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Known Space (Publication Order)
Treasure Planet
A thrilling stand-alone novel addition to the long-running, popular Man-Kzin Wars series created by New York Times multiple best seller, Larry Niven.
“Ah, the wealth o’ the treasure planet be beyond the dreams of Man or the hopes o’ Kzin!”
On Wunderland, a generation after Liberation, memories of the bloody kzin conquest and Occupation have faded, and men and kzin live largely in peace. But the fabulous treasure of the kzin pirates, hidden on a distant world, remains a magnet for freebooters. Young Peter Cartwright and his kzinrett friend Marthar receive information and map from a most unlikely source and soon themselves fighting the most ruthless pirates in Known Space for an unimaginable prize.
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
About the Man-Kzin War Series:
“[The Man-Kzin Wars series is] excellent . . .gripping . . .and expands well on Larry Niven’s universe. . . .” –Locus
Hal Colebatch is an Australian writer, journalist, editor and lawyer with a wide range of publications. He’s best known in science fiction as a long-time series author in the Man-Kzin War universe, with many appearances in the popular anthologies helmed by Larry Niven. He has created several original characters including Dimity Carmody, Nils Rykerman and Vaemar-Riit.
Jessica Q. Fox is an engineer with a major in stochastic control. She has had four other books published. What the Q stands for is a closely guarded secret.
“Ah, the wealth o’ the treasure planet be beyond the dreams of Man or the hopes o’ Kzin!”
On Wunderland, a generation after Liberation, memories of the bloody kzin conquest and Occupation have faded, and men and kzin live largely in peace. But the fabulous treasure of the kzin pirates, hidden on a distant world, remains a magnet for freebooters. Young Peter Cartwright and his kzinrett friend Marthar receive information and map from a most unlikely source and soon themselves fighting the most ruthless pirates in Known Space for an unimaginable prize.
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
About the Man-Kzin War Series:
“[The Man-Kzin Wars series is] excellent . . .gripping . . .and expands well on Larry Niven’s universe. . . .” –Locus
Hal Colebatch is an Australian writer, journalist, editor and lawyer with a wide range of publications. He’s best known in science fiction as a long-time series author in the Man-Kzin War universe, with many appearances in the popular anthologies helmed by Larry Niven. He has created several original characters including Dimity Carmody, Nils Rykerman and Vaemar-Riit.
Jessica Q. Fox is an engineer with a major in stochastic control. She has had four other books published. What the Q stands for is a closely guarded secret.
364 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 5, 2025
Nice SiFi version of the classic treasure Island story. nice read. Recommended
July 25, 2014
Absolutely terrible, tried repeatedly to get into this book, but could never make it past page 20. Being a direct rip on Treasure Island (which is public domain so fair enough) it doesn't remotely fit into the Known Space universe.
The idea of a Kzin speaking like an 18th century Earth pirate is ridiculous, and extremely distracting. Characters referencing the size of Wunderland compared to Mars of all places is also ridiculous given that in the Known Space universe Mars is little more than a pebble near Earth. I'm sure I'd have more complaints but despite trying repeatedly I just cannot bring myself to read this atrocity. It will sit on the shelf with every single other Known Space story/novel (all of which I loved) and never be read.
I have noticed in the past that anything Jessica Q. Fox collaborates on with regards to the Man-Kzin Wars books tend to be poorly crafted. So in this case I will hope it is her influence that lead to this story and not Hal Colebatch who has written many excellent Man-Kzin Wars stories.
The idea of a Kzin speaking like an 18th century Earth pirate is ridiculous, and extremely distracting. Characters referencing the size of Wunderland compared to Mars of all places is also ridiculous given that in the Known Space universe Mars is little more than a pebble near Earth. I'm sure I'd have more complaints but despite trying repeatedly I just cannot bring myself to read this atrocity. It will sit on the shelf with every single other Known Space story/novel (all of which I loved) and never be read.
I have noticed in the past that anything Jessica Q. Fox collaborates on with regards to the Man-Kzin Wars books tend to be poorly crafted. So in this case I will hope it is her influence that lead to this story and not Hal Colebatch who has written many excellent Man-Kzin Wars stories.
February 9, 2016
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. I have read all the other Man-Kzin War books and I am a huge fan of the series. This latest standalone novel in the series was one of my favorites of the series so far. The story was incredible with pirate kzin and a treasure hunt on an alien planet.
