Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Ringwelt by Larry Niven

4 reviews

diazona's review against another edition

adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

It's 1875, and at a table in a long-distance train car there are two old philosophers with corncob pipes and horn-rimmed glasses having a dense scholarly debate about the nature of life on other planets. The third person at the table is a retired railway executive, who is mildly interested in the debate but is more interested in the fourth person: his new, inappropriately young girlfriend. After a while the train breaks down, so they go out and try to fix it. They walk through some scenery. They talk to some people. There may be an episode of them getting captured and/or uncaptured - I dunno, I had kind of lost interest at this point.

Congratulations, you've just read Ringworld. 

I mean, sure, the train is moving at a hundred thousand times the speed of light, and the philosophers are aliens, but the sad thing is, none of that matters. As I see it, Ringworld is a story about four people who go on an adventure and are too preoccupied with their own relationships and internal conflicts to let anything interesting happen on said adventure. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of these people, and the "adventures" they go on are pretty inconsequential. I know it's supposed to be a classic and all, but this book sucked all the joy out of reading for me; it's the closest I've ever come to not finishing a book because of how much I didn't like it.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Confinement, Death, Sexual content, Slavery, and Violence

mar's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

sorry cant write a proper review bc every time i think about how Niven writes women in this book i start seeing red

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny and Sexism

Moderate: Confinement, Sexual content, Vomit, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Racism, Rape, and Slavery

weird eugenics shit

storyorc's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Creative concepts with implications explored
The Ringworld, with its carefully-considered technologies for air, landscape, a day/night cycle, spaceports, defence and more, is just the start. Teleportation has rendered all human cities one homogenous soup. One weapon disables and addicts an enemy via artificial bursts of happiness. The ships have a stasis field that freezes you in time when it detects trouble. Some races can move entire planets. The idea of breeding for luck is a surprise through-line that explores how being the luckiest person alive might make you something that is barely even human.

Oh, and one of the principle characters is from a two-headed, three-legged horse alien race of highly-advanced cowards. I love him.

Multi-faceted characters

• Speaker-to-Animals, an ambassador from the warrior tiger-man race, the kzin, is bloodthirsty, patriotic, and eager to command, but he is also scared at times, admits when he's in pain and is capable of highly intelligent deductions in the heat of battle (and hates being called cute). 
• Sweet, pitiful Nessus, who curls into a ball at the first sign of danger, is also an outcast among his kind for being bold enough to meet with aliens, longs for a mate, and is not above calculated cruelty when his mission requires it. 
• Teela Brown wears the skin of your typical 70s sci-fi feeble-brained woman but she contributes scientific theories to the group, does better mental math than the protagonist, and as the story evolves, her recklessness is cast in a very different light to plain old stupidity.
• Louis is... ok Louis Wu is an everyman but he skates around some macho stereotypes thanks to his willingness to admit being afraid of pain, his patience with Nessus, and his indifference to power. He only wants to explore and have sex but he's also sharp enough to hold his own. (See content warning for light-spoiler notes on his misogyny.)

I also enjoy how the aliens stayed alien. The formal affectations of their speech makes you as a reader have to learn to read between the lines along with Louis. Rewarding.

Game theory politics
Bucking the trend of early hard sci-fi being all plot and no character, this party is like a group of colleagues desperately trying to remain professional on a business trip whilst the extended proximity reveals more and more to admire and despise about each other. Since the outcome of their mission to the Ringworld will greatly effect their races' futures, each character, despite being atypical for their race, is trying to optimise a particular cultural value - survival for Nessus, honour for Speaker, and whatever Teela's luck decides it wants - with Louis mediating. They hurt each other constantly, often while regretfully explaining their logic for doing so. At times, the coldness of it reminded me of the chess-like moves Cixin Liu's characters make in his Remembrances of Earth's Past trilogy. And yet, Ringworld retains its jovial road trip atmosphere between the gut punches.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Misogyny, Slavery, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Confinement and Homophobia

[LIGHT SPOILERS] --- HOMOPHOBIA/TRANSPHOBIA: Louis insists that a race who can fly entire planets around the galaxy can't possibly have a mated pair of beings using 'he' pronouns who produce offspring. --- MISOGYNY: Louis does think of women almost exclusively in terms of sex and is initially very dismissive of Teela as a bit of a bimbo (she's 20, he's 200 btw). However, the narrative laughs at this by constantly having Teela display not only scientific aptitude but useful practicality. Later, we even get an explanation as to how her shallowness and recklessness make total sense due to special traits she has. If there were even one more nuanced female character in the book, I would give Niven the benefit of the doubt in making Teela a pseudo-bimbo. However, the only other named woman also happens to be juvenile (despite a huge age) and is a sex worker who does little besides seducing Louis. She even talks a bit caveman due to their language differences. Worst of all, they decided she was a sex worker initially simply because she was one of only a few women on her old crew. Awesome. Oh, and the kzin and puppeteer races BOTH have non-sentient females. I maintain that this book is less sexist than usual for its time, but it still stings here and there.

bookthief404's review against another edition

adventurous challenging informative mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Outdated, hard to forgive. Women done terribly. Louis is a creep and just as childish as Teela. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Confinement, Misogyny, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail