Rating: 
Summary: Not one of Niven's best works
Review: The Ringworld series seems to drop a notch with each book: the first was a 5-star book, the second a 4, and this one is (barely) a three. I love Niven but this book, I'm sorry to say, bored me. There is plenty of other Niven books out there, so you might want to get one of his other titles if you're just starting to read him; otherwise, this may make you think he's a poor writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Less than best
Review: I've always enjoyed Niven's books and this was no exception. It is a good book. But Niven is known for great. There were several flaws that made it less enjoyable than it should have been. This book is far more dependant on previous novels than any other. You should NOT read this book without reading RINGWORLD and/or RINGWORLD ENGINEERS first.
Second, I feel like Acolyte - I am bewildered - at least in several places. Louis jumps from one thought to the next with less than perfect reasoning, and often without explanation.
Overall, the novel has Niven's attention to detail and, I think, rich characterization, but lacks the smooth flow and completeness found in his other books.
Also, there was not really anything new here. One of Niven's strengths is the new and exciting - characters, places, etc. Okay, we are confined to ringworld but, except for a brief look at the spill mountains, I did not see anything really new. I mean, what does this thing have - close to 600 trillion square miles of surface area? We should have found something REALLY new.
More than anything, this seems like an "inbetweener" - like THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK seemed to me to be just the movie between the first and the third - so where is the last novel? It is good but I would like to read the rest.
Rating:
Summary: Better than you think
Review: After reading some of the reviews here, I was expecting this book to be a confusing regurgitation of Niven's themes from the first two books in this series. Instead, I discovered a thoughtful, engaging extension of his previous work that continued to explain the complexities and underlying assumptions of the Ringworld, both physically and sociologically. Sure, the book has some flaws, in its reiteration of material to support especially difficult plot points, and in its similarity of character depiction, but I was able to put these aside to dig into the careful discussion of how the various species and subspecies on the Ringworld got into their present configurations and integrating new advances from elsewhere in Known Space (specifically, the nanotech autodoc from his last new Beowulf Shaffer story). No, it doesn't reveal as much as Ringworld Engineers did, but that's the difficulty with fleshing out environments, instead of creating new ones: you're limited to filling in holes and working within a framework. That's what makes Niven's work in this book so rewarding: he fits things together gracefully (unlike Star Wars Episode II, for instance, which was tragically clunky in setting up Episode IV). Relax, remind yourself of everything that happened in the first two books, and get ready for a wild ride.
Rating:
Summary: I liked it better than Ringworld Engineers...
Review: Like some others here, I've been avoiding Ringworld Throne.
I first read Ringworld back in the late 70's when I was about 20, couldn't put it down. On a scale of 1-5, it was a 6. I was disappointed with Ringworld Engineers - but how could it live up to Ringworld? Then I recently reread, in this order - Neutron Star (the good stories with Beowolf Shaeffer, and "Relic of Empire", and "The Handicapped"), World of Ptavvs, Ringworld, Protector, and Ringworld Engineers. So I decided to buy and read Ringworld Throne in spite all the negative reviews found here. I enjoyed the first read of Ringworld Throne as much as the reread of Ringworld, and more than my reread of Ringworld Engineers. Protector is the weakest book of the bunch but provides much insight into the motivations of protectors - I had no problem with the infamous "last 20 pages" of Ringworld Throne, those of you who had trouble may want to read Protector just for the backround info. I found Ringworld Throne a pleasant surprise.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book sat on my bookshelf for three or four years. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to read it, even though I read several of the Niven-inspired Man-Kzin Wars collections, and even re-read several of the Known Space novels. When I finally decided to read it, I initially thought my disappointment was due to the length of time that had passed since I had read The Ringworld Engineers. I couldn't follow much of the descriptive passages, and found myself losing interest while reading. Upon reflection, however, perhaps I was expecting to read something other than what Niven wrote. That is, I was expecting a science fiction yarn featuring some of Niven's better characters. What I found was not science fiction but "engineering fiction," and the attention to the characters reflected an engineer's sensibilities. I wish I could more highly recommend this book, but I cannot.
Rating: 
Summary: The Wrong World
Review: An incomprehensible, amateurishly written and thoroughly dull effort. Not even a shadow of its two wonderful predescessors. Incredibly bad. It was an effort to get to the end and at the end I still didn't know what the point of the whole thing was. I've seen better writing from my ten year old daughter. Time to retire, Larry.