The story is told from the point of view of a boy from Wunderland which I thought might ruin things, since kids aren't really the best point of view to read from. However, in this story, the boy is very smart and not at all annoying. His friend Marthar is an intelligent female kzin that is of the Riit bloodline that we have seen in the other Wunderkzin stories. I really enjoyed having Marthar as a major character, not too many stories in this particular universe have a strong female character. She was my favorite character and definitely opened up the whole of the man-kzin universe to more tales with female kzin in the lead.
The plot and character building in the book was pretty amazing. I felt connected to the characters and they didn't feel one dimensional at all. There were a couple of lesser characters like the Doctor and the Judge that I didn't really connect with but since they were very minor characters it didn't affect the story at all. I really enjoyed the angle with the kzin pirates and they way they talked and acted very similar to the pirates of old earth, just in space!
I had a little trouble figuring out some of the pirate talk and the way that things were spelled but once I figured it out, it was amusing to figure out what the pirates were saying. I also felt that Silver was not really bad enough for a kzin pirate. He did a lot of lying and backstabbing which is odd for a kzin, but it worked out in the story. I also would have liked to know more about Silver and his connection to the Riit family that was mentioned in the book but hopefully that means there will be another book!
Overall, I really enjoyed the story and characters and will definitely be buying this book for my Man-Kzin War collection. I highly recommend this book for anyone that enjoys adventure in space and pirates!
The story is told from the point of view of a boy from Wunderland which I thought might ruin things, since kids aren't really the best point of view to read from. However, in this story, the boy is very smart and not at all annoying. His friend Marthar is an intelligent female kzin that is of the Riit bloodline that we have seen in the other Wunderkzin stories. I really enjoyed having Marthar as a major character, not too many stories in this particular universe have a strong female character. She was my favorite character and definitely opened up the whole of the man-kzin universe to more tales with female kzin in the lead.
The plot and character building in the book was pretty amazing. I felt connected to the characters and they didn't feel one dimensional at all. There were a couple of lesser characters like the Doctor and the Judge that I didn't really connect with but since they were very minor characters it didn't affect the story at all. I really enjoyed the angle with the kzin pirates and they way they talked and acted very similar to the pirates of old earth, just in space!
I had a little trouble figuring out some of the pirate talk and the way that things were spelled but once I figured it out, it was amusing to figure out what the pirates were saying. I also felt that Silver was not really bad enough for a kzin pirate. He did a lot of lying and backstabbing which is odd for a kzin, but it worked out in the story. I also would have liked to know more about Silver and his connection to the Riit family that was mentioned in the book but hopefully that means there will be another book!
Overall, I really enjoyed the story and characters and will definitely be buying this book for my Man-Kzin War collection. I highly recommend this book for anyone that enjoys adventure in space and pirates!
November 30, 2021
As others have said, regardless of any potential quality of writing, this story was an absolutely horrible idea. Essentially, ignore every thing you have learned about the Kzin race and make them large furry human pirates instead. Why in the world would an alien felinoid species, with no history of ship culture and only Wunderland natives (who are Germananic in culture with no piratical elements) to learn English from, speak English in a pirate accent? Every element of this story drags me out of the Known Space universe (100+ stories/novels) with its well-established science, races, and cultures. I cannot even finish it. It might be a fine tale - as Treasure Island was - but it has no part of Known Space. This one goes on the library donation pile. I'm sure someone else will love it, but I cannot.
October 27, 2018
I enjoyed this retelling of Treasure Island. I have often thought about reading (starting) the Man-Kzin series of books but never gotten around to it, so I thought this might be a good place to jump into it (even though it is not considered "canon" by the creator of the series). The character development was decent; the story moves at a decent pace. It has been well-night thirty years since I last read Treasure Island, but some parts do somewhat stand out in it and it seemed like the authors did a credible job translating those moments into this book. I liked the authors' take on what constitutes "treasure" . It has some good moments; it also has some long/boring moments. I did feel like the story might have been a bit longer than it needed to be, but I still enjoyed it, overall.
It does have some crazy moments in it .
I did enjoy the book. I could see myself looking for the rest of the canonical books and reading them now, after having read this book. I know other reviewers have commented on how 'different' this book is in comparison to the rest of the series, but that is fine with me. I hope I enjoy the other books as well.
