Man-Kzin Wars IV

Rating:
Summary: One of the more interesting among the M-K Wars
Review: How the hell could this book be out of print? Anyway, I really liked the character Grass Eater, because it shows a whole new side of the Kzinti, and gives insight into who they really are. You see that even the mightiest warriors among them are not fearless, but are basically brutalized from birth into constant fights for survival that is the basis for their entire society. I liked it.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: If you like Sci-Fi and you like Space, then You've GOT to read Larry Niven's Man Kzin books. He's gotten together with scientists and over 20 writers and created a so-fi world unlike any that's ever been created.

His sci-fi world will continue perpetuating itself long after he's gone because many young writers have bought into his sci-fi version of space as well as MANY older well established ones.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat different from the first three books in the series.
Review: In each of the first three books of this series, the book was made up of two or three stories of relatively equal length. This book varies somewhat from that format; there are two stories, the first a small novel in and of itself, taking up about 75% of the book (240 pages out of 310). The remaining 70 pages are a story more similar to the others we've seen in the series, perhaps a bit shorter.

Both of the stories in this book are excellent, particularly the longer first story ("Survivor", by Donald Kingsbury). I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone not familiar with the basic concept of Kzinti, a race of spacefaring carnivorous cats, constantly at war with us omnivorous monkeys and constantly losing in the long run because we monkeys are capable of THINKING about the long run, whereas Kzinti consider it shameful to be so cautious as to excercise forethought and planning. (Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it conveys the spirit of the situation.) Still, it isn't necessary to have read all of the previous three collections to appreciate this one; granted, the first story refers back to some events in a story in volume three, but if you didn't know that, you would probably simply assume that the events glossed over were events of tangential importance to this story, and you'd be correct.

This is my favorite of the series so far, even if the ending to the second story was somewhat less than satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Kzinti "cats" at all-out war with human "monkey-boys"
Review: Similar to Man-Kzin Wars I through VI: many excellent stories about Kzinti and humans at war across interstellar space. Did I mention that Kzinti telepaths go mad interrogating human vegetarians? Or that human prisoners are considered additions to the meat larder? Or that Kzinti women are not even sentient? This is _not_ for kiddies. Ironically, Niven goes far out of his way in the introduction to Man-Kzin Wars IV to criticize a parody of his work and claim ownership of "his" fictional universe. "The Only Fair Game" (an explicit work involving S&M and homosexuality) may be found on the author's webpage at http://www.halcyon.com/elf/other/