Customer Reviews

Fabulous Riverboat

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

After focusing on Sir Richard Burton in the first Riverworld book, Farmer shifts the viewpoint to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). The book focuses on how Clemens tries to find out the secret of Riverworld by building a magnificent steamboat that will carry him to the tower located at the end of the River. This book is about the efforts to build the steamboat, not about the journey. There is a lot of political intrigue in the book, as Twain has to cooperate with others, including unsavory types like the former King John of England. The book held my interest, and I read it almost in one sitting. Since Farmer has literally everyone in human history to draw from, there are lots of interesting characters, and Farmer writes the story competently. I recommend the book, but it would probably best to read TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO first.

This is Farmer's second offering in his outstanding Riverworld series, five books that must be read together in sequence for the whole story. He continues to develop this fabulous world of a millions mile long river, snaking around and around a planet, hemmed in on each side by unscaleable mountains which force all to live in the river valley. Into this artificially formed world, all humanity who ever lived and died has been resurrected, with no clue as to the how or why, or by whom. The books in the series tell the stories of those who are driven to find answers to those mysteries.
In 'The Fabulous Riverboat', Farmer leaves for a while the quest of his protagonist from the first book, Sir Richard Burton, and focuses on another fascinating 19th century personality - Samuel Clemens, AKA Mark Twain. Clemens is driven by a dream of finding iron on this mineral-poor planet from which he can build a riverboat such as he piloted on Earth, to take him to the headwaters of the river where emerging clues seem to indicate answers can be found to this confounding after-life. The Clemens we meet here is bitter, angry, and filled with guilt, and his ultimate motivation is to find those responsible for the mass resurrection of humanity, and to strike whatever blow he can against them in retaliation for bringing him back from the peace of the grave. With the help of a powerful "Mysterious Stranger", who may be a renegade member of the race responsible for this resurrection and Riverworld, Clemens is able to find the minerals he needs, and to form a colony dedicated to the project of building his fabulous riverboat.
Complications abound, however. The first and greatest is a partnership of necessity that Clemens must form with the deceitful and despicable King John Lackland, the most notorious of all the old kings of England. Then there is the need to concentrate on developing the military might to hold and defend this unique area of the river that contains the minerals necessary to fulfilling his dream. And finally, there is Sam's personal, guilt-ridden agony over making the hard, amoral choices that have to be made if he is going to succeed in his quest.
The strength of these books lie in the opportunities that the premise provides for having historical persons from widely different periods interact with each other. In 'The Fabulous Riverboat', we meet Lothar von Richthofen, brother and flying comrade of the Red Baron, Erik Bloodaxe, 10th century Viking leader, Odysseus, Cyrano de Bergerac, Hitler's toady Herman Goring, mountain man "Liver Eating" Johnson and more. Together with some well-drawn original characters, these make for a fascinating story.
This book does not suffer as much from stilted writing as did the first book of the series, but I still would describe the writing style as merely competent. The characters and story are the strength of the book, and more than sufficient to provide both the thrills and intellectual stimulation to make reading it worthwhile.
After taking you on a thrill-ride of battles, assassinations, double crosses, and assorted intrigue, 'The Fabulous Riverboat' will leave you with a cliff-hanging ending that should send you scrambling to read the next book in the series (The Dark Design).

I am a huge fan of Mark Twian's books, so when I heard that he was a main charecter of a bok I was very sectical and didn't think the book would be any good.

For the most part I was very wrong. The action is fast paced and the ending(although not wholly surpising) was well done. I espically liked the ingenuity the "Riverworlders" displayed at every turn. My favorite part was where they used the fat in the bodies of the dead to make parts for explosives. This didn't hurt anyone because the next day they would be resurrected along another strech of river.

In the second book of the Riverworld series, Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain has a single dream: build a majestic Riverboat to sail to the headwaters of the mighty river and find the ones responsible for Resurrection. Although the story is first rate, I found the pacing mediocre. Clemens is given a revelation from a "Mysterious Stranger" at the very beginning of the book, and nothing more is forthcoming; I found that this early climax robbed the rest of the book of some of its punch. Also, toward the end, there are two major time-shifts which are totally out of place. But the rest is quite enjoyable.

After presenting such a wonderfully consistant and believable view of River World in 'To your scattered bodies go', I was repeatedly stunned by the unbelievable circumstances he presented in this, his second installment. JPF managed to make Mark Twain rather boring, and robbed the River World of all it's interesting features by abandoning subsistance living and introducing airplanes and firearms. Like the river it takes its name from, the river world series unerringly goes downhill...