It does have some crazy moments in it .
I did enjoy the book. I could see myself looking for the rest of the canonical books and reading them now, after having read this book. I know other reviewers have commented on how 'different' this book is in comparison to the rest of the series, but that is fine with me. I hope I enjoy the other books as well.
June 3, 2019
Treasure Planet, by Hal Colebatch and Jessica Q. Fox
pastiche : noun; an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.
If you are a lover of the Kzin stories, as I am, then whether you have been following them for thirty years, since they first appeared, or have joined up recently with the release of Man-Kzin XV, released in February of this year, you have likely thrilled along with me to find echoes of some of the famous movies of the past among the literature. “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “Casablanca,” and most recently, “The Third Man” have all appeared, and there are likely others that I have missed. Missing things is inevitable, even for a voracious reader like myself, largely because I am NOT as much of a film buff as I am a reader. In fact, when I recently read “The Third Kzin,” I had to find and watch “The Third Man” simultaneously as I read the book, swapping from text to video, section by section. I found both experiences to be enhanced.
That is the case with this title as well. Actually, while I am certain that I have seen some version of the filmed “Treasure Island,” I didn't even attempt to do a re-watch; movies tend to bore me sick. At the moment, I'm trying a re-watch of “The Alamo,” which hit the big screen when I was in the first grade at Sunset Hills Elementary in San Antonio, Texas; one of my sister's friends was a direct descendant of Col. Travis. And, even with that connection, it's taking me a week or more to get through it. So, rather than try the movie, I grabbed the original Robert Louis Stevenson book off Gutenberg, and multi-tasked my reading.
Lovely, lovely, lovely time!
All of the pirate characters in this re-telling are played by rogue Kzin, including the heroically villainous (or villainously heroic) Long John Silver. However, Kzin are represented among the good guys as well, most notably as the companion of the Jim-analogue (Peter Cartwright), the kzinrett Marthar.
Her story provides a great deal of the suspense. As a modern kzinrett, she has received an implant that prevents her from developing into a mindless breeder. However, once beyond the reach of modern medicine, she is injured, and the implant is destroyed. That gives her a definite deadline to get the story resolved, because she will most assuredly revert to a chrowl-seeking pleasure device unless she receives proper care.
I'll not go further into the story. If you have ANY recollection of “Treasure Island,” you'll be familiar with the plot; if not, then “pirates and treasure and kidnapping and danger” is all I'm going to say.
Although you can find his name on the covers/in the pages of the Man-Kzin Wars books in multiple forms (Colbach, Colbatch, etc), I am assured that the proper spelling is Hal Colebatch, and he is most definitely an experienced player in the universe, as is Jessica Q Fox. Read, and enjoy!
pastiche : noun; an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.
If you are a lover of the Kzin stories, as I am, then whether you have been following them for thirty years, since they first appeared, or have joined up recently with the release of Man-Kzin XV, released in February of this year, you have likely thrilled along with me to find echoes of some of the famous movies of the past among the literature. “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “Casablanca,” and most recently, “The Third Man” have all appeared, and there are likely others that I have missed. Missing things is inevitable, even for a voracious reader like myself, largely because I am NOT as much of a film buff as I am a reader. In fact, when I recently read “The Third Kzin,” I had to find and watch “The Third Man” simultaneously as I read the book, swapping from text to video, section by section. I found both experiences to be enhanced.
That is the case with this title as well. Actually, while I am certain that I have seen some version of the filmed “Treasure Island,” I didn't even attempt to do a re-watch; movies tend to bore me sick. At the moment, I'm trying a re-watch of “The Alamo,” which hit the big screen when I was in the first grade at Sunset Hills Elementary in San Antonio, Texas; one of my sister's friends was a direct descendant of Col. Travis. And, even with that connection, it's taking me a week or more to get through it. So, rather than try the movie, I grabbed the original Robert Louis Stevenson book off Gutenberg, and multi-tasked my reading.
Lovely, lovely, lovely time!
All of the pirate characters in this re-telling are played by rogue Kzin, including the heroically villainous (or villainously heroic) Long John Silver. However, Kzin are represented among the good guys as well, most notably as the companion of the Jim-analogue (Peter Cartwright), the kzinrett Marthar.
