I’m a little surprised that Ringworld hasn’t come up, yet. Maybe I’m assuming that those of you who are science fiction fans are all Niven fans already. Anyway, it’s the best damn pastiche of the Wizard of Oz you’ll ever read. No, seriously, Larry Niven himself has had this insight (WARNING: TV TROPES LINK).
And so, adieu to The High Crusade.
The first one has some fine moments in it. A page turner. Don’t get sucked in too fast, mind the tides.
There’s a whole series, the first few written by Niven, but he came up with one of those “shared universe” dinguses and other writers jumped in. Some of them pretty good. I think he still has approval, anyway.
An interesting series I recently read was the Reforged trilogy (plus Forged – a collection of four short-story prequels) by Erica Lindquist & Aron Christensen.
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Each was about 500 pages and I was able to read all three trilogy books in about 2 weeks. Seriously, real page turners, all three. The fiction is very good and the science is plausible. Check them out if you get the time and can spare $15 for the Kindle versions….
As of this morning, the price for the trilogy plus the short stories is $9.73 (first book free). Hum, Let me get the first book and see if it’s worth it.
Niven wrote four books in the series by himself. I’d say the first two are very good (the first one, of course, an SF classic).
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I’m currently reading through the third one for the second time, and it suffers from several problems, including mostly being a set up for the final book (it also focuses too much on a rather uninteresting battle where some locals are trying to get rid of a “vampire” nest that’s become a problem).
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Edward M. Lerner (credited with Niven) wrote the X of Worlds series that tells some of the history of the Puppeteers, and acts as something of a prequel/backstory for the Ringworld books. The last one, Fate of Worlds, also acts as a capstone to the Ringworld books.
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They’re all readable (IMO) although of course none come near to being the classic the original book is.