Definitely read 'To your scattered bodies go', but avoid this (and the rest of the series) like the plague.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the first of Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld novels, was a fast-paced, highly creative, and extremely exciting story, so I was eager to continue the tale in the second novel, The Fabulous Riverboat. This part of the story of mankind's resurrection onto a million-miles-long stretch of river valley focuses on Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) -- one of the people who've been contacted by a traitor who hopes to use twelve special humans to disrupt the plans of the creatures (gods? aliens?) who are responsible for the Resurrection.

At the beginning of The Fabulous Riverboat, we meet Sam Clemens and his 800 lb Neanderthal bodyguard named Joe Miller. (Note: I highly recommend Recorded Books' audiobook version narrated by Paul Hecht. Joe Miller's lisping speech is difficult to read in print, but Mr. Hecht is brilliant with him.) Sam Clemens and Joe Miller are on a Viking ship that is searching for iron-rich meteors (the Riverworld has very few mineral deposits). The Vikings want the iron for weapons, but Sam wants to build a huge steamboat so he can sail up the river to its source and confront the beings who run the planet.

Sam gets some help from the mysterious traitor who tells him where to find required materials, but then he must work with tyrannical humans who want to hoard their countries' natural resources or promote their political or religious agendas. Thus, there's a lot more threatening, squabbling, political maneuvering, dealing, double-dealing, and war going on than actual ship-building.

It's fun to meet real historical tyrants in Riverworld -- they tend to rise to the top and become the leaders of aggressive city-states. It's also amusing to watch the interactions of humans from such a wide range of time periods. For example, we see Joe Miller gradually becoming more cynical and humorous as he spends time with Mark Twain and we watch a 20th century engineer teach Twain how to store electricity to power the riverboat.

What's not fun is that Philip Jose Farmer takes every opportunity to provide information about each of the characters who's a real historical figure, and this is inelegantly done:

"I read about him in school!" von Richthofen said. "Let's see. He was born in 1797, died about 1853, I believe. He was an artillery expert and a good friend of Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia. He was called `The Warlike Monk' because he was a general who also had strict religious views. He died when he was about fifty years old, a disappointed man because he had been dropped from favor..."

And sometimes the facts are repeated. For example, we're told at least twice that John Lackland was such a bad king that the English swore they'd never have another king named John.

Also annoying is that Farmer frequently takes the opportunity to address topics such as racism and determinism by either having characters hold long philosophical discourses, or by obvious and clumsy manipulation of the plot. The end result is that there is lots of teaching and moralizing and little action in The Fabulous Riverboat. If you look at the book cover, you'd expect to be exploring Riverworld from the deck of Mark Twain's steamboat, but the boat finally gets finished at the end of the novel.

It's the wonderful world-building and intriguing questions that make this series so compelling: Why has humankind been resurrected? Who created this world? Who is the traitor? Is there a way out? What's the purpose of dream gum? But we don't get to explore much of Riverworld and we learn very little about it in The Fabulous Riverboat. I'm still so curious, though, so I'm hoping we'll progress more quickly in the next installment: The Dark Design.

I read the first book of the series, thinking it has an interesting story.

SO I picked up the 2nd book in the series to continue the journey. Sadly, it's not what I expected it to be. In fact, by the name and cover art, one would thought that the 2nd book is about the journey down the river, searching for truth behind riverworld. However, that's not the case. You don't get to see the boat built until the last 10 pages or so. And most of the story is not about building the boat either; it's about political intrigues surrounding the several neighborhood kingdoms which centered on the one ruled by Mark Twain. I guess it has something to do with the author possessed limited scientific knowledge about the techniques actually building a boat.

I'm really disappointed at this book and no, I won't continue on to the next book in the series.

One last thing, I don't know whether it's just me, but this whole concept of the series reads like a Scientology textbook.

This second installation in the Riverworld series stars the real-life historical figure of Samuel Langhorn Clemens, aka Mark Twain. He, too, has been resurrected on this strange planet. With the aid of a "Mysterious Stranger", who claims to be a renegade member of the species who built the planet and resurrected the humans, he struggles to build an enormous paddle-wheeler and search out the tower said to be found at the river's source. Unfortunately he is tied to the most notorious traitor in English history, John Lackland. As I said about the first book in the series, this book is entertaining but ultimately dissatisfying because of little character development and no solution to the mystery of the planet.

This is one of my all-time great series. Since everyone who ever lived is in this world, I keep on looking for myself in the story. The Fabulous Riverboat is arguably the best book of the series, but I deeply enjoyed them all. The idea for this series
is ingenius and a gold mine of plot opportunities with every
charactor in history (and pre-history to draw from). My only
regret is that Mr. Farmer has only written one other book (of
short stories) on this theme. I am a great fan of Mr.Farmer.

This book is a must! I not only enjoyed it a lot with its fantasy and fiction, but I learnt history and many philosopical new questions arised to me! I really recomend it if you want to spend a good time and you want to think in the same moment!