Apparently I missed The Ringworld Throne between reading Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers years and years ago and Ringworld's Children just recently. On the other hand, I don't appear to have missed much.

In the author's notes at the beginning Niven talks about how much fun he's had with the Ringworld series, and how much subsequent novels have been influenced by the observations that fans have made about one aspect or another (Spill mountains, ramjets for wobble adjustment, number and spacing of shadow panels, etc.)

While this installment of the Ringworld series includes all of those 'hard' elements, the story mainly follows the continuing adventures of Louis Wu on the Rignworld and how he and an assortment of suppporting Protectors, breeders and stranded outsiders are going to save the Ringworld from being casually destroyed by the ARM, the Kzin and others.

The story moves along quickly enough and the technology, if not explored all that much, is still interesting. Unfortunately it kind of feels like a quick tour of other parts of the Ringworld with a short history of the Pak and some gratuitous sex & violence thrown in for good measure.

If you're a Niven or a Ringworld fan, its worth a few hours reading. Otherwise, just give look a couple of books down the shelf and give the original Ringworld a try. ( )

Ringworld's Children is a big improvement over The Ringworld Throne, but that's not saying much. The rapid pace and narrative format recall the original Ringworld, almost in the style of a comic book. We get a lot more insight into the Ringworld's history and builders, the luck of Teela Brown, and even Hindmost's motivations. And Niven manages to come up with several nice surprises along the way.

Loius Wu continues as our cynical, inventive, take-it-as-it-comes protagonist, but we also get a couple of interesting new characters in Proserpina and Hanuman. Roxanny, the new human female character who survives the crash of an ARM warship on the Ringworld surface, is far from plausible. She seems to be inserted in the story primarily to give Louis someone new to have sex with and be injured by, although in the end Roxanny is also caught by the inescapable luck of Teela Brown. If you are looking for science fiction with plausible female characters, the Ringworld series is probably not the ticket.

The bizarre obsession with interspecies sex that dominated so much of book 3 makes only a brief appearance here (in a totally unnecessary scene that runs something like this “Oh, Hi. You must be the giraffe people. Wanna f***?”). ( )

Didn't he ever look at a globe and wonder about the differences of day, dawn, night, and dusk periods at different latitudes. Obviously not.

A fitting sequel to the Ringworld saga. If you haven't read at least Ringworld, you can't call yourself a science fiction fan. ( )