jmcg@decvax.UUCP (Jim McGinness) (03/31/84)
I bought Niven's The Integral Trees last night. I foolishly started reading it around midnight before going to sleep. I didn't stop until I was done, around 5:30am. Be warned. The Integral Trees takes place in the gaseous doughnut surrounding an old neutron star. Niven has performed the appropriate writer's magic to make this setting plausible from the point of view of recent physics, though I felt the biology and human culture to be less carefully crafted. The story itself is engaging enough, but lacked the humor and character depth I remember from the Known Space books. Cheap narrative tricks are used to inject the "lectures" that explain how the place works. Although most of the main characters "grow", the reader is not invited in to experience the changes but simply gets to observe them. There's more sex than in previous Niven novels. But, hey, we're talking about a science fiction novel here. That's all it is, though written by a favorite author. My recommendation: Read it, but wait for the paperback. --jmcg