Review: Fleet of Worlds

Fleet of Worlds is a 2007 science-fiction novel by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, set in Niven's Known Space universe.

I cede that it has been many years since I've read a novel by Niven himself; and those novels themselves were years or decades old at the time, so his writing style may well have changed significantly in the interim: but it does not feel like a Niven novel. I suspect that it would be more accurate to label it fanfiction, if professionally-published and author-approved. (And, given the cover credit, probably also at least author-edited.)

It is not, thankfully, bad fanfiction. It is not, I think, a very good novel, but it is at least not bad fanfiction.

Fleet of Worlds centers primarily around the Puppeteer known to humanity as Nessus, whom some may remember from the original Ringworld — though the events of Fleet predate those of Ringworld by some 200 years or more. It begins with the hitherto-undescribed — and, under further analysis, completely ludicrous — initial premise that the Puppeteers hold on their homeworlds a population of humans derived from the crew and cargo of a captured colony ship that happened upon their Kemplerer Rosette [sic`{::}^2`] and kept ignorant of Earth (despite the Puppeteers being anything but ignorant thereof).

I am still waiting for an explanation as to why a hyperparanoid species such as the Puppeteers — the arguably Puppeteer-insane Experimentalist political faction notwithstanding — didn't just vaporize the ship and have done.

Eh. It's diverting, but it wasn't worth getting in hardback, like I did a year and a half ago. Perhaps I should have been clued in by the SciFi logo? 1/1, and probably not worth your time.