The Gripping Hand (ISBN 0671795740)

enough with the coffee already:
You know I always loved Niven's other works. I grew up on them, and frequently found them interesting after multiple reads (Ringworld, Destiny's Road, anyone?), but I just don't get this one. Big yawn, too much confusing and endless political wrangling, a sort of fetishization of educational and class status, lower than usual number of dimensions per character, etc. But what the hell. When I write my own 400 page novel, I'll be allowed to criticize these guys. There is one recurring oddity, and that's this obsession with coffee and other refreshments the characters have. Maybe I'm just missing something or forgetting some bigger joke from TMiGE, but I wonder if Niven and Pournelle themselves found it funny. I imagine they're like Beavis and Butthead laughing about NADS, and just couldn't stop pasting in coffee references. I can't count how many times the same kind of exchange occurs: "My God, Renner, the ship is under attack by the Khanate. All the cameras have been overloaded by the massive energy beam they are directing at us. I hope we can make the Alderson point before that junk ship catches us." Bury raised a quizzical eyebrow and silently eyed his fluttering dials. "And that's not the half of it. I don't know if Bury can take another jump shock," Renner muttered. "Oh well. Coffee?" "Yes please, with milk. Make it the Kona." I mean, come on....

Poorly thought out:
I am amazed at this book. The reason this book sucks so bad comes down to very simple reasoning: The Moties motivations for every action were based on consideration for resources. When the second Alderson point opened, the Moties had absolutely no motivation to fight over that "exit" to their prison. And yet half the book was spent in a convoluted and confusing effort to convince readers that the Moties were fighting over the second Alderson point. I'm afraid not. I'm sure many Moties would have been "Crazy Eddie" insane, but it is far more likely they would simply try to escape. Who would stop them? Sure, leave ...and create "breathing room" for the rest of us. This entire book shows how just how disconnected many science fiction writers are from reality. Any fighting over the second Alderson point clearly would dramatically lower their odds of escaping. And these were highly intelligent aliens capable of retaining museums to expedite the next rise of civilization after each collapse. I cannot begin to express my irritation at the convoluted third rate thinking that went into this book. Shame on Niven. Shame on Pournelle.

OK, I guess.:
"The Gripping Hand" is an OK sequel to "The Mote in God's Eye", I guess. But, I was not all that happy with it. I know these writers are capable of better story-telling than this and marked it a little low, because of my disappointment. "Mote" had a good deal of 'action'. This sequel has less action and more beating around the bush. There are plenty of words. But, they do not seem to add up to much in this story. I got through the story, but had to wonder: "So what?" for a bit. Who knows? Perhaps Niven got tired for a while? Some of that 'tiredness' ahows in some of his solo works from this time. Who knows? What I do know is that this book could have and should have been better.

Different, but worthy:
I happen to be re-reading this book right now, a copy of which "Operation Paperback" generously sent to Afghanistan for the benefit of deployed servicemembers. The book certainly is chock-full of talk. Page 206 (of the edition I read) is not unrepresentative: it has exactly four short narrative sentences; all the rest is spoken dialogue. On the other hand, page 284 has exactly *three words* of dialogue, with the rest being narrative, so don't get too concerned! The preponderance of dialogue doesn't bother me particularly, as good books are about people, and people communicate largely by the spoken word. At least I find dialogue interesting. Consider this sentence: "There's motive here for an arbitrarily large number of murders." And the next line: "What do you know of our breeding habits?" (!) Is this book dull? I don't think so. It has a great deal more political manuevering than 'Mote' did, true; but that is in the nature of the scenario, in which the Empire of Man has to decide What To Do about the Moties. It also has space battles, ships captured, a hostage situation, and quite a bit else. Here's part of the problem: space is BIG. The technology Niven and Pournelle have adopted in these books forces the characters to stooge around an alien solar system at one G or thereabouts. It just takes a long time to get anywhere, and the ship movements are complex. The authors could have glossed this, but in my view that would have taken a bit too much of the 'science' out of the 'fiction'. It's worth the effort to keep track of the book's many complexities. Of neccessity, very much different from 'Mote'; but quite good in its own right.

Could have been better written:
The first book was excellent and I was glad to read it. This one is not written well but is still worth the read. It seems like the author just didn't think a lot of the details through. People will start ideas in the dialogue and never complete them. The intrigues between the moties and humans are interesting but seem to take nonsensical turns. I reread passages many times and referred to the cast of characters in the back to see if I missed things, but didn't manage to make sense of the, In the end I just continued to read sometimes things cleared up, sometimes they did not, generally it didn't seem to matter. There are also a lot of false starts and several unnecessary characters. The authors have a rough draft of a good book here. I am surprised that these two great authors would be this sloppy with such an important property. I hope they read this review and rewrite this book.