Her story provides a great deal of the suspense. As a modern kzinrett, she has received an implant that prevents her from developing into a mindless breeder. However, once beyond the reach of modern medicine, she is injured, and the implant is destroyed. That gives her a definite deadline to get the story resolved, because she will most assuredly revert to a chrowl-seeking pleasure device unless she receives proper care.
I'll not go further into the story. If you have ANY recollection of “Treasure Island,” you'll be familiar with the plot; if not, then “pirates and treasure and kidnapping and danger” is all I'm going to say.
Although you can find his name on the covers/in the pages of the Man-Kzin Wars books in multiple forms (Colbach, Colbatch, etc), I am assured that the proper spelling is Hal Colebatch, and he is most definitely an experienced player in the universe, as is Jessica Q Fox. Read, and enjoy!
September 18, 2023
Sort of a fun book--a retelling of RLS's Treasure Island, but relocated to Niven's Known Space universe of the alien rat-cats the Kzin. Interesting to see how the author created the parallels, from the obvious plot points to the characters. Always been a big fan of the Kzin, among Niven's semi-humorous creations. Followers have probably done more with the Kzin and their world/history than Niven ever did--but that's a testimonial to how well he sketched them out in the first place, leaving so much to work with. IN this case, Colebatch doesn't disappoint. I was also pleased to see how the author brings in that other nifty Niven creation, the "transfer discs". Colebatch also did plenty of his own science homework (probably more than was necessary) to justify the workings of his plot.
April 17, 2024
Almost 4 1/2 stars, really. This is a marvelous book, well-written and executed on a fascinating concept. I can't QUITE bring myself to give it 5 stars, but it's very close. It's a re-telling of the "Treasure Island" story, with a science fiction (specifically, Man-Kzin Wars) setting, and it executes that concept quite well. It's been many years since I read "Treasure Island", so I can't speak to EXACTLY how closely the plot follows the original, but I still remember it well enough to say that the parallels are noticeable and clever. If you're a fan of the Man-Kzin Wars series, and have fond memories of "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, this book is a definite must.
December 17, 2024
I'm probably being a bit generous with 4 stars but I had a lot of fun with this. The beginning is slow and the Kzin-pirate talk gets a little grating at times but once it starts firing on all cylinders I couldn't put it down. It really feels like a weird scifi novel from the 70's but published in 2015 (those who know what I'm talking about will get it). There's even a pretty big reveal in regards to a piece of technology from Ringworld which is pretty cool. I would say if you're a fan of Niven/Ringworld give it a go, if not you might be confused.
October 19, 2017
Yarrgh me mateys!!!
And a fine swashbuckling tale it is. A Wonderful tribute to Robert Lewis Stevenson, makes me want to go back and read Treasure Island again. Buy it, read it, love it.
And a fine swashbuckling tale it is. A Wonderful tribute to Robert Lewis Stevenson, makes me want to go back and read Treasure Island again. Buy it, read it, love it.
September 23, 2018
Treasure Island takeoff
Really enjoyed this man-kzin book using the Stevenson story as a base but not limiting itself to it. Will look for more of this offshoot series.
Really enjoyed this man-kzin book using the Stevenson story as a base but not limiting itself to it. Will look for more of this offshoot series.
December 24, 2019
Just no. Weak.
February 26, 2023
Characters fell apart a bit towards the end. Space pirates afraid of ghosts?
May 17, 2025
Treasure island. Homage.
I have read and viewed alot of treasure Island variants. The original book is great, the Muppet movie is childish.
I have read and viewed alot of treasure Island variants. The original book is great, the Muppet movie is childish.
December 8, 2020
Interesting, though I feel that I missed the tension of the Man-Kzin actual war, so I'm going to go back and read the first volume. While I was working on this book, retrotv (a network that is off-air as often as it's on-air here) was airing an episode of Doctor Who from the 80s called Survival, with cheetah people.
March 23, 2014
http://koeur.wordpress.com/2014/03/19...
Publisher: Baen
Publishing Date: May 2014
ISBN: 9781476736402
Genre: Scifi
Rating: 1.2/5.0
Publisher Description: On Wunderland, a generation after Liberation, memories of the bloody kzin conquest and Occupation have faded, and men and kzin live largely in peace. But the fabulous treasure of the kzin pirates, hidden on a distant world, remains a magnet for freebooters. Young Peter Cartwright and his kzinrett friend Marthar receive information and map from a most unlikely source and soon themselves fighting the most ruthless pirates in Known Space for an unimaginable prize.
