Тронът

Ringworld #3

by Larry Niven

Огромният Пръстенов свят е спасен, но спокойствието отново се оказва измамно. Пазителите, произхождащи от различни раси, са се вкопчили в безмилостна схватка, за да решат кой ще властва над него. Племената, с които търгува Народът на машините, трябва да обединят силите си, за да се преборят с напастта на неспирно множащите се вампири. И никой не подозира, че скоро звездните империи на хората и кзинтите ще се намесят в борбата за Трона…

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Space Opera, Audiobook, Science Fiction Fantasy, Ebooks

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Laurence van Cott Niven's best known work is Ringworld (Ringworld, #1) (1970), which received the Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. The creation of thoroughly worked-out alien species, which are very different from humans both physically and mentally, is recognized as one of Niven's main strengths.

Niven also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure stories. His fantasy includes The Magic Goes Away series, which utilizes an exhaustible resource, called Mana, to make the magic a non-renewable resource.

Niven created an alien species, the Kzin, which were featured in a series of twelve collection books, the Man-Kzin Wars. He co-authored a number of novels with Jerry Pournelle. In fact, much of his writing since the 1970s has been in collaboration, particularly with Pournelle, Steven Barnes, Brenda Cooper, or Edward M. Lerner.

He briefly attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics (with a minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, in 1962. He did a year of graduate work in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has since lived in Los Angeles suburbs, including Chatsworth and Tarzana, as a full-time writer. He married Marilyn Joyce "Fuzzy Pink" Wisowaty, herself a well-known science fiction and Regency literature fan, on September 6, 1969.

Niven won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for Neutron Star in 1967. In 1972, for Inconstant Moon, and in 1975 for The Hole Man. In 1976, he won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Borderland of Sol.

Niven has written scripts for various science fiction television shows, including the original Land of the Lost series and Star Trek: The Animated Series, for which he adapted his early Kzin story The Soft Weapon. He adapted his story Inconstant Moon for an episode of the television series The Outer Limits in 1996.

He has also written for the DC Comics character Green Lantern including in his stories hard science fiction concepts such as universal entropy and the redshift effect, which are unusual in comic books.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/larryn...

Reviews

[Kara Babcock · Rating 1 out of 5]

Once upon a time, a science-fiction author wrote a novel about a Big Dumb object. It would go on to win the trifecta: the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for best novel, not to mention become the iconic novel about Big Dumb Objects. It is now, essentially, a classic.

Fans with engineering degrees from MIT decided to crunch the numbers and ask difficult questions about how this Big Dumb Object could actually work the way the author said it works. Because that's what fans do. However, the author decided to address these questions by writing a sequel. He included several retcons and focused a great deal on recreational sex conducted between hominids of different species for the purposes of trade negotiations (rishathra). Although it received nominations for the Hugo and the Nebula, this sequel did not win any awards.

Still the author was not satisfied! He wrote a third book in the series, introducing still more retcons and still more rishathra. He continued tweaking and modifying both the story and the physics underlying it, not recognizing all the while that, in this relentless pursuit of perfection, he was cheapening something that had once been great.

That's pretty much the story of the Ringworld trilogy, which is now a tetralogy. Although I won't rule out the possibility that I'll read Ringworld's Children, nothing could be further from my mind at this moment. The Ringworld Throne so thoroughly turned me off both the series and Larry Niven's writing in general that I am in no mood to pick up yet another sequel.

At first, this book was so uninteresting that I had to force myself to read it. For the first hundred or so pages, I seriously entertained the notion of setting it aside. However, I've only abandoned four books since joining Goodreads 3 years ago, and I did not want this to be number five. So I persevered, and while I don't regret the decision (I think it might have haunted me otherwise), this book was far from satisfying.

