Customer Reviews

The Gripping Hand

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

What a tremendous disappointment! I have read "The Mote in God's Eye" perhaps a dozen times over the years. When I recently discovered an old copy of this sequel I was delighted. Until about the fifth page. After that, it just kept going downhill. Gone from this is any concern for character development which so enlivened the first book. Gone are intuitive and creative insights into the minds of the moties (remember how the first novel gave us large sections of their thinking in italics?). Gone is any sense of a coherent plot (whatever happened to Jennifer and her colleague trapped aboard the Khanate mother ships?). Perhaps most sadly, gone is any sense of the danger and mystery of these strange creatures. There is nothing surprising or interesting or frightening about them any more. They are more like a plague of ants than a fearsome race that actually could destroy mankind. It reminded me of the difference between the creature in the movie Alien who was impossible to kill, compared to the way the sequel, Aliens, showed them dying left and right as though they were mere bugs.

What has replaced these wonders from the first book are: more of the authors' juvenile sexual fantasies (yes, again, we see young girls being forced to strip in front of moties, a promiscuous Kevin Renner moving from one meaningless lustful relationship to another, even poor Horace Bury has a concubine/MD/amazon guardian who actually lays on top of him in the final scene!); a boring and really bad "chase sequence" (really dull); incoherent dialogue; tedious allusions to a "gripping hand;" broken plot lines and dropped characters (why introduce Sarah if she's going to just disappear halfway through the novel for no reason?); and endlessly boring Nivenesque discussions of space travel and starship warfare and the mechanics and mathematics thereof.

I actually threw the book across the room when finished. So disappointing.

A very disappointing sequel. Like many others who have commented, I am a big fan of "The Mote in God's Eye", and although sequels often fall short of the original, this one fell shorter than most. It has flaws that would discredit a first novel by an unknown author, quite frankly: characters are introduced and developed, made interesting, and then dropped without explanation and never referred to again. Same for subplots. The dialogue is confusing, and the protagonists make leaps of logic that I found impossible to follow.

Perhaps worst of all, I did not recognize the "Empire" of this story as being the same "Empire" from TMIGE. Certainly, 30 years had passed, but too many things had been stood on their heads, and none of the characters seemed to have noticed. It was as if the authors decided that the social and political background of the first book was no longer commercial, and so they performed major surgery on it -- unfortunately doing a sloppy job and killing the patient in the process.

In this sequel to The Mote in God's Eye, humans and the alien "Moties" once again come into contact with dramatic results. The Empire of Man has a blockade to keep the Moties bottled up in their own system because the Moties are explosively expansive and would quickly overrun the Empire. Horace Bury, an Imperial Trader, and Kevin Renner, his pilot, travel through the Empire helping Naval Intelligence quell rebellion. But Bury and Renner, veterans from the first contact with the Moties, have another goal: to make sure that the Moties stay penned up in their system. When they find possible evidence that the Moties may escape, they pull all the strings they can find in order to visit the blockade. Events unfold quickly and they end up once more in the Mote system, trying to prevent a disaster. They have help of Chris and Glenda Ruth Blain, the two children of the first expedition's captain. The Blaine's have unique insight into the situation because they grew up around the only Moties allowed into the Empire.

The tension is thick at times, and the space battles are well plotted. However, there are large stretches consisting of political intrigue and Motie history lessons that slow down the plot considerably. I think the sections are interspersed well enough to hold the reader's interest. Some of the plot twists were hard to follow, especially once the Moties are involved. However, considering the chaos involved during battles and throwing in completely alien thought patters, it's probably fair to have some confusion in the plot. The characters are engaging, but I found it a little annoying that some of them just drop out of the story at the end without resolutions.

The Gripping Hand is definitely easier to read if you have the background found in The Mote in God's Eye. However, like most sequels, it doesn't live up to the promise of the first book. It's entertaining, but not destined to be a classic.

I read "Mote" many years ago, and unlike most people, didn't think it one of the top 20, or 50, SF novels at the time. Now along comes the sequel, reinforcing the idea from the end of "Mote" that a blockade of the Motie system is a stop-gap measure at best. Sooner or later (as it turns out, MUCH sooner), Empire of Man must deal with the issue. Niven & Pournelle have concocted an interesting follow-up, where characters from the original (namely Renner and Bury) stumble almost accidentally on to the fact that all hell's about ready to break loose. It was a quick read, which fortunately doesn't require the reader to remember all the details from "Mote."

What bothered me was the quality of writing. Albeit better than "Ringworld Throne", the dialog is hard to follow, scene breaks are choppy, and characters actions/dialog often make no sense to the reader, as if the authors deleted all internal dialog that might have provided clues to what the characters were thinking. More than once I had to backtrack a few pages and attempt to reconstruct the sequence of who-said-what-to-whom. Sadly, if this book had been written by relatively unknown authors, I doubt it would ever have been accepted for publication.