Review: The cover art looks like a gay tiger parade.
Let it be known that this is NOT written by Larry Niven as evidenced by the overuse of the verb, “growled” at every turn. I think I will make a new rule. If growled is used more than 2x before 10% of the novel is completed it will get a DNF and zero rating. I am sick to fuggin’ death of authors using these dam word crutches to expedite scene closure. Its fuggin’ lazy and irritates the shjt out of me.
Larry Niven is a wonderful author but that is where the similarities end with this installment. Larry hand feeds these dopes the story-line with creative license and they bungle it with poor character development and the whole “growled” thing. Backstories at various descriptive levels is lazy, and just so happens to be a part of the conversation. Like they have to tell each other what they both already know. Riiiiiiight.
So a Kzin tiger space pirate who talks like a frickin’ human earth pirate and drinks rum, strolls into a human village and suddenly everyone is off to a distant galaxy to find Space Pirate Tiger Treasure. Really? It is that fast. One day they are fighting ‘ye olde pirates of Katmandu, ARRRRGGGHHH!!!!, er….meow??’ and the next they are on a spaceship to “fin yeh olde space treasure, aye”.
Besides the ridiculousness of giant warring space tigers that behave like drunk piratical Klingons speaking like Captain Barobossa, we have Peter the human who is dumber than a bag of hammers and bounces around with no real assertive intelligence. And how is this guy supposed to carry the novels load? With a frickin’ amulet a dying space tiger/pirate gave him. His best friend, Marthar, a Kzin princess?? has this super secret royal family lineage that enables them to go anywhere in the galaxy without little monetary effort. But she chooses to live in a backwater town, on a backwater planet in a backwater galaxy. Fug. The bad space pirate, Silver, speaks in this olde pirate English, then all of a sudden it is switched off during a lengthy narrative. Huh? When space tigers say things like “Skel showed a bit o’sense,..an’ e gone…we lives rough an’ ye’ die..K’zarr’s hisself was feared o’ me, an’ be sure o’ it.” Double fug.
The authors kill off 3 of the most interesting characters in the novel at about the 15% mark, then we get dull space travel and tiger pirates masquerading as the crew of the Black Pearl. I would say Larry Niven would be turning over in his grave but he isn’t dead yet.
Publisher: Baen
Publishing Date: May 2014
ISBN: 9781476736402
Genre: Scifi
Rating: 1.2/5.0
Publisher Description: On Wunderland, a generation after Liberation, memories of the bloody kzin conquest and Occupation have faded, and men and kzin live largely in peace. But the fabulous treasure of the kzin pirates, hidden on a distant world, remains a magnet for freebooters. Young Peter Cartwright and his kzinrett friend Marthar receive information and map from a most unlikely source and soon themselves fighting the most ruthless pirates in Known Space for an unimaginable prize.
Review: The cover art looks like a gay tiger parade.
Let it be known that this is NOT written by Larry Niven as evidenced by the overuse of the verb, “growled” at every turn. I think I will make a new rule. If growled is used more than 2x before 10% of the novel is completed it will get a DNF and zero rating. I am sick to fuggin’ death of authors using these dam word crutches to expedite scene closure. Its fuggin’ lazy and irritates the shjt out of me.
Larry Niven is a wonderful author but that is where the similarities end with this installment. Larry hand feeds these dopes the story-line with creative license and they bungle it with poor character development and the whole “growled” thing. Backstories at various descriptive levels is lazy, and just so happens to be a part of the conversation. Like they have to tell each other what they both already know. Riiiiiiight.
So a Kzin tiger space pirate who talks like a frickin’ human earth pirate and drinks rum, strolls into a human village and suddenly everyone is off to a distant galaxy to find Space Pirate Tiger Treasure. Really? It is that fast. One day they are fighting ‘ye olde pirates of Katmandu, ARRRRGGGHHH!!!!, er….meow??’ and the next they are on a spaceship to “fin yeh olde space treasure, aye”.
