The feeling is too much of a sequel and it's so uneventful and unsurprising that all I could say would be spoiling. I was really captivated by the fisrt so I went ahed of my self and bought the second and third book. Now I have the 3rd and I have to say the the last 50 pages of this one were already quite hard to finish. The Ringworld was such a great idea that it become the prison (so far) for the narrative and the characters, it's like all the imagination was confined to this construction and

It's taken me many, many years to figure out my problem with Niven's work, but in my defense, it was hard to get around the visibility he had in the SF world when I was younger. So much of what he does should appeal to me: a style very much in line with Analog authors of the 80s; a preoccupation with engineering-style problems in a far-future setting; the great fun of the Ringworld concept itself; and lots of lots of imaginative high-tech devices. I really should love the Known Space books.But I...

I can hardly remember the original Ringworld anymore (it's been a few years already), but I really hope it was much more better than this. I seem to have given it (out of memory, as I read it pre-goodreads) a rather large score.The Ringworld Engineers ... well, if I want to be kind, I'd say perhaps its naive or simplistic. Otherwise, I'd have to rant too much here. Pointless sex scenes, the humans will solve everything (the sci-fi version of Americans solve everything), we'll also figure out vas...

This book is an excellent squeal in that it answers almost every question that came to mind after people were done reading the first one. This book is about a voyage back to Ringworld, it gives much more detailed information on the Ringworld, and tells what happens to some old characters like Teela as well. If you were lucky enough to experience the first one, then you must experience the second.

A Return to Ringworld5 February 2020 So, I enjoyed the original so much that I ended up going on a quest to attempt to locate the sequel, namely because I wanted to find out what happened after the first book. Well, that book certainly exists, and there are a few others as well, and these particular books are set in Niven’s Known Space universe, and as such there are a number of creatures that would be familiar to people who know this setting. Well, we once again meet up with Louis, who has beco...

I really enjoyed the first Ringworld novel, but just like with the "Motie" series co-authored by Niven and another author, the excellent first novels were followed up by far weaker sequels. In this case, at least Engineers fares a little better than the dumb Motie sequel.This sequel begins some time after the first novel, with the same two main characters, Louis Wu, now a drug addict over his guilt from what happened between novels dealing with the Ringworld, and the Predator-like kzin (they're

And so we return to Ringworld, with Louis Wu and Speaker-to-Animals, who have both undergone character development in the interim. We get a new Pearson’s puppeteer, though I much prefer Nessus, who had some dynamism. Niven is now free to present major obstacles in the Ringworld, and he does so within a typical, though exciting, plot. The stakes are high, no less than the fate of the Ringworld itself and its trillions of inhabitants. We get up close and personal with many of those inhabitants, to...

second read - 8 October 2013 - **** In 2013/14, I read the complete Ringworld series, which had come to be four books long. This included a third read of Ringworld, a second read of The Ringworld Engineers, and a new-to-me read of The Ringworld Throne and Ringworld's Children. This is set 20 years after the first book. Louis Wu and Speaker-To-Animals return to Ringworld, to discover that it is no longer stable, and to find out who are the engineers who created it. If you have this book, without

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Wireheads: "The Ringworld Engineers" by Larry Niven(Original Review, 1980-12-20)Reading some people's complaints about unpleasant events in SF (e.g. Louis Wu becoming a wirehead in "The Ringworld Engineers") reminded me of an article in Analog some time back. It was written by a founder of a company that would keep you in cryogenic storage until a cure was found for your disease, or the Messiah came or a John Bircher became president o...

I wasn't sure if I wanted to read this book to start with because of the change to Louis Wu's circumstances at the start of the novel (he's a junkie, addicted to the pure pleasure of electrical stimulation of the brain). But that actually turned out to be one of the more interesting things about the book. Why would a character as obviously strong as Wu turn to the wire? That question does get answered, along with the other obvious question of what he does next. Perhaps his escape from addiction

It started off great. The sweeping adventure feel of the first book, a grand adventure back to the ringworld; a sad twist of fate for Louis Wu, now a junkie of sorts and so in need of such adventure more than ever. Ringworld Engeineers was fantastic and equal to the first novel in every way except for two fatal points for me.1.) The rishathra is too strong with this one. A surprising number of reviewers on Goodreads whined about this with the first novel, which baffles me because he's essentiall...

Like its predecessor, Ringworld, I really liked the overall ideas of this book: a massive, artificial, circular world that needs saving, varied hominid species filling all ecological niches, non-humanoid alien species that act in a truly alien manner, and a hodgepodge group of heroes. However, the main character, Louis Wu, is portrayed as God's gift to any female hominid; if it's anatomically possible for him to sleep with someone, he does, basically. The Ringworld revolves around sex between sp...

The sequel to Ringworld, this has a better story. The characters go on an adventure in which they explore, experience and come into conflict with a lot more people. Niven is incredibly original, designing entire cultures, civilizations, and unique creatures behind the history of Ringworld. This book explains a lot of the mysteries found in the first book, and introduces more. Niven fixes some engineering and ecological gaps that were left in the original, and expands greatly on the plot found in...

(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 de

I don't know what happened in this book. I mean. The first book was decent. Not great, but not terrible. Most things followed from other things and you know, it was OK. This one was all over the place. There were lots of good ideas but most of them were just set out without any kind of proper foreshadowing or setup.Take the origins of humanity (and the creators of Ringworld) - what would be a huge, fascinating reveal in any well-written tome - it's a huge flop here, an afterthought. AND I get ho...

Updates the record on the original to explain some inconsistencies, focuses on wonderous engineering marvels. Lots of fun social exploration.

Far more interesting than the first installment of the series. So far, Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers are the only books I've read set in Niven's "Known Space" universe. The first book may have taken certain things for granted that weren't sketched out fully enough for me to appreciate the nuances of characters, places, events, whereas I felt this book did a better job of introducing ideas from the background shared by the Known Space books. There's especially one ancient alien race that is i...

I liked The Ringworld Engineers more than I did Ringworld, in the sense that I enjoyed reading it more. Yet it is neither better nor worse than its predecessor. Although full of many more interesting conundrums than the first book, The Ringworld Engineers still suffers, notably in its treatment of female characters and sex. And after a careful unveiling of mystery after mystery leading up to a climax with such great potential, the ending is disappointing and little disheartening.This book is all...

1. Some Non-Trivial Calculus As the MIT students sang back in 1971:Oh, the Ringworld is unstablethe Ringworld is unstabledid the best that they were ableand it's good enough for me!People who want the details should check out Non-Linear Dynamics of Ringworld Systems, by Colin McInnes (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/6244/). It'sfascinating. If you like that kind of thing. 2. The Puppeteer Shock Doctrine See, they engineered this disaster so that the Friedmanite Puppeteer government could

This book was... so weird.This book takes everything that was exciting about the first Ringworld book (not without its own problems of course) and veers hard in the direction of the unexciting bits.It was surprisingly sexist - all female characters exist primarily for the pleasure of Louis Wu. In seemingly every other species that is introduced, the female or female-equivalent is subservient to the male of the species - that is, if they are more than an unconscious sex-object (yes!! that is what...