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
This book feels like two stories stitched together into one sort of Frankensteinish one. The first half is noticeably different from the previous Ringworld novels, instead choosing to focus heavily on Ringworld natives as pov characters. Series protagonist Louis Wu plays only a minor supporting role until the second half, at which point the scale flips and it becomes his book, with the previously featured natives falling into the background. It doesn't mesh well, and the novel suffers from the inconsistent focus, causing what could’ve been two good stories to become one decent one.Setting:In Known Space, towards the end of the timeline, in the Ringworld Era. Still on the Ringworld.Plot:Valavirgillin is leading a trading caravan across the land, trying to rebuild her lost wealth, when she comes across news of a massive vampire nest that's expanding and engulfing every settlement in its path. She decides that the real profit seems to rest in the security business and turns her caravan into a makeshift army, planning a sortie to destroy the nest. Meanwhile, Louis Wu is growing old and sick, shunning boosterspice in an effort to atone for all the lives he destroyed while saving the Ringworld. The Hindmost is watching him wither away from a distance, desperately searching for evidence to convince Louis that things went better than they thought... The plot is messy. The first half is the best part, and it reads like a horror story. The Ringworld’s special brand of vampires are terrifying because of the way they kill via rape – using pheromones to highjack control of other creatures’ brains, luring them into the vulnerable, defenseless state that is orgasmic climax before effortlessly ending them. This book also delves into some mindscrub worthy details of how the vampires capture sex slaves from other populations in order to reproduce via forced breeding camps. However, it manages to touch on some important rape themes, like the guilt that characters feel after having fallen sway to the vampires (when they survive) and the struggle they have trying to cope with the memories of the pleasure it gave them or who they were forced to have sex with. There’s also the stigma associated with rape victims – such as when (view spoiler)[ one of Valavirgillin’s followers has his daughter abducted into the breeding camps and grows distant from her even after she is rescued. (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about The Ringworld Throne (1997)?
Terrible. The first two books in this series were great. This book took an unexpected twist early on when the focus became the vampires that apparently live on the ringworld. It was a little weird, but it could have played out well had it been relevant. On the ringworld there are various humanoid species that have evolved individually. Between these species there is a custom called rishathra, which is sex with another intelligent species. Though introduced in the previous novel, the author became OBSESSED with rishathra in this book. It seemed like you couldn't go five pages without talking about or performing it. It started with the vampires which used pheremones to attrach their victims to mate with them. This could have made sense since this would provide the vampires with additional future food, but it turned out not to be a different spin on vampires, but just another part of the author's obsession with sex. There wasn't any point to this book besides aliens hooking up.
—Matthew Siemers
This is the third of four “Ringworld” books by Larry Niven. It chronicles basically two series of events: The forming of a coalition of various hominid/human races to battle against a proliferating vampire race, and the further adventures of Louis Wu and his merry companions, Hindmost, the Pierson’s Puppeteer, and Acolyte, a Kzin, son of Chmee (you gotta read the previous books to get who these are). My favorite part of the book was the first, and indeed if this was the only story in the book it would have gotten four stars. I was fascinated by the ways (Well, OK, in addition to Rishathra, the sexual coupling of races as a way to form alliances) that the different races (which are tied to their particular geographic locations, features and hunting/eating preferences) communicate and cohere in the interests of fighting a common enemy, the vampires. This ain’t so easy, now, because the vampires exude a sort of musk smell which inflames the id and therefore makes one virtually incapable of any other action, especially combat. The vampires are holed up in the shadow of a sort of “floating city,” which one intrepid hominid manages to enter and cleverly get the allies together and defeat the vampires – well, not all of ‘em, so I suspect we’ll see ‘em again.The second half entails our heroes (Louis, Hindmost, Acolyte) trying to save Ringworld (after restoring its orbit at the cost of only several hundred trillions of its denizens) and both fighting and engaging the services of Protectors (highly developed individuals with psychic (and other) powers whose mission is only to protect those of their race). We have many “jumps” among “stepping disks” (think if those as instant-transport devices, very clever I think) among various locations. I found the action muddled and very difficult to follow, making this series less enjoyable as it progresses. Nonetheless, I shall read on! Ringworld’s Children, the last in this series, is next, with Man-Kzin Wars III interpolated. Reviews of both comin’ up.
—Tim
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.
—Benjamin Duffy