Besides the ridiculousness of giant warring space tigers that behave like drunk piratical Klingons speaking like Captain Barobossa, we have Peter the human who is dumber than a bag of hammers and bounces around with no real assertive intelligence. And how is this guy supposed to carry the novels load? With a frickin’ amulet a dying space tiger/pirate gave him. His best friend, Marthar, a Kzin princess?? has this super secret royal family lineage that enables them to go anywhere in the galaxy without little monetary effort. But she chooses to live in a backwater town, on a backwater planet in a backwater galaxy. Fug. The bad space pirate, Silver, speaks in this olde pirate English, then all of a sudden it is switched off during a lengthy narrative. Huh? When space tigers say things like “Skel showed a bit o’sense,..an’ e gone…we lives rough an’ ye’ die..K’zarr’s hisself was feared o’ me, an’ be sure o’ it.” Double fug.
The authors kill off 3 of the most interesting characters in the novel at about the 15% mark, then we get dull space travel and tiger pirates masquerading as the crew of the Black Pearl. I would say Larry Niven would be turning over in his grave but he isn’t dead yet.
May 8, 2014
I've dipped in and out of the Man-Kzin Wars anthology series. Kzinti, the big tiger-like aliens, hold the same fascination for me that Klingons and Vulcans do. They're an interesting alien race, catlike in many ways but with a warlike culture that harks to the Klingons. This anthology series was launched from the Ringworld book that featured Speaker-to-Animals, a Kzinti diplomat (humans were the animals referred to in his title). I've gone through parts of the Kzinti Occupation and wars, but many of the later books in the series are unfamiliar to me.
Treasure Planet looked like a fun place to peek in again and see what had happened. After all, it's Treasure Island in space, Kzinti pirates, seems like a good time could be had.
Unfortunately, the book didn't live up to my expectations. The writing wasn't awful, but there was a lot of info-dumping early on in an attempt to get the reader up to speed. I found that female kzin, who before had been bred back to almost animal intelligence so that the male-dominated Kzin society could control them, now had access to drugs that made them smart enough to be characters. This was probably the most interesting development for me.
The problem with the book came down to this: not much really happened on-screen. There were lots and lots of conversations (with horrible pirate-y dialogue sprinkled with "ayes" and "laddies") but (and I confess I started skipping around about a hundred pages into the book) no great action scenes that I could find. And as for the plot, well, pirates will be pirates, which means that they were ruthless and treacherous and prone to having artificial limbs. The book was written as a riff on the Robert Louis Stevenson book, which meant that it was wordy and rather old-fashioned in its construction.
I was hoping for a lot more to be done with the concept and for some tension and thrills. Didn't get any of that.
Treasure Planet looked like a fun place to peek in again and see what had happened. After all, it's Treasure Island in space, Kzinti pirates, seems like a good time could be had.
Unfortunately, the book didn't live up to my expectations. The writing wasn't awful, but there was a lot of info-dumping early on in an attempt to get the reader up to speed. I found that female kzin, who before had been bred back to almost animal intelligence so that the male-dominated Kzin society could control them, now had access to drugs that made them smart enough to be characters. This was probably the most interesting development for me.
The problem with the book came down to this: not much really happened on-screen. There were lots and lots of conversations (with horrible pirate-y dialogue sprinkled with "ayes" and "laddies") but (and I confess I started skipping around about a hundred pages into the book) no great action scenes that I could find. And as for the plot, well, pirates will be pirates, which means that they were ruthless and treacherous and prone to having artificial limbs. The book was written as a riff on the Robert Louis Stevenson book, which meant that it was wordy and rather old-fashioned in its construction.
I was hoping for a lot more to be done with the concept and for some tension and thrills. Didn't get any of that.
November 19, 2015
Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of Niven's Known Space and Man-Kzin Wars. I own and have read pretty much everything published in the Known Space universe. I'm not usually a big fan of Hal Colebatch's tendency to focus on the Wunderland wilderness, but I tolerate it. I don't recall offhand how Jessica Q. Fox's other entries into Known Space have been, but glancing over "A Man Named Saul" again briefly, I suspect she's primarily responsible for this book.
Treasure Planet is something else. This is bar none the WORST Man-Kzin Wars story I've ever had the displeasure of reading.
Besides being a blatant lift of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, it completely disregards and ignores the established behavior, society, speech patterns and social interactions of the races of Known Space. (As well as vaguely and unresolvedly introducing a(several?) species, that I doubt have any place in this fictive universe.)