Seriously, what is it with Niven and rishathra? Dude, I get it: you like talking about hominids having sex. Most of the first part of The Ringworld Throne consists of people from various Ringworld species—Machine People, Grass Giants, Red herders, etc.—leading an expedition to wipe out some vampires. (Vampires, in Niven's world, are sub-sentient hominids who release pheromones that cause other hominids to have sex with them while they drink their victims' blood.) Among the expedition is Valavirgillin, one of the people Louis Wu met and befriended during The Ringworld Engineers. In between discussing tactics for killing vampires, Valavirgillin and her allies have rishathra and talk about rishathra endlessly.

It all feels rather pointless, especially because I thought I was getting another book about Louis Wu and Chmeee. Louis does play a larger role as the story progresses, but we don't see Chmeee after the prologue. We meet his son, Acolyte, who is endearing after the Kzinti fashion but otherwise essentially another set piece for Niven's increasingly-bizarre chess game among Louis, the Hindmost, and his Protector-Antagonist-of-the-Week.

The original Ringworld fascinated because it was, well, original. The concept was new, and Niven had assembled an eclectic ensemble of humans and aliens to explore the Ringworld and get into trouble. And it had a textbook example of the sense of wonder that good science-fiction novels, especially those with Big Dumb Objects, can evoke. Niven, if nothing else, is great at discussing scale, and the Ringworld can make one feel small and insignificant.

Even The Ringworld Engineers had its strong points. Niven upgraded the Ringworld's backstory, positing a new species as the engineers and giving Louis a truly enormous problem to solve. Though he is successful in the end, he does so at (he thinks) a terrible price. And so when The Ringworld Throne opens, we see a tired Louis Wu ready to retreat into his autumn years. He is going to strike off across the Ringworld alone, without any boosterspice to keep him young, determined to age and die normally. This story alone would be intriguing, but Niven does not leave well enough alone and insists on including the parallel story of Valavirgillin's Vampire Slayers.

In addition to the unnecessary emphasis on rishathra, this storyline feels so out of place in a science-fiction novel. Yes, there are various non-human species, but most of the technology is medieval or just barely industrial, and the threat is just vampires. If the book had been published last year, we might be able to accuse Niven of riding the vampire craze set off by those novels you've all heard about. As it is, I have trouble understanding the point to this entire storyline. And I don't know if it's just because the story failed to entice me whatsoever, but I had a very difficult time following the order of events and keeping track of who was who. There were times when I just skimmed the pages until I reached a chapter with Louis Wu and read from there.

Unfortunately, Louis' story doesn't make much more sense. He enters into some sort of contractual arrangement with yet another Protector, and they then engage in a test of wills/minds, jockeying for superiority while the Hindmost whines about stepping discs. Although more nominally science-fictional than Valavirgillin's story, this plot also fails to pass the "Make Me Care" test. The Protectors are an intriguing alien species, but Niven relies far too much on speculation among his characters as a form of exposition. While it might make for a lighter touch when it comes to narration, this has the one drawback of allowing Niven an easy way out when it comes to retconning in later books: the characters were mistaken, or lying, or both. So I just don't feel like investing much time or effort into learning about a backstory that is just going to get revised anyway.

I wish, having now read these three books, that I could somehow take everything I like from each of the books and mash it up into a single, coherent Ringworld narrative. There's something good in each of them—yes, even in this one—but it's lost in a lot of mediocre and downright awful stuff. Niven shares a problem all-too-common among other science-fiction writers: his ability to come up with big ideas far exceeds his mastery of the actual craft of writing. Niven is a good writer, but he is a good writer with awesome ideas, an essentially disappointing combination.

The Ringworld Throne is, as I said earlier, likely the conclusion for me of the Ringworld series, at least for now. And if you are considering the series, consider reading only the first book; it did earn its place in the canon of classical science fiction. I cannot say the same for its sequels, particularly this one.

Lastly, for Terence:


My Reviews of the Ringworld series:
← The Ringworld Engineers

[Harvey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rishathra. Endless rishathra. I'm over it Larry! Write about something else.

