Customer Reviews

Destroyer of Worlds

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For many years, in interviews and essays, Larry Niven has recognized one of the major consequences of the stories in the Known Space universe he has created. In Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven, he has postulated a doomsday explosion at the core of the Milky Way, in which a chain of supernovae has created an expanding cloud of deadly radiation and atomic particles expanding from the galactic core. In Protector, he postulated the Pak, a vicious, deadly, xenophobic species - and our ancestors - located in a solar system near the galactic core. Clearly, the Pak would be visited upon Known Space. In Destroyer of Worlds, it finally happens.

Niven and Lerner may have very well written the "Worlds" series to build to this novel. Certainly, plot elements like the Gw'oth were first developed in Fleet of Worlds. But the much-abused Sigmund Ausfaller, paranoid ex-cop, must now deal with an epoch-class crisis: invasion by the migrating Pak fleets, who will not tolerate any threat, however slight, to their species; who regard every other species as an enemy that must be destroyed; and who have spread disaster and death in an expanding cone approaching the worlds of our heroes.

Ausfaller and the people of New Terra must find a way to destroy of divert an enemy that has no central command, that takes xenophobia to a whole new level, and is "scary smart" as well.

It's a great yarn, well told, and as a bonus clears up a number of plot threads that have been troubling Niven fans for decades.

But it only gets four stars because there are some points where the reader's willing suspension of disbelief gets stress-tested. Chief among those points is the idea that the enemies - there are lots of enemies - who have technology a millennia beyond ours - cannot detect the Puppeteer's Kempler Rosette of planets, even red-shifted by its velocity. Current astronomy can detect planets orbiting stars 50 light years away. I suppose it's the Rule of Plot, but the technologically advanced Pak never detect the Puppeteers' worlds.

Apart from those lapses, this is a Niven story like those we got 20-25 years ago. The combination of Niven and Lerner is greater than either alone. It's a compelling read, generally consistent with what we have always been told about Known Space (the failure of the colony of Home being one small lapse), and a terrifically plotted resolution. It's especially welcome after the relatively weak Juggler of Worlds.

Recommended; strongly recommended to fans of Larry Niven.

Destroyer of Worlds is the third book by Niven and Lerner to extend the story of Niven's Known Space universe, following Fleet of Worlds and Juggler of Worlds.

This book deals with the threat of the Pak species introduced in Larry Niven's book "The Protector". The final migration of the Pak away from the galactic core and toward known space is fast approaching and as bad luck would have it the path they chose will pass through the fleet of worlds in a few years. This book is a mad scramble to deal with this threat by the species of the Fleet of Worlds and it's neighbors. The story follows several scouting and punitive missions sent out to find out how much trouble the worlds are in and what can be done about it. The technologies are all familiar from earlier books as are the characters involved. The book is well paced and the story proceeds through logical steps to tell the story, but there is a distinct lack of any excitement or tension in the storytelling.

My only real quibble with the story is the total ignorance in the Humans and Puppeteers of military tactics used in fighting relativistic foes when you have hyperdrive. Humans beat the Kzin in the early Man-Kzin wars using precisely these tactics. The Kzin had much better drives than the Pak, and possibly more ships. So why wouldn't they know about how to fight this way?

In my opinion, the authors made the Pak character and the Puppeteers much less intelligent than earlier books have implied, replacing their role in this book with the Gw'oth species introduced in the first book in this series. I guess they needed an explanation for why the Pak was unable to escape, but why not leave him in stasis?

This book is a quick read, giving another glimpse at the Known Space universe, and is a step up in quality from the previous book. The quality is around the average of the Man-Kzin wars books. Longtime Niven fans will probably enjoy it, though new readers would be better off reading some of Niven's classics.

Larry Niven was one of my favorite SF authors in the mid to late 1970s. Interesting speculations about the impact of technology on human society, and interesting alien races were two of the strengths that characterized his writings. The Beowulf Schaeffer series, the ARM series (Gil Hamilton) and yes, even Ringworld, were solid SF triumphs by Niven.

But in the 1980s and later, Niven's writing changed, and not for the better. Part of the problem seems to be that every single thing he writes is in collaboration with some other SF author, and I really wonder how much of these titles are written by Niven. Perhaps not much, given the lack of zip that almost all of Niven's offerings of the past two decades have had.

This novel is no exception. It is lifeless and slow-moving. Pursuant to many other novels and short stories that Niven published, the Galactic Core is exploding, and the Puppeteers are moving out of the Galaxy at lightspeed. Other races are following, this time the xenophobic Pak. That is what this story is about. The novel meanders along while the protagonists try to figure out what to do about the Pak, who are threatening the Puppeteer worlds and the world of New Terra, a human client world of the Puppeteers. More would be telling, but really there is not much to tell. If the G'wok were as intelligent as this novel makes them out to be, they would solve this problem before breakfast. Highly implausible.

I gave this one two stars. Three would have been dishonest from my perspective. I respect that some of the other reviewers here have been kinder, but I cannot be. RJB.

Although the races in this book are familiar to anyone who has read of Known Space or Ringworld, there is a rich new complexity to them all. The Pak, whose overarching militancy has only been portrayed in limited setting up till now, come to vivid life as several dominant tribes of truly deadly xenophobes who will destroy everyone in their paths, including eachother. Galactic locusts on a grand scale.

The first two books in this series were a marvelous setup for this finale. Niven and Lerner have sharpened their prose and delivered the kind of rich tapestry that the first two books only hinted at.