Rating:
Summary: Even One Star Is Too Much for This Awful Book
Review: I first read Ringworld 31 years ago, in the first edition that has Earth rotating in the wrong direction, and have reread it at least half a dozen times since then, each time with enormous pleasure. Today I see no reason to change my judgment that it is one of the 3 or 4 best science-fiction novels ever written. If it were the only book Larry Niven had ever written, he would be remembered for it the way Walter Miller is remembered for A Canticle for Lieberwitz. But he followed it up the following year with Protector, which is nearly as good. And over the years he's written dozens of excellent short stories, especially those in Neutron Star. Ten years after Ringworld, Niven wrote a belated sequel, Ringworld Engineers, which seemed curiously lifeless compared to the first one but which was still a competent, even interesting, job of carrying on where the first one left off. No one will ever argue that it is even one of the 500 best SF books ever written, but it was intelligent, intelligible, and added some interesting new ideas to the original Ringworld concept. Then, seventeen years or so after Ringworld Engineers, Niven wrote (or programmed) this miserable third book in the series. The writing is so desultory, so ambiguous, so unclear, along with most of the action, that you actually begin to wonder if maybe he punched a number of coordinates into a super-intelligent writing program and then sat back to let it do the rest. There are so many things wrong with this as a piece of fiction that I won't bother to enumerate them -- most of the other reviewers here have already done so. What I will say is this: if you haven't already read BOTH of the earlier Ringworld books, perferably several times, this book will make absolutely no sense at all. Even with the other books fresh in your memory it will STILL be difficult to understand, so cursory is the writing, the plotting, the description of characters and motivation. The last 20 pages or so, which describe an epic battle between various mysterious characters high on the edge of the Ringworld, are so opaque as to defy comprehension. Who is doing what to whom, and why? And who cares, for that matter...? It's a terrible shame -- at his best (in my own opinion, before he fell under the baleful influence of Jerry Pournelle and the apparently irresistible pleasures of collaboration), Larry Niven was a GREAT science fiction writer. But this tedious book hardly deserves one star --... Let's hope that this is the low point of his career....
Rating:
Summary: Confusing, Disjointed
Review: Let me say -- Ringworld floored me and dazzled me with scale and imagination. Ringworld Engineers also succeeded, though it wasn't as satisfying as the original novel. But this novel...something else entirely. I had decided to get the novel to finish off the series. I saw many of the other reviews that gave it low stars, but I wanted to see the end of the series anyway. I have scarcely EVER been so confused in my life. I felt as if every 3rd paragraph of whatever original manuscript Niven wrote has been simply cut from the printed version. It was disjointed. It was illogical. It didn't have focus. I would read with understanding for several paragraphs or a page and then it was as if some whole section was missing and I was in another scene or another logical conclusion, or a whole different character was interacting with the same character on the previous page w/o any real transition of how. While I understood the transfer disks and they had made sense in the other prior novels, here, when they were used, I found myself often not understanding what just happened. In some of the action scenes with Bram and Louis and the fights using the disks, I could barely follow what was going on, where he was - or even *who* he was. Sometimes it felt as if Bram would step on one disk and Louis would appear out of another -- and upside down. And a huge focus on Vampires and Ghouls -- What was with this? Am I reading an Anne Rice wannabe or a science fiction novel? Ringworld was hardcore science fiction. The math was basically right, the scale was right. It was science fictin. The science in this version is minimal at best. I didn't buy the concept of Ghouls and Vampires on Ringworld. I also don't buy the trite theme that we humans are not the product of an original evolution, but an alien experiment gone wrong (Homo Habilus were the breeders of Pak Protectors? Greek gods were really Pak Protectors? I mean, come on!!!!) Niven, despite a decent science background, pushes aside the whole body of evolution indicating the constant lineage from the cambrian explosion to homo sapien in favor of a trite and ignorant theme that we humans were basically an alien "transplant" to the worlds. So, I have to concur with the bulk of other reviews. If you need to just get a little more Ringworld trivia, or want to finish off every word of the series, read the book. If you can put up with the disjointed writing here (which I did not feel in the other books) that is on virtually every page, you will eventually understand the bulk of the this novel. In retrospect, you can appreciate by inference, some of the things you've read. But I did not enjoy reading this novel as I did the other two. I had to force myself to keep turning the pages. And it was with relief rather than eagerness that I came to the last page.
Rating:
Summary: The Ringworld Throne
Review: I am disappointed at the 3rd book in the Ringworld series. I was also expecting a continuation of the tales of Louie Wu, the Hindmost, and Chmee. Instead, similiar to the second book, the author quickly dismisses characters from the previous book. Chmee is only talked about for a few pages and is replaced by his son Acolyte whose character has as much depth as a bowl of soup. Harlopillar, Louie's girlfriend, from "..Engineer" is found to have died off years earlier without really examining her and Louie's relationship once they got to earth. What's with extensive focus on sex with the introduction of the different natives? The author tries in vain to tie in 2 stories -- the plight of the natives against the vampires and the continuing saga of Louis Wu with the Hindmost and Chmee's replacement. The final battle with the vampire's nest is confusing and leaves more questions than answered. The final battle with the protectors is also confusing in the sense that I did not understand what was ulimately accomplished. Mind you, I enjoyed the first 2 books but struggled to get through this book as others have found.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the worst book I've ever read
Review: Having read and enjoyed Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers, I hoped for a suitable conclusion to the trilogy. Instead I found a boring, unintelligible tale with new characters being introduced late in the book. Larry Niven must have had a wire in his brain, because he writes here as if he were high all the time. His original concept was masterly. I would say Engineers advanced the plot. This culmination leaves many more questions than answers, and I forced myself to get through it, just out of principle. I liked or at least had some sympathy for the main characters earlier in the series. The cardboard cutouts introduced in this book I could care less for. Even the surviving characters from the earlier books lost my interest and sympathy. This is not the normal tailing off to be expected as a series continues on. This is a plunge into the abyss of writing.
|