Very disappointing.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think my rating of 4 stars is quite generous for this book. Yes I did enjoy , once I got into it, there are some great characters (as ever) and the story is far ranging, but despite Louis Wu being as entertaining as ever, I just found I wasn't looking forward to my next read. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a struggle, and I was not dreading it , but I found I wasn't trying to sneak another few pages in before I turned the light out at night.
I had been warned by fellow Space Opera fans, that the series went downhill, and they have, but they are still of a really high standard, and lets be honest, you only write one Ringworld in your life.

This book picks up our three "heroes"; Louis Wu a human now over 200 years old; Chmee the Kzinti and the Hindmost a Puppeteer; from where the last book left off. For reasons, I won't go into, they are basically trapped on the Ringworld structure after Louis Wu destroyed the engines of their spacecraft.
Hindmost being a puppeteer is hiding in the remains of the spacecraft and "dancing" to pass the time, Louis and Chmee initially do some exploring of the Great Ocean, before going their separate ways to explore more of the Ringworld. And so the adventures begin, and we start to learn even more about who is controlling The Ringworld

All of that said, it was good and I will be moving on to the final (ish) book in the series Ringworld's Children.

[York · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, some new "Ringworld " ideas, residents etc., but there wasn't much "story wise" and I found it hard to read Niven's wandering prose...

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited to find this book, because I hoped Niven had something new to say about the Ringworld. Well, he didn't. In fact, I almost gave up after the first hundred pages or so, because I found it so deathly dull.

The first half of the book deals with a whole slew of characters, most of whom never appear again, hunting vampires. I'm not sure what this was supposed to accomplish in terms of plot structure. It was, frankly, boring and seemed to serve no purpose other than to let Niven mention the practice of inter-species sex on every page.

The second half of the book dealt with Louis Wu a kzin named Acolyte (who was a son of Chmee) and the Hindmost serving a protector bent on taking over the world. This involved quite a lot of Louis essentially watching the main action on television and interpreting it for the protector, and I didn't find it interesting, or even see much of a point. The big ending took the form of a Deus ex Machina, which left quite a lot of questions unanswered.

Frankly, I think Niven should have stopped a Ringworld Engineers.

[Graham Crawford · Rating 1 out of 5]

Everyone says this book is rubbish, and it really is. The last third is stupidly complicated - a pea and shell trick with teleporters that goes on for so long the author looses the peas and the plot.

The first half is really a short story with side characters that has been stretched out to fill a novel. I could almost cope with a soft porn alien vampire novella (True Blood in space!) - almost. Except it's the same sex over and over again. And it's relentlessly male heterosexual wish fulfillment - (lightly)bearded women and furries are as transgressive as we get. All that angst over a monogamous couple enjoying group sex. Seriously - Did Larry Niven bug out at a 1970s sex party and decide to (try to) write a book about it.

[Ric · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2013 was turning into a stale year for SF. That summer, I really needed the solace of good, hard SF to escape, if just fleetingly, some harsh realities, same reality having given me long days and nights to read and listen. So, without really making a decision to do so but compelled by circumstances, I started a re-read of the Ringworld series. The publication history of the series was such that one book came out every ten years, on average. And so each book read provided a reflection of a decade of life, the places and friends, the situations and milestones when each book was read. Fiction, particularly the science fiction of the Ringworld books, it turned out, was nothing more than dressed-up reality. I never left the Ringworld.)

The Ringworld Throne is quite a departure from the space-spanning, technology-making energy of the first two books. Niven spends the first half of the book exploring the various hominids that have evolved on the artificial surface of the Ringworld. Not boring, just different, and maybe just a bit too much rishathra. The story is set 11 years after The Ringworld Engineers. The final half of the book sees the action pick up as Louis Wu and his fellow travelers deal with the Ringworld engineers.

