jedibuttercup

I've been struggling through a Niven book ("Rainbow Mars") myself, and questioning whether to throw in the towel. I've been reading a lot of his stuff lately (the first two "Ringworlds," "The Integral Trees," "Destiny's Road," and "Building Harlequin's Moon,") and this has perhaps made me more sensitive than I would otherwise be to stock characters, worlds, and plots. This book feels like he's transplanted the main character from "Ringworld" into a very slightly different locale, made up a new swear word ("Futz" instead of "Finagle"), and given him a slightly more compotent love interest - but that's about it. The backstory is let out in dribs and drabs that are probably supposed to make it interesting and pique your interest but instead just irritate in their incompleteness - he had to build this elaborate society and time travel system to get his characters to a populated Mars, and since Mars is what he wanted to deal with he had to rush head-long throug all the exposition. I'm not sure I'll finish. Life is too short.