Ringworld by Larry Niven Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Ringworld
Book Review: A Classic Series
Summary: 5 Stars
A true classic! Although it has some mature themes, it's a great book for young teens. Adventure, science, moral dillemas, seven foot tall sentient tigers... it's got it all. I read it first as a kid at camp, and at 31 I reread the whole series over and over.Book Review: A Good Hard SF Adventure
Summary: 4 Stars
The mainpoint of interest in the novel is the world itself, Ringworld. The Ringworld is what makes it interesting. The characters are strong static, flat, characters. Take Teela Brown, someone in the same position as her would have the same frame of mind. The thing is I'd never put her in a novel because of that same frame of mind. As I said before, I found myself more fascinated with the Ringworld itself than with any of the characters, it is fully envision with depth and imagination. I'd suggest that you read Niven's collection of Beowulf Schaeffer stories, "Crashlander", first if you haven't already. It would make things a lot clearer.Book Review: A Great Piece of Hard SciFi
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked this book up on a whim while serving with the Air Force in South Korea. Honestly, what attracted my attention was the idea of the ringworld itself. A ring with 6 million times the surface area of the Earth built by beings who have abandoned it just sounded so fantastic, I couldn't resist.This book was anything but a dissapointment. It moved at a good pace and I hardly had to push through any of the chapters. The breadth of this collosal work of engineering is described with a good sense that leaves the reader in awe.
Having been the first of Niven's book I read, this was my first exposure to the Kzinti race which appear through Niven's "Known Space" works. And here is where my only problem with this work is. Honestly, the idea of gargantuan feline-like aliens just seemed a little cheesey to me. Although Niven works out nice background info for this race, I just thought he could have done better with the appearance.
Despite that, this book has some nice original ideas and even a few brilliant ones. It deserves the Hugo and Nebula badges that grace the cover. Very Highly Recommended.
Book Review: A Spectacular Tale That's Missing Something
Summary: 4 Stars
Ringworld by Larry Niven Ringworld presents us with a rich, highly detailed novel about a 200-year old man who is bored with his life. But when he is confronted with a special journey to a mysterious relic, Louis Wu accepts the challenge. Along with a twenty-year old female, an alien from a race which has been missing for quite some time, and a cat-like alien named Speaker, Louis boards a mysterious ship to investigate a world three million times the size of Earth. Upon crash landing on the surface, the team is confronted with a planet so mysterious and large that they may never return from it alive. This first of a three novel series is great, however, many may find it hard to visuallize the Ringworld itself as the author doesn't clearly detail what it looks like. It often had me confused when details of the land were being described. It was an above-average sci-fi novel, however, and should appeal to most who read it. The character development was well written and the character interactions were well portrayed. I recommend this novel to anyone who is willing to read about an enticing sci-fi journey.Book Review: A True-blood SCIENCE-Fiction Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
"Ringworld" is perhaps the most science based sci-fi book I have ever read, and I have read a fair share. Larry Niven creates a future that is far removed from our own, yet employs our understanding of physics in the most imaginative of ways. A world BUILT around a star rather than orbiting it? Pure genius.
This book is an amazing piece of literature. From the moment it starts to the moment it ends, it leaves you constantly asking for more. The adventure arc of the characters is unbelievably epic in nature. What it basically comes down to is a desert-island story: an unlikely group of explorers stranded on an alien planet.
But it is so much more than that. The motley crew are two bizarre humans, a feral and vicious but sentient cat, and a Puppeteer (an alien species long since disappeared in the galaxy). The four of them, in a seemingly indestructible ship, crash onto their target destination, the Ringworld. This ringworld is a trillion times the size of the Earth! The scope and magnitude of this size is almost too big to comprehend but don't worry: it's hard for the characters as well.
The scale of the book is almost too large to fathom, which is part of the only weakness this book suffers. Niven paints a magnificent picture but sometimes that picture is SO abstract it's hard to fathom. He explains it well enough through science and poetic phrase but it sometimes isn't enough. It too me a long time to fully grasp many of the events in the book.
In the end, this is a MUST read. It is magnificently written: the characters are believable and endearing, the story is magnificently told, and the settings are beyond other-worldly. To kick it off, the end to the book is one of the more memorable reads you will come across.