An interesting narrative problem: how to present the actions of species who are smarter than humans? The simplest way is to just be inscrutable or indecipherable on the principle that they are much smarter than us so we cannot hope to understand their actions and motivations. As a reader this is annoying since it seems to give the writer license to withhold explanations until the end. We are not dumb, just, perhaps, slower. Niven addresses the matter in his typically empirical way; offline, he develops the response of the Pak, presents the aspects of it that may be apparent to the slower mind, then dares the reader to catch up or keep up. Makes for a more entertaining, if challenging, read. This makes up for the lackluster first half of the book.

Also typical Niven is the deliberate way in which he ties up the various threads of the narrative for resolution. As with the two previous books, he does not seem to be setting up for a sequel (although he does write one 8 years later).

This is the weakest of the Ringworld books so far. However, it does provide a further development of the Ringworld story and justifies the scary nature of the Pak. Niven builds many of the aspects of the Fleet of Worlds Ringworld prequel series from elements presented here.

After examining my feelings about the book, I'm changing my rating of this book to 3 stars.

[Mars · Rating 3 out of 5]

The downhill trend of the series continues. In and of itself, it's a fairly acceptable book, but it's worse than Engineers (book 2). Action jumps around, the whole vampire hunter thing to which half the book is devoted leads essentially nowhere, a crew of 4 (which is easy to keep track of) plus no-more-than-2-at-a-time auxilliary characters is gone, replaced by dozens of characters, many of them with 6-syllable names, most of those entirely unpronounceable...

Random junk words are introduced, which would work except something like "stet" doesn't appear to be properly defined (or I missed the only place where it is?), and which actually has 3 DIFFERENT meanings, and is used in every other sentence in parts of the book. (had to go to the dictionary at the end to look it up - it means either "leave it alone", "exactly right", or "no change". Actual usage seems to be syntactically equivalent to "shit" half the time.

[Booknerd Fraser · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a disappointment. I mean, Niven knows how to get you to turn the page, but the first part of the story is about characters I'm not really attached to, and the second part was something of a rushed train wreck. It's the opposite of over-written, it was under-written

[Jacob · Rating 2 out of 5]

The entire first half the book is completely unnecessary and the whole book is incredibly hard to follow (a problem I had all previous books too). Niven doesn't have a great talent for clearly describing environments his characters are in. I found myself reading and re-reading and re-re-reading things over and over again. He seems to contradict himself in his imagery often and that causes my imagination to come to an aggravating halt.

The first half of the book barely involves the main characters for the previous book. It introduces about 15 new characters that have long forgettable names and you get about 3 chapters to learn about them all. The book does come with a glossary in the back of the book with all the new characters and their species. This glossary is entirely necessary if you want to have any iota of what's going on throughout this half of the book. In fact, I started to keep a separate bookmark back there so I could flip to it quicker. (SPOILER)And even when some of them die, it still felt like I was reading about them for the first time (/SPOILER). The first half comes to a boring and lame conclusion and then you finally get to the real interesting story....

You learn a lot about the protectors in this book which to me, is very exciting. You barely got to know anything about them in the last book which disappointed me greatly. Despite the protectors having enormous brains, Louis still outsmarts them almost every time. There's a lot of fights between protectors but they are described so badly that it's not until the fight is over and several paragraphs later do I know the outcome. I wish R.A. Salvatore would write a Ringworld book. He's amazing at writing fighting scenes.

Not a great review but I don' feel like writing more.

[Joe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really liked the first book, or maybe just the concept of a massive ringworld, but yea I quite enjoyed it. I kind of liked the second book (maybe the novelty was wearing off), but when reading the third book I was totally lost. I had no idea what anybody was doing, or why. The vampire hunting was fairly obvious, but everything else: Why people were making decisions, going places, doing tasks seemed totally random.
At least the first and second books had clearly defined plots "Get off the Ringworld" and "fix the Ringworld".
I don't know what the plot was for the third book. Kill the vampires? Kill all the protectors? Fix the jets? Get off the Ringworld? Kill Bram? Save the invaders? Kill the invaders? Contact the invaders?
And to add to the confusion, Bram seemed to be in charge, and I had no idea if I was supposed to want him to succeed or not, even though I didn't know what he was supposed to be doing.

