6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Possibly the best in the series, but read A Darker Geometry., May 13, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Man-Kzin Wars VII (Mass Market Paperback)
Three stories covering Kzin involvement with Humans. All very entertaining if you like Niven's Known Space universe.
The first 80 pages are a flashback style mystery set in the late 19th century and just after the first Kzin contact.
The final 50 pages is an action packed black ops story set at the end of what is probably the last Man-Kzin War. It paints a great picture of what a single "smart" Kzin could do.
Over 220 pages of this 345 page collection has been released as a complete novel with 150 pages of additional material (Author: Mark O. Martin, Title: A Darker Geometry). I highly recommend A Darker Geometry, particularly for Niven fans.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fills in some interesting gaps in the history..., March 4, 2002
This review is from: Man-Kzin Wars VII (Mass Market Paperback)
For those of you new to the series, the Kzinti are a race, created by Larry Niven, which he has given other authors permission to write stories about in this series. They are a spacefaring, sentient race evolved from carnivorous hunting cats rather than omnivorous monkeys, just as intelligent as humans and slightly more advanced technologically, at least in some areas. The only thing that has kept them from enslaving all of humanity is that their code of honor frowns upon sufficient caution; their genral idea of strategy is "first you scream and then you leap."
This installment comprises three stories, two short and one nearly novel-length by itself. On balance, they are well-written, but the characterizations seemed somewhat flat by comparison to previous stories in the series. It's difficult to say why exactly; the characters were not by any stretch of the imagination stereotypical, but I simply found it difficult to really care what happened to them.
The first story details the events just after first contact, when the first human ship to encounter Kzin was attempting to persuade a dubious government back home of the reality of the threat. The writing was good, but the main character lacked anything to make him a sympathetic character, and the plot turned on a rather dubious bit of retroactive deus-ex-machina.
The second story detailed the events that led to humanity acquiring a faster-than light drive technology, giving them the technological edge over the Kzin for the first time. These events had been referred to in previous installments, but the full story had never been told. Again, the writing was good, but while the main characters were certainly more sympathetic than the main character in the first story, they never really connected, and events still seemed rather like a deus-ex-machina, out of the control of the characters and dependent on aliens vastly more advanced, and vaguely reminiscent of beings from the Cthulu mythos.
The third story was in some ways the best, except that it was too short to live up to its potential. Just a hint, but it may be that we actually met the Kzin Patriarch himself in this one! If so, he demonstrated that he deserves his position.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best of all the Man Kzin reads, September 11, 2005
This review is from: Man-Kzin Wars VII (Mass Market Paperback)
A Darker Geometry is quite simply, the finest non-Niven Kzin/Man story. It has the works - Kzin, Outsiders, Puppeteers (even an aggressive, WARLIKE Puppeteer !) A superb story that would have graced Niven.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