If you want to have Kzin behaving and talking like 18th century pirates, down to swaggering around drinking rum and waving cutlasses while drawling "avast me hearties!" and similar, you'll like this.
Otherwise, avoid like the plague.
Treasure Planet is something else. This is bar none the WORST Man-Kzin Wars story I've ever had the displeasure of reading.
Besides being a blatant lift of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, it completely disregards and ignores the established behavior, society, speech patterns and social interactions of the races of Known Space. (As well as vaguely and unresolvedly introducing a(several?) species, that I doubt have any place in this fictive universe.)
If you want to have Kzin behaving and talking like 18th century pirates, down to swaggering around drinking rum and waving cutlasses while drawling "avast me hearties!" and similar, you'll like this.
Otherwise, avoid like the plague.
May 10, 2014
Great adaptation of Treasure Island, which I read a long time ago; it has the feel of the story and the characters. It seems to be a faithful version, though the treasure is more interesting; I'd love to find out more about that! Having the Kzinti use pirate jargon takes a bit of getting used to, but Silver is certainly a bloodthirsty pirate. My favorite character was Marthar, but I liked the Doctor and the Judge and Bengar... And I can see why Marthar treated Peter like a pet sometimes...
There was a lot of background at the beginning, but it covered a lot of territory. It's different from most Man-Kzin stories, but it's well done, and it would be interesting reading it with the original and comparing them.
Hey, make it a school assignment; and
that reminds me of the Jack London story, "To Build a Fire," and the companion SF update, "To Ignite a Fire on Enceladus" by Vincent Miskell, which is available as a combo.
There was a lot of background at the beginning, but it covered a lot of territory. It's different from most Man-Kzin stories, but it's well done, and it would be interesting reading it with the original and comparing them.
Hey, make it a school assignment; and
that reminds me of the Jack London story, "To Build a Fire," and the companion SF update, "To Ignite a Fire on Enceladus" by Vincent Miskell, which is available as a combo.
July 4, 2016
Okay. It isn't really a known space or Man-Kzin Wars story. It portrays the pirate Kzin speaking like 18th century British pirates, which I find unlikely as they would have had to learn that dialect. The use of this style occasionally made it hard to read the story, but in the long run was more of a distraction. The blatant violation of known space rules regarding sentient (or semi-sentient) computers and the lack of the psionic mass detector for hyperspace travel were much more egregious.
That said, it was a good, rousing story that I enjoyed reading. I just had to read it as a stand alone book, only vaguely related to known space. Kind of like that old Star Trek animated series episode with Kzinti... the one where Spock (the dreaded leaf eater) took Nessus's place in the story.
Read it, or don't, but don't read it expecting a known space or Man-Kzin Wars story.
That said, it was a good, rousing story that I enjoyed reading. I just had to read it as a stand alone book, only vaguely related to known space. Kind of like that old Star Trek animated series episode with Kzinti... the one where Spock (the dreaded leaf eater) took Nessus's place in the story.
Read it, or don't, but don't read it expecting a known space or Man-Kzin Wars story.
April 26, 2015
Thoroughly delightful science fiction version of "Treasure Island." A great way to introduce young people to the classics, who would not read the original because it is "Old." Lots of fun.
While I have read other Larry Niven books, this is the first I have read of the Man-Kzin War series. I think it is a fascinating concept and I will read some others in the series.
Other books by this author can be found under his full name, Hal G. P. Colbatch.
While I have read other Larry Niven books, this is the first I have read of the Man-Kzin War series. I think it is a fascinating concept and I will read some others in the series.
Other books by this author can be found under his full name, Hal G. P. Colbatch.
June 17, 2014
Great adaptation of treasure island. At first applying the pirate dialect to the kzin seemed odd, but it grew on me. Nice dovetailing with Known Space and hinting at the ...you know who.
July 3, 2014
Fan of Niven since the 70's, this was fine. Since it had to follow Treasure Island plot and character wise, some of the Kzin adaptations were odd, compared to the rest of the Man-Kzin wars.
August 17, 2014
Tiger men takes over treasure island.
January 18, 2015
good book but not great
It is a rewrite of Long John Silver but with Kinz. No real surprises which was a disappointment but still enjoyable.
It is a rewrite of Long John Silver but with Kinz. No real surprises which was a disappointment but still enjoyable.
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