Customer Reviews

Man-Kzin Wars VII

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book deserves an extra star just for that story "A Darker Geometry". Way to explain the Outsiders to us, when somebody, whose initials are L.N. completely forgot that his readers are interested in them. Beautiful, and I hope it won a Hugo at some point in the past, or hope it will in the future.

Three snapshots of the wars. Hal Colebatch's "The Colonel's Tiger" is parrticularly impressive, a blend of Gothic horror story, hard SF, Victorian detective story and a hint of Kipling. The three stories cover the wars from first contact to the first appointment of a humble and nameless Kzin as "Ambassador". All well-written, fast moving and with strong believeable characters, human and Kzin. A must for all fans of the series!

I was puzzled by the story of how the humans first acquired the hyper drive. I think the author made a few foul ups, and am not sure that part of it fits the entire story line. Otherwise, not a bad read overall.

An excellent and exciting contribution to an excellent series. In particular I liked "The Colonel's Tiger" by Hal Colebatch, which as well as filling in an important part of the story of the Man-Kzin wars, is a subtle detective story and a convincing and frightening portrait of a defenceless society smothered by blandness in the tradtion of Huxley's "Brave New World." - the naive, defenceless Earth as it existed just before the carniverous, predatory Kzin came calling! The other stories are good too, increasing the complexity of the Kzin without distorting their nature. Buy it as an entertaining read and a good mind-stretch.

If you like Sci-Fi and you like Space, then You've GOT to read Larry Niven's Man Kzin books. He's gotten together with scientists and over 20 writers and created a so-fi world unlike any that's ever been created.

His sci-fi world will continue perpetuating itself long after he's gone because many young writers have bought into his sci-fi version of space as well as MANY older well established ones.

These adventures are all SF should be, the three tales (tails?)from the first to the last shots of the first Man-Kzin War braiding together remarkably well. BUT: Why aren't the Man-Kzin Wars available in England? There are 50 million people there.

The man-kzin wars series is great reading, it is however very hard to get hold of outside the US (why's that ?). They are all worth buying if you like Niven's 'Known Space'...

Unfortunately Man-Kzin wars IV has been out of print for ages and I've been looking for it for months !