The Gwo'th, a new species first encountered in Fleet of Worlds, have reached out to contact the Concordance, a fact which causes great alarm for the Puppeteers. They come with some bad news: the Concordance is in the path of a tremendous invasion fleet coming at them from the galactic core. Sigmund Ausfaller, former ARM on earth, now the head of New Terra's secret police, must deal with the incoming threat using the preternaturally brilliant Gwo'th as his untrusted allies, within the delicate framework of Colonist-Concordance relations. In other words, everything is going off the rails at once.

The book also ties into, and expands upon, Niven's book Protector. For anyone who ever wondered what happened at the conclusion of that story, an epilogue of sorts is an integral part of Destroyer of Worlds.

Ausfaller has his work cut out for him. And he gets the kind of up-close and personal view of the Pak that can truly inspire a paranoid for another thousand years.

It's a real treat to read a book that so neatly balances marvels of hard science with stimulating and thought-provoking interspecies dynamics featuring dynamic characters. This book fires on all cylinders.

Compared to Ringworld, Destroyer of Worlds is a much better book, the work of two writers in their primes, though the backstory from the previous two books in the series certainly helps in enjoying this, the payoff. And the story is obviously not done yet. (SPOILER?) It's obvious that at some point in the future, Sigmund Ausfaller will become a protector. Personally, I can't wait to read about it.

"Destroyer of Worlds" is the 3rd of Niven's & Lerner's "Before the Discovery of the Ringworld" set of books (Fleet of Worlds, Juggler of Worlds). The writing and tone are very similar to that of "Fleet of Worlds" (and, thus, better than that of "Juggler of Worlds" -- but there's no way to get to this book without having read "Juggler"). Overall, I found the book well-paced, interesting, and enjoyable. But, I do have a few quibbles with it. First, though the main plot does get tied up, it doesn't feel like a very satisfactory solution (it's a bit abrupt, given what it took to get there). Second, there are several other plot elements that are just left hanging (I wish authors would write self-contained, complete books and let their writing abilities and their universes bring readers back on their own accord). And, finally, I don't understand why the authors ignore the tremendous tactical advantages a hyperspace jumping ship would have over regular space ships in a battle. It just seems to me that dropping out of hyperspace with a high relative delta-v to another ship, dropping a rock on an intersecting path, popping back into hyperspace after a couple of microseconds in regular space, and then repeating the process as needed is a pretty obvious and strong capability. But, those are fairly small problems considering that I highly enjoyed reading the book. So, I still rate the book at a Very Good 4 stars out of 5. If you liked "Fleet of Worlds," you should like this one.

While these novels might not rival some of Niven's earlier work, they are certainly an improvement over some of his later writing. I have enjoyed all of them and am willing to cut the author some slack. (After all, I gave him a large glass of heated brandy and seated him on a windowsill in a very high room of a hotel at a Bay Area Science Fiction Convention shortly after the publication of 'Inferno'...) ;o)

this is by far the best Known Space story (and one of the best Niven stories of any kind) I've read since Ringworld Engineers back in 1979. It's got the grand sweep of classic space opera, lots of alien species, fun hard-science problems to solve, and just a general sensuwunda to it that's been sorely lacking from Niven's output for a long time. The only one of his books in the last 30 years that imho even comes close in entertainment value is Saturn's Race.

Addressing a couple of gripes other reviewers have made (MILD SPOILERS):

* the humans on New Terra don't even know about the Man-Kzin wars, and the Puppeteers have to be very careful about how much they reveal to the humans about their history. And what worked for the humans against the Kzinti wouldn't necessarily occur to Puppeteers, it's not in their nature.

* the Gw'o'th are literally learning all this as they go along, and neither the humans nor the Puppeteers have any inkling that the "squids" are catching up until it's way too late.

For those reading this who enjoyed Fleet and Juggler, getting this one is a no-brainer. For those who were underwhelmed, you'll be very pleasantly surprised by Destroyer.

There are a good number of reviews here, so I will not assume this is the only one being read. My only comment is that the more negative reviewers are right that this book, like the others written with Lerner, is a bit plodding. The characters are only fairly well developed, and the story just shouldn't take 400 pages+ to unfold. Having said that, I found this and its companions in this series much better than the Man/Kzin knockoffs and just everything, with the sole exception of the The Mote in God's Eye, which was a quite good book, that Niven wrote in collaboration with others, or for that matter by himself, since the early 70s.

If you like stories about a spacefaring future with devious aliens, fabulous technology, and brilliant (but flawed) humans. you'll love Destroyer of Worlds. Sigmund Ausfaller is a very engaging character, and the Puppeteers are great fun, as always. Alien characters that are truly alien, yet understandable, are hard to depict so smoothly in a novel-length work, but these authors make it look easy. I think I would've spaced the Pak after his first escape attempt, but I'm more bloody-minded than Niven and Lerner. I wish I lived in this future.

As others have noted, this is something Niven fans have wanted for a long time, a prequel series that can be used to tie up a LOT of loose ends in the Known Space world. This is an entertaining book, at times, and at other times it is just screamingly frustrating.

Without too many spoilers, at one point a Pak is captive on a human/Puppeteer ship. His behavior, and those of his captors is by turns brilliant and utterly stupid. Who let's a captive make multiple escape attempts when he's using technologies they don't see or understand? The Pak alternates being ruthless and insipid. These and other plot inconsistencies really weaken the book.

Niven's later work is like Heinlein's later work, okay, but with nothing like the inspiration of the early stuff.

I can't recommend this to anyone by diehard Niven fans.