I'm fine with having multiple plots in a story, I just want to know what they are!

And having Louis and Acolyte getting mortally wounded every five minutes, also gets old after a while. I hate writing bad reviews, but I feel I have to be honest.

[Benjamin Duffy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe it was Isaac Asimov who said that in true science fiction, the setting is the real protagonist. In this third Ringworld book, Niven is finally arriving at that stage; there's frustratingly little of Louis Wu (undoubtedly Niven's most interesting and compelling character) in the first half of this book, so it was slow going for me until the Ringworld itself roped me in. By that, I mean that eventually I kept pushing forward, not because I cared what happened to the people, but more because I was intrigued by what they would find next, and by the ultimate fate of the world. Much the same as the last two of the original six Dune novels in that way.

Not nearly as warm, funny, or emotionally involving as the first Ringworld book, but more compelling than The Ringworld Engineers. Again, Niven's intelligence and imagination leave little to be criticized, and this series is definitely worthwhile reading for the fan of speculative fiction.

[Zach · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rishathra rishathra rishathra. The first half of this book is really focused on that. Rishathra being sex between two different hominid species on the Ringworld. It was cringy and gross but worst of all, the plot line about clearing out a vampire nest that takes up the first 3/4 of this book turns out to be nothing more than an almost complete waste of time. It barely ties in with what I'd call the main plot. The main plot in turn is so hyper compressed down that it's a little confusing and hard to follow. Fuck this book.

[Marin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Though a big fan of Niven's works, I have never been a big fan of the Ringworld series. The setup is so enormous, so many possible stories arise, that it feels the author is (unsuccessfully) trying to tell them all. The Ringworld Throne is the most painful proof of that (so far). Several different plots run along completely unrelated to each other, right until the last couple of chapters. Not only are these plots very boring as they stand all alone, but they also try to wear down the poor reader who's trying to Sherlock them all together. Nobody likes a figuring out a nice mystery more than me, but a mystery requires clues and a fighting chance for the reader to piece them all together. This book gives no such thing.
What it does instead, it gives us a couple of genius characters that piece together a story out of thin air. There is simply no way they could figure all that out - simply because the possible solutions are (nearly) endless.
Sticking to 1 or 2 interlocked plots and giving more space to character development would make it a much more pleasant reading experience.

Another problem that was already surfacing in The Ringworld Engineers is that author keeps trying to patch up this unrealistic world. Somebody notes that Ringworld would be unstable in real world - bam! - author inserts thrusters etc. I guess the goal was to make "Known Space" a viable future (as opposed to "the galaxy far far away"), but it just starts looking more and more like a house of cards.

And while I could even get over the patchy nature of the Ringworld, there's the famous rishathra to give the final blow (no pun intended). While it might have been an interesting (if not very convincing) possible side-effect of such a world, it has become a central plot theme for this book. Which makes it feel like it was written by a horny teenager. Larry, please next time just pretend you never wrote about it in the first place - or start fresh on the other side of the Ringworld where locals still haven't heard about it.

Should I even give Ringworld's Children a try?

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warning: the Ringworld series is addictive. The quality, however, decreases with progress. Still, the story is interesting enough to want to read the sequel.

[Tomislav · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the sequel to Larry Niven's award-winning Ringworld, and his pretty-good Ringworld Engineers. I re-read those recently, and am now reading the next sequels for the first time. Throne (#3) is a big disappointment. The contribution of this book to the overall series could have been made in two short chapters - one about Valavirgillan's war with the Vampires, and one about Louis Wu and Hindmost and Acolyte's war with all the rival Protectors. But the two stories as stretched out in this book, are incredibly poorly written and uninteresting. Numerous characters of numerous hominid species with mind-numbingly forgetable names. An obsession with repetitive interspecies sex mentions, as in "then they had sex again". Motivations of principal characters not disclosed. What a mess. But as I mentioned, it does advance the overall series a little, and probably cannot be skipped.

