doakley64's Full Review: Larry Niven - Destiny's Road
As a life-long sci-fi reader, I must admit that this book both sparked interest while at the same time touching off some "huh?"'s somewhere in my cortex.
The premise of the book is excellent. A young man, Jemmy Bloocher, grows up on a planet called Destiny, the second extra-terrestial colony tried by Earth. He grows up with aging and sometimes failing machines, called "settler magic," that take care of some aspects of daily life, but nowhere near all. As a result, life is often hard.
In specific, the colony is often short of "speckles." The "speckles" are an item that humans on Destiny must have or go slowly crazy and eventually die. And "speckles" aren't grown in Spiral Town, where Jemmy grew up. So Spiral Town relies on the tri-annual caravans, which are much in the tradition of the Spanish gypsy caravans, selling goods and the need "speckles" to the colonists.
The caravans follow the Road to Spiral Town. The Road was created by a group of settlers flying in the colony ship Cavorite by sitting close to the ground and literally melting the surface into a road. The story is that Cavorite left Spiral Town and never returned, leaving the town to worry and consider what happened to them.
Jemmy is interested in three main things: where does the Road lead, where do the caravans come from, and what happened to Cavorite? And so, through an unfortunate incident, Jemmy goes on the run and eventually finds out a great deal of things that are not in any way consistent with his training and upbringing.
Niven does a good job of approaching the start of the book from the standpoint of children who were born and raised in Spiral Town, knowing nothing different. I felt at times as if I were staring through a window into Destiny, imagining the Road of frozen lava curving away into the distance, a black ribbon of life. I could feel the concerns of the settlers as they struggled to keep intelligent life through the speckles, follow Jemmy's mind as he ran from his problem. The descriptions of an alien planet seemed totally the opposite, and the introduction of a non-human sentient life form seemed natural and totally believeable. And each new community along the road seemed true to human triumph and folly (except for the Shire women).
But the book does have some problems. Niven jumps through time, always forward, often leaving out what seem to be crucial pieces of information. I often had to search to determine what had just happened from one page to another. One gap is of 27 years, and there seems to be no connection between the two at all, except the end goal.
The main character is always changing names, and is therefore sometimes difficult to follow. In the above mentioned gap, he changes names, but Niven does not let the reader know that.
Niven also seems to be stuck on sex, totally apart from conventional mores. Toward the end of the book, the reader can infer why he includes the topic so much, but it is somewhat disconcerting to have the main character in bed with someone every few pages.
And last, the book ends on a note that seems to be unresolved, kind of like a song that wasn't ready to end yet.
My rating of this book is guarded at best. Those who are less detail oriented will probably love this book, but those of you who are enthralled in detail, get it from the library and save your money.
Multiple award-winning science fiction master Larry Niven returns in grand form with the story of Planet Destiny, Earth s second attempt at colonizing...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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