|
-
News
- Features
- Events
Calendar
- Editorials
- Monthly
Zine
- Offworld
Report
- Our Daily
RSS Feed
- Movie/TV
Reviews
> Recent movies
> Movies by year
> Movies by title
- Book
Reviews
> Recent books
> Books by year
> Books by title
- Home
- Worlds
- Biography
- Bibliography
- Appearances
- Reviews
- Blog
- Community
- Press
- Links
Become
an Advertiser
- Web
Site Directory
- Search
the Net
- StephenHunt.net
- WoodenRocket.com
- Check
your E-mail
- Non Sci-Fi
News
|
Burning Tower by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
01/05/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Orbit. 430 page hardback. Price: £18.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-84149-072-5pub: Orbit. 616 page paperback. Price: £ 8.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-84149-218-6. Buy Burning Tower in the USA - or Buy Burning Tower in the UK  check out website: www.orbitbooks.net
Please bear in mind I'm a die-hard SF reader looking at the first Niven/Pournelle fantasy collaboration hoping to see some of the expertise they had with their Science Fiction books. Actually, 'Burning Tower' is their second but as it's the sequel to 'The Burning City' should be considered as one big book. For the record, years ago, I did read Larry Niven's 'The Magic Goes Away' and enjoyed it, mostly because he still applied cause and effect principles which wouldn't cheat the reader.
Neither of these two books are like that. If anything, both authors have chucked out their rule book, put in far too much dialogue, too little descriptive action and ignored a cardinal fantasy rule, namely if you have a quest show what its for.
I'm still not sure if 'Burning Tower' is a reference to part of the original Burning City or the name of Regapisk's daughter. Considering her significance to the story, it also seems odd that she's omitted from the large cast list at the beginning of the book. Speaking of Regapisk, he doesn't appear until a third of the way through the book and is practically a secondary character for much of the time.
You can learn more about the plot from the back-cover as Lord Sundry and Burning Tower leave the town and join various travelling parties. Along the way, they rescue Regapisk and show how to deal with some rather carnivorous large Terror Birds. The last quarter of the book when the party gets to an Inca city shows a lot more promise but it lacks emotional content and you're left not really caring about those who die.
As I commented on the first book, its almost as though they've worked to fulfil a particular page count and then had to work to shoe-horn everything in and made the wrong sacrifices loosing text and detail. Whether or not a fantasy reader would enjoy these books is rather debatable. My source at Orbit tells me Niven and Pournelle did the books as an experiment but gave no indication whether they considered it a success. If your taste is only for Science Fiction then I would give this a miss.
GF Willmetts
|
|
