It took me a long time to finish this book. It fell into that difficult spot where it was interesting enough to keep me reading, but not interesting enough to really draw me in. That means that I would read it on occasion, but not every chance I got.
I’m not the biggest fan of Niven’s writing, but this is the first time I’ve read one that he co-wrote, and it’s an improvement. I get the sense that Niven was a good idea man, but he needed someone else to really help elevate the writing. The book is good, but not great, and it hasn’t aged particularly well. It was initially written and set in the late 70s, and there are a lot of ideas and language from that time period that just don’t fit anymore.
The story is really split into three parts. The first is the setup, the second is survival, and the third is the aftermath. One of the things that made the book so difficult to get through is that each of these three sections are treated equally. That means the first third of the book is just setting up the disaster. It has a lot of great technical information, but it just moves so slowly. Then part two comes along and it’s this huge shift to everyone running around trying to find safety. The final section is the most interesting. It’s the only part where I feel like there’s actually a plot, and not just exposition or reaction to events. The final third drew me in so much more than the first two parts.
Despite all the pacing issues (and there are a lot), the book is not bad. The characters are well thought out. They have distinct personalities and behave realistically. Overall, I’d say this is a fantastic example of how people would behave in a globally cataclysmic event. It’s what kept me reading. Every decision made sense, every reaction made sense. The characters behaved like people and not just characters trying to advance the plot.
The ending of the novel was just okay. I felt like it implied the outcomes of the conflicts rather than directly showing them to me. The end result is the same, as I had a good idea about what happened to the characters and the society, but it seemed a little lazy. It was like Niven knew what he wanted to have happen, but didn’t want to go through the trouble of describing it, so he tacked on an epilogue with a brief summary of the results.
This book put me in a difficult spot. I have a few other works by Niven on my reading list (like A Mote in God’s Eye, and some of the Ringworld books), but Lucifer’s Hammer was so difficult to get through and had such a small payoff, that I’m a little soured on reading anything else by him.
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