[Jona Cannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Luis Wu is self-marooned on ringworld, and seems to be thought of as a wizard or a god depending on how primitive the education of the species you talk to. He is not through punishing himself for saving 95% of the people of ringworld by sacrificing the other 5%. Can a god find redemption for his sins?

I'd heard from other fans that this was the least favorite of this series, and I agree. It was hard to follow, and not a great story. It kinda felt to me like Niven just wanted to bang out another book, with no passion for the thread of the story. But there is one more book to go, so hopefully this is the low point.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this third Ringworld book very much, but admit that it's probably not a very good novel on a lot of counts. I don't think it could stand alone at all, in that I don't believe much could be gotten from it without being familiar with much of Niven's Known Space groundwork. I believe Niven collected questions and criticism of his prior work and attempted to answer his critics and offer explanations in this book. He certainly did that quite well, but at the cost of a smooth narrative in exchange for the presentation of ideas and alternatives. I enjoyed the book, but it's not a good Niven starting point.

[odedo1 Audio book worm. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an old story but still good.
I don't think that I would recommend it for everyone because of this reason, new SiFi uses much more advance science with authors trying to explain its working which is missing in Ringworld but if you disregard it you can enjoy the series.

[Daniel Pitterman · Rating 1 out of 5]

God I literally don’t know what to say except: garbage!
Should I be embarrassed that I have no
Idea what the point of this book was? The first 3/4 are about vampires and a hundred different species that I couldn’t tell or care the difference between. It’s almost totally disconnected with the story in the lady 1/4. And honestly I really don’t know what actually went on in the end. I’m not stupid. I just think it wasn’t written in a way that made anything interesting or understandable.
A complete waste of time.
I highly recommend NOT reading it !

[Angie Shoemaker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started this book thinking I was going to like it more than its predecessors. It had more action, more sarcastic dialogue. But in the end, I was just relieved to be done. I got super tired of all the “rishing” (sex between alien species), the half-explained solutions to nebulous problems, and the copious references to the “rutting urge.” I feel no desire to read the final two books in this series.

[Keith Long · Rating 3 out of 5]

Idk if it was just bad timing for when I read this (I was very tired) but it did not hold my attention at all. Very boring, nothing interesting happening, and slow to boot. The only intriguing part was the repercussions of boiling the sea leading the vampires to hunt a wider field from cloud/stream cover. Nothing else really kept me interested.

[Dave Clarke · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first book was great, the second book was meh, but this one is just shite IMHO, disappointingly so ... any novel ideas concerning his creation having long since dried up, and his seedy insistence on insterspecies f*cking being a major plot device was poor when it was written, and hasn't improved with age, coupled with the at times painfully constructed prose, this ended up being one of those book i've finished out of sheer bloody mindedness not the joy of the story, and wanting to see it's end ... there's one more in the series, but that's not going to be on my 'to read' lists anytime soon ...

[Randy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Less and less interesting.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much more sex in this one than the previous ones that had their fair share. Nothing super explicit, but enough to make say “let’s get on with the story.”

This book also told more perspectives outside Louis Wu. I think I prefer sticking with Louis.

Otherwise, enjoyed the story. It ended with a little bit of a cliffhanger, but since it is a series, that is forgivable.

[Laneila · Rating 1 out of 5]

Daha fazla devam edemeyeceğim.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another fun Ringworld book - not quite as intriguing as the previous two, but very good nonetheless.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to confirm that this was published in 1996; it FEELS like it was published in 1969.

[Jennifer Beauchemin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was so disappointing. Horribly written. I don't think I will continue reading this series.

[Jeff Powers · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this read is rough. It does little to advance the series and by the end you will never want to hear the author mention rishathra again. But the latter half is the true story and is really what should have been the focus. Skippable unless you are a completionist.