Ringworld's Children and Fleet of Worlds

Widely considered a classic of sci-fi, this book as been in my “to-do” shelf for a long time. I finally got to it now, and I have mixed feelings.

The idea itself is interesting enough, all the interesting tidbits of trivia about a future world, aliens, fall of some distant civilization interesting. But somehow I am missing a bigger picture or a story line. Perhaps I am used to 800+ page tomes of Neil Stephenson, but this just didn’t meet the expectations I had for it.

In addition for some reason the writing style didn’t sit well with me somehow. I had to concentrate on the content more than usual to not miss things.

It was still a nice enough read, with quirky characters and quite a few interesting odds and ends to be entertaining. But I think I will skip the followups.

A pretty riveting book, with very detailed explanations of the theories it built on. Sometimes the characters seem almost too analytical, but then how would the exposition ever happen. And really, you find yourself wanting to know more of the mechanics of the setting, why this came about, and how.