loved this series. Waited a long time for this book - and it's just a poor read.

Rating:
Summary: Back In Form
Review: To be honest I hated the previous Ringworld Sequel "Ringworld Throne" so much my brain purged it from my memory. So I hesitated to buy "Ringworld's Children." But after much debate I did and was glad that I had done so.

It's enjoyable, the pace is fast and it is always a joy to enter Larry Niven's playground of "Known Space."

My only regret about reading it is after I finished I will have to wait and hope that Larry Niven will write some new stories of Known Space so we can visit again.

Rating:
Summary: More Pak than you can shake a stick at
Review: Yes, it was a pretty bare-bones story in many ways, and far too short, but the ultimate conclusion was satisfying, if short on some of the big ideas that the first two book had (also lacking in the awful Ringworld Throne). It was also good to return to the many familiar characters from the other books, although I wish Chmee would have had more than a passing cameo and his son did nothing to really advance the plot. I also wish the history of the Ringworld would have been fleshed out in more detail by more exposition from the Prosperina character. Good points include the ARM characters and a nice resolution of the whole Teela Brown situation in a way that I was initially sceptical about, but made sense when the lucky gene was factored in. I also liked the fact that we finally got to see the other Great Ocean, and there were so many Protectors in this book I was beginning to lose track of them. A must-read for Ringworld/Known Space fans with a few hours free.

SPOILER - SPOILER

A SPOILER AND A HOPE FOR A FUTURE BOOK

Given that the book ends with a planned visit to Home, I can only hope that Niven has a plan for a future book which will finally explain what happened after the events in Protector, my all-time favourite Known Space book. It looks like there'll probably be no more Ringworld novels, but I really wish Larry would fill in the biggest hole in the Known Space history - what happened to Protector population of Home and what they did to the Pak colonization fleets which never made it to Earth. The tantalizing idea that ARM may be run by a Protector, plus the Hindmost's comment that he wants to go to Home because it has an "interesting history" makes another book a hopeful possibility.