Fleet of Worlds

I'm wary of buying Niven's books these days: he started well as a writer but has weakened over the years. However, in this case there was a chance that collaboration might produce something worthwhile.The strange thing is that, although Lerner presumably did at least half of the work on this book (maybe more), it's almost indistinguishable from pure Niven. Either they're naturally similar writers, or Lerner blends in very well.The story is a prequel to Niven's award-winning [b:Ringworld 7987601 Ringworld Larry Niven https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1270514178l/7987601.SY75.jpg 924711], and it takes place in the 27th century, 200 years earlier than the events of Ringworld. It's mostly about relations between humanity and the alien race nicknamed the Puppeteers.Hundreds of years earlier, the Puppeteers secretly hijacked a human colony starship with thousands of human embryos on board, and brought up their human captives as a servant race (known as Colonists) knowing nothing of Earth or human history.Now this is starting to cause problems. Some of the Colonists are beginning to doubt the benevolence of the Puppeteers and are trying to find out about their own history. Meanwhile, the humans of Earth long ago wrote off the lost colony ship as an accident, but are trying to locate the Puppeteers' home world for other reasons.The Puppeteers are very powerful, being numerically and technologically superior to humanity; but they are highly risk-averse herbivores and these developments strike them as potentially dangerous. Nor are they united: there are rival political factions trying to gain advantage from the situation.At first reading, the story is readable and gripping, though it ends without a bang: the authors planned to continue it in a subsequent volume.As usual with Niven, there are plenty of interesting ideas and situations, but human characterization is weak. He has occasionally created distinctive human characters in the past, but the humans here are almost interchangeable. The Puppeteers are more interesting; and there is another alien race that plays a small part in the story.This is not a great book, but it's an adequate book that Niven fans should be able to enjoy. I give it two stars because I read it once and haven't felt motivated to read it again, nor to read the next in the series.