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The Burning City

The Burning City

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Something different from the masters
Review: This book is written from a strange perspective, in the beginning the main charicter is a child who doesnt understand the world he lives in. You see things through his eyes and so you dont get to understand either. As he learns, you learn. I found this approach interesting. Most fans of Niven and Pournelle will like this book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: If you don't like this you don't really like to think
Review: Not all science fiction is about stars and on this one the star system fails - the average is computed but nobody is giving this book average stars - either people love it or they hate it. For a novel of ideas with some puzzles and in-jokes and things to recognize to rouse such venom in some reviews puzzles me - perhaps this book is more like The Space Merchants or Little Black Bag and Marching Morons with more hope and plenty of bite so that Burning City is not escape literature, no getting into another world with different problems no coming of age for the reader to identify with (Pournelle's recent Starswarm did that nicely) but very definitely a worthwhile read - a single malt rather than soda pop - does not leave the reader feeling wow I could have had a V8 instead of some sugar water - this is the pure quill no sugar.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Thoughtful, mature story based in "magic"
Review: Too many fantasies have virile males with big thanus, slicing and dicing their way through the evil magicians' machinations. Here we have N&P showing us balanced, human characters struggling with social dysfunction they can barely perceive. Yes, the parallels are only thinly disguised. But violence begets harm to the perpetrators as much as the victims. Their descriptions of the countryside make me want to go back and see what I missed in California. Science fiction (which this really is) is literature that makes one think, above all. This story makes you think hard, and have fun doing it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Mastadons, Magic and Mer's Oh My!
Review: Far from being on a downslope, this book proves Larry and Jerry are still working at their prime.

In one book they've fit the southern California geography, and alternate history of the fall of Atlantis, the La Brea Tar Pits, native american creation myth, heroic self improvement and a heck of a good story with true page turner interest. I literally couldn't put it down.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Patience pays off...
Review: I am perforce a re-reader, since there are so few good new books each year. My list has shifted a bit, as we lost Mr. Heinlein and Dr. Asimov in the last few years, but I have always been able to count on Pournelle and Niven. From Mote and Lucifer's Hammer on, I have yet to put one of their books down, and for me, The Burning City was another big payday. I picked up the hardcover the week it came out, and had finished it hours later, having dropped another night's sleep to this writing duo. Actually, they owe me many, many hours of lost sleep.

Fleshing out the world of Warlock and getting to know Whandall was a real pleasure. People are people and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Thanks, Jerry and Larry. Stay the course - I want LOTS more books out of you both.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Book
Review: I hadn't read much of Pournelle or Niven for several years, but I enjoyed The Burning City enough that I have been re-reading their other books.

I found it thoroughly enjoyable.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Great New Start for Larry Niven's "Warlock" Universe
Review: I held off buying "The Burning City" for a while. As much as I liked Niven and Pounelle's past hard SF collaborations, I wasn't too certain about a fantasy. I should have had more faith. This is one of their best books ever!

If you know Niven's story "Warlock" and its many sequels, you are familiar with the basic premise of this fantasy universe. Magic is based on "manna", which is depleted by every spell or god or fantastic beast. Eventually all of the manna is used up and 'the magic goes away'. This latest novel in the "Warlock" universe is set during the period when much of the world has become non-magical, but pockets of magic still exist here and there. The authors use the device of contrasting the rare remaining magic with the increasingly mundane day-to-day existence of most of the characters both effectively and humorously. For example, what do you do if you are a magician being chased by a water sprite? Why, you live in an area where there is not enough manna for the magic-based sprite to pursue you. But then, of course, most of your magic doesn't work very well, either. Including the spells that are keeping you alive.

Niven and Pournelle have always produced stories with strong plots and complex, likeable characters. In this case, they have added the fun of figuring out the correspondences between their fictional world and our real one. (If you don't already know where in the real world the "valley of smokes" is, it shouldn't6 take you long to figure it out.) Add in a dollop of social commentary, so well integrated into the plot structure that there is nary a lecture in sight, and you have a book that will keep you thinking even as your having loads of fun reading it.

If the idea of a magical universe with laws as consistent and strict as those of physics and chemistry appeals to you, you will love "The Burning City". Don't wait for the paperback, because this one is good enough that you are going to want to have it in hardback, anyway.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Burned Out
Review: Here's what happens when two otherwise talented SF writers hit a rough patch. The latest offering from Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is an embarassing allegory of urban violence in South Central Los Angeles. The Burning City is ostensibly set in an imaginary metropolis 12,000 years before Christ, but the parallels are obvious: Children are tattooed and recruited into youth gangs before they reach their teens; women give birth to multiple offspring by several different fathers; men, when they don't abandon their families altogether for a life of drinking and crime, physically abuse their children; and every few years the populace is seized by an uncontrollable urge to burn down vast portions of the city, a la Watts in 1965 or the Rodney King riots.

The authors' prescription for this urban chaos is as doofy as one might expect from two middle-aged white guys from the L.A. 'burbs (Niven lives in Tarzana, Pournelle in Studio City): The young hero must pull himself up by his bootstraps and, with the inspiration early in the story of a nurturing male, lead his people to find "a better way." (So that's what the working poor of South Central L.A. need: a greater sense of personal initiative and a few good Big Brother programs!)

This marginally racist drivel might provoke a good chuckle if it weren't for the fact that Niven and Pournelle, together and respectively, have previously authored some of the true classics of the sci-fi genre, including The Mote in God's Eye, Ringworld and King David's Spaceship. It's as if these guys wanted to cash in with a fantasy novel in the tradition of Robert Jordan or David Eddings but then decided to make it "about" something. Big mistake.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What a disappointment.
Review: Poorly elaborated characters, weak plot, silly and primitive dialogue, hackneyed fantasy devices, and no real conflict...it's hard to believe this is the same duo who wrote such exciting stories in the past. I've always been a big fan, but a clever premise and world structure doesn't carry this insipid story very far. I'm glad I won't have to wait for the sequels to this dog.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Slogging misuse of an interesting universe
Review: It could be that the warlock universe doesn't support a novel. The original warlock stories were fun, usually featuring a clever logical twist. Niven and Pournelle really pull off a stinker here. None of the characters are compelling. Nothing much interesting happens. The book doesn't so much end as creak to a close. Looks like Niven's used up his creative mana.

If you're like me, and will read anything Niven publishes, wait for the paperback. You won't feel quite so disappointed.


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