Felt like a book written by two Big Names without their heart in the project. After the first 100 pages finally something of interest happens: the Bury-Blaine confrontation. But until then what? Hand-shaking and "How've ya been?" Any new information different from TMiGE? None. And when we finally get to the Moties, any substantially new information? Not much. The authors created one of the All-Time Best SF cultures: dynamic, rapidly adaptable, changing, a threat to The Empire of Man. What happened after 30 years? Not much there but plotting t h r o ugh-the-motions-to-the-end-pick-up-our-advance-and-royalties-story-telling. Rape my lizard! Where was the Editor for this thing? Scrap the first 100 pages. Cut to the chase: the Moties! How 'bout some basic story-telling skills? Find the character(s) flaw(s) and have the protagonist(s) (Moties!) attack the character(s) at their weakest point. Instead, what does this book give us?--'Evry body here's a good guy feel. Even the devilishly evil Bury (remember TMiGE? he kidnapped a Navy guy and videotaped his slowww execution!) is clean and pressed. This book is very politically correct, doesn't offend anything or anyone. Where was the Editor? At times rambling narrative and dislocated dialog. What's the story? The Moties! What does the first 100 pages have to do with the story? Nothing. What do Mormons have to do with the story? Nothing. What does Glenda Ruth Blaine's quote "sex appeal" unquote, have to do with the story? Nothing. Where was the editor?--seeing big sales numbers if L & J would just whip out anything, something please oh pretty please I have quotas to meet! --The preceding is from a DEVOTED Niven & Pournelle reader. Buy all they put out, have enjoyed all they put out (well, execpt ONE) to various degrees, and was disappointed by The Gripping Hand. Not a bad book, just not worth reading.

I was very disappointed with "The Gripping Hand". I read "The Mote in God's Eye" over 20 years ago and just re-read it in preparation for reading the sequel. "The Mote" was as good as I remembered even though it got a bit "sappy" with the Blaine/Fowler relationship towards the end. I expected the Blaines to be the central characters in "The Gripping Hand". To my dismay, one of my least favorite characters from "The Mote", Horace Bury, is the central character! I didn't buy the "evolution" of the Moties. It didn't seem like a natural evolution from "The Mote". Why were these space fairing Moties so strong? Why didn't they conquer Mote Prime for its land and where did they get their material since they appeared to have raped every asteroid, comet, etc in the Mote system? Why did they like Bury so much? That was never a point in "The Mote". As for the humans, the only likable character is Kevin Renner. The other characters are bland and annoying. I expected more from the Blaine children. The son is just another navy officer and the daughter is a precocious teenager. And what ever happened to Terry and Jennifer? Where was the blockade fleet at the Alderson point? What happened to Rod and Sally? They were summoned to New Cal and then that story line was dropped! There is so much "filler" in the book -- filler that neither helped move the story nor developled the characters. I had to struggle to complete this novel. "The Gripping Hand" is a disappointing, slow moving novel that limped along towards an uneventful ending.

You know I always loved Niven's other works. I grew up on them, and frequently found them interesting after multiple reads (Ringworld, Destiny's Road, anyone?), but I just don't get this one. Big yawn, too much confusing and endless political wrangling, a sort of fetishization of educational and class status, lower than usual number of dimensions per character, etc. But what the hell. When I write my own 400 page novel, I'll be allowed to criticize these guys.

There is one recurring oddity, and that's this obsession with coffee and other refreshments the characters have. Maybe I'm just missing something or forgetting some bigger joke from TMiGE, but I wonder if Niven and Pournelle themselves found it funny. I imagine they're like Beavis and Butthead laughing about NADS, and just couldn't stop pasting in coffee references. I can't count how many times the same kind of exchange occurs:

"My God, Renner, the ship is under attack by the Khanate. All the cameras have been overloaded by the massive energy beam they are directing at us. I hope we can make the Alderson point before that junk ship catches us."
Bury raised a quizzical eyebrow and silently eyed his fluttering dials.
"And that's not the half of it. I don't know if Bury can take another jump shock," Renner muttered.
"Oh well. Coffee?"
"Yes please, with milk. Make it the Kona."

I mean, come on....

I have to agree with other reviewers. This book is not that great. I truly enjoyed "The Mote in God's Eye", a masterpiece, and was eager to go back to its universe. Unfortunately, "The Gripping Hand" is a tedious exercise of authorship. The book is divided into two parts. The first one prepares the actual action in which the moties are involved (no spoiler, this is very predictable). It is just an unbearable tale of space politics and average character development with very little action. The second half is more interesting, and it does make use of some slick ideas, but the story is too fragmented to be exciting. In summary, Larry and Jerry wasted a couple of good ideas, and a lot of the credit they gained from "The Mote".

I love Niven's work, and Pournelle's no slouch :), but this book really disappointed me. Maybe because Mote was so incredible, maybe not. Basically, my impression of the book is a bunch of characters running around in space doing not much for 3-400 pages. Maybe I need to read it again. But, I can say that this is the only Niven book that I didn't like upon finishing. But don't let it discourage you! All of his other books are 4-5 stars, and the Pournelle collaborations 5+ (Mote, Lucifer's Hammer -- CLASSICS).

TMiGE was a superlative work. As I have matured (read it when my guardians boought it in '74... 'm now 28) I was fascinated with the technology. Re-reading it, I am astounded by the Crazy Eddies who put so much *thought* into a nearly infinetly improbable question. Now, the publishers and agents are apparently Crazy Eddie, demanding a sequel from men who apparently wrote it with one hand on a napkin in the cafe waiting to cameo on Seinfeld. Either that or their Fyunch(click)'s went Crazy Eddie trying to run a publishing company. Renner's irreverence (He and Han Solo are my role models) has evolved into a self absorbed fop's attitude. Bury, whose greatest appeal was in the knowledge he was far more complicated than we could grasp, is yet another self made man out to save us from ourselves. Forget about knowing what became of Gunny Kelly, Engineer Sandy Sinclair, Commodore Jack Cargill, or anyone else you were even faintly interested in. No new faces, no new places. The Blaine-Fowler brats are... well, ones an unimaginitive naval officer, the other belongs on the set of 'Clueless' as a model to the statrs. If you want enjoyable reads with good combat scenes, read David Weber's Honor Harrington series. If you want your thoughts provoked, re-read TMiGE. If you run out of kindling or wish to re-enact the pioneer days before Charmin, buy The gripping hand.