The Legacy of Heorot

Oh boy, where to even start with this book. It's not good. Spoilers below. But my advice is to just read the spoilers and skip the book.

The story is a sort of a modern reimagining of Beowolf set on mankind's first colony on another planet. The colony is composed of 200 individuals who are put into a cryo-sleep for the voyage except for Cadman, our main character. Cadman is the typical grizzled war veteran. He stayed awake during the voyage (or maybe just had a lot less sleep time, I forget). It turns out that when you wake up from long term cryo-sleep it can have effects on your brain. For most that are affected, it just makes them a little bit less sharp than they were before, a little more forgetful, a little slower to work through problems. This comes into play because its makes the colonists miss some connections that would have made their situation a hundred times better. A little convenient for the author, but seems plausible enough so I let this one slide. A few of the colonists can't be woken at all and one was awakened but with severe mental disabilities.

The colony is on a large island, and is doing great for the first 6 months or so. Planting crops, breeding chickens, cows, horses and dogs. Cadman keeps saying “Guys, something bad is gonna happen, I just know it.” And colonists are like, “Dude, shut up and chill out. Its fine.” Obviously things go bad. A giant animal that is something like a komodo dragon the size of a hippo with the tail of a stegosaurus shows up, eats a baby, wreaks havoc and kills several colonists. The beast is eventually killed.. The animal can move insanely fast. They never give exact numbers or anything, but like blindingly fast. The Achilles heel of the creature is that it has to turn on its ‘speed' using some type of oxidizing gland that is the equivalent of shooting jet fuel into the bloodstream. But when its using its ‘speed', its body super heats. So it can only use it for a short time before it has to find some water to cool off in. Afterwards, Cadman, upset that they didn't listen to him sooner, takes off like an 8 year who didn't get his way and makes a house halfway up a mountain. Mary Ann, who for some reason is madly in love with Cadman follows him up there and he's a super dick to her. But she sticks around because she so in love with him and wants to be near him even if he doesn't love her back and maybe if she is a good housewife he will actually fall in love with her.

After a few months of Cadman sulking, the colonists eventually grovel at his feet enough to convince him to come back to the main colony. But surprise surprise there are more of the beast, called “grendels” now. A couple more people die. They go out and hunt down a dozen or so of the grendels and kill them. Now the colony is presumably safe as they've eliminated all of them. But then it turns out that the native fish are actually tadpole versions of the grendels. And the grendels actually eat their own babys if there isn't enough food. The baby grendels eat algae and plants, which the full grown grendels can't. Then the full grown grendels eat the baby grendels. So it creates a sort of stable population where only a dozen or so full grown grendels can exist on the island at any one time. When the colonists killed the adult grendels, they weren't around to eat the baby grendels and then there is an enormous explosion of the grendel population. Thousands instead of a dozen. The colonists make their stand and eventually win through a combination of blowing up hundreds of them with mines, the grendels eating each other, and them over heating when they get too far from a water source.

Throughout all of this there is a weird love trapezoid or pentagon that was just unbearable. Two women love Cadman because he's Mr. Macho. But one of them, Sylvia, is already married so her and Cadman just have these awkwardly inappropriate conversations because they aren't allowed to get together. But boy does Sylvia think Cadman is great, despite him telling her husband that he isn't man enough for Sylvia and just being a big douche in general. Mary Ann is head over heels for Cadman, also because he is Mr. Macho. She also knows Cadman would rather be with Sylvia but maybe if she just tries hard enough... At one point she even thinks to herself that maybe she should let Cadman and Sylvia sleep together just so Cadman can get it out of his system. Then Sylvia's husband gets paralyzed so he gives her permission to have sex with someone else as long as its not Cadman. So she starts having sex with Cadman's best friend Carlos (who speaks Spanish, but not really?) but still wants Cadman, and everyone knows it. Right up until the very last page Sylvia is thinking to herself, “I sure wish this baby I am having were Cadman's baby.”

I only finished this book because I had heard the final confrontation was really tense and exciting. It was fine. Not great, but not bad. The action is the only somewhat decent part of the book. The main character is unbearable. I think at the start of the book you are supposed to kind of think he is a jerk. But I think by the end you are supposed to actually like him because he is such a man's man but he's still an asshole. The romance subplots are just awful and unnecessary. I usually like Niven and Pournelle. Most of the time I can get past the sexism that always finds its way into their books and enjoy the story. But I just couldn't with this one, it was just constantly shoved in your face.
The best I can say about the book is that maaaaaybe if you make this a 100 page novella without any of the interpersonal drama you'd have an OK but forgettable story.

I'm sure there are worse books out there, but I haven't read one.

I didn't like this at all, and got rid of my copy of it. Presumably I bought it in 1987 without knowing anything about it: when I look through the synopsis now, I see nothing attractive about it.