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3.0étoiles sur 5
Interesting World Building, Aoû 30 2003
First let me say that this edition I'm reviewing is a two for one. You get both the Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring in one volume, which certainly makes it worth the price.Secondly, The Smoke Ring was published four years after The Integral Trees. But reading The Smoke Ring, immediately after the Integral Trees, makes it a much more enjoyable and stronger book. I doubt I would have enjoyed it quite as much had I read it four years after reading The Integral Trees. Both of these novels are concept novels in the hard science fiction genre., which is both a strength and a weakness. Niven sets up the world he creates in The Integral Trees, and there is character development but it is a bit thin. I found the novel hard to slog through at times and frankly had a hard time conceptualizing the environment Niven creates. The Smoke Ring is a lot more fun on two accounts. First, Niven goes about exploring a lot more of the world he created. And the characters a bit more developed. Overall, both are worth reading. If you get through The Integral Trees and really liked it, I think you'd love The Smoke Ring. If you get through the Integral Trees and liked it, but just barely, The Smoke Ring is better. If you really hated The Integral Trees and didn't get it at all, skip The Smoke Ring.
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4.0étoiles sur 5
Great concept, real characters., Jui 22 2002
Even though this story is based in a world that is almost incomprehensible to us as earthbound humans, the struggles and characters are very real. Fastpaced and exciting. Worth the read.
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5.0étoiles sur 5
Niven's science is far-out yet still believable, Fév 11 2002
Are planets really necessary? This is the question that Larry Niven has asked perhaps as often as any writer in history, and he presents some more of his most fascinating answers in this marvelous sci-fi adventure novel. Somewhere in another solar system, the atmosphere from a dying planet has leaked out into a vast gas torus in which live enormous trees, anchored solely by gravity, gathering light from the sun and nutrients from the thin
atmosphere, and strangely enough, inhabited by a society of hunters and gatherers. Life has been getting tougher on the tree recently; so much so that partly in desperation, and partly out of malice, the Chairman sends an adolescent boy, a student of the sciences, and a powerful young hunter up the trunk of the tree with a ragtag bunch of misfits to find food to save the tribe - or failing that, to die trying. Following the adventures of this group provides a keen insight into their unique culture and how it has survived, but gives only a few clues as to where they came from and why. Balancing the hunting party's amazing adventures is a series of interludes featuring the Checker, a distant, computerized personality who has a strange fascination with the fledgling society. Niven's combination of dry scientific records and intimate sociological observations teases the reader into playing anthropologist, trying to piece together what exactly happened to create this situation in the first place. Beyond this, there's plenty ofaction and more than a few total, out-of-the-blue-sky surprises, so readers should find this story as entertaining as it is intriguing. Moreover, Niven's ability to make his scientific points believably is unparalleled. While not as philosophically daring as Ringworld or The Mote in God's Eye, this is a top-notch sci-fi adventure for readers of all ages.
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