Customer Reviews

Beowulf's Children

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is identical in content to 'The Dragons of Heorot' ISBN 1-85723-373-5

Once again, I have stumbled into a series from the wrong direction. I finished "Beowolfe's Children" before reading "The Legacy Of Heorot," and in fact, did not realize it was a sequel until I was over fifty pages into the novel. I didn't miss a thing. I can easily say this story stands on it's own. The characters are well drawn, the background intriguing, and the action non-stop. Someday, I am sure I will find a Niven-Pournelle-Barnes collaboration I don't like. But this isn't it. I heartily recommend "Beowolfe's Children."

This book was wonderful. I couldn't stop reading it. The Niven/Pournelle/Barnes triad is in top form here. Lots of great ideas and interesting ground covered. Only two disappointing parts: the "Big Mystery" is badly telegraphed part way into the book, and the ending is weak and a bit abrupt. Still, a great read and highly reccommended. Can't wait for the sequel.

I really, really liked this book. I accidentally read it before Heorot, so I am shopping here to purchase it. However. I really liked this book and it was thrilling read. Very unpredictable and quite the Ecological Mystery. I Highly recommend Destiny's Road if you liked this book. Question...in Destiny's Road they say that Avalon quit communicating with Earth. In Beowulf's children they say that its the other way around, how do you reconcile that????

Fun and entertaining, but no-where near as amazing as Legacy. Interesting developments with Avalon ecology, but nothing as intrinsicaly astonishing and unpredictable as Legacy and also grossly under-developed. A huge anticlimax at the end, left me needing to reread the first book. I also suspect that Niven and Pournelle didnt contribute to this as much, it lacks their style.

Until this book, I had never read a Niven book I didn't like. Ugh! Choppy writing, gratuitous sex, gratuitous violence, unlikeable characters, and a storyline that never went anywhere. The plot kept chasing its own tail. I lost interest about halfway through and had to force myself to finish it just to find out who gets killed by the end. And when I found out what happened, my response was, "So what? That's all?" Sex, gore, choppy writing, and lousy plot. Read _Ringworld_ or _The Integral Trees_ instead.

This continuance of the excellent story of The Legacy of Heorot is a huge disappointment, full of editing errors and downright sloppy writing. I was amazed that I considered not finishing a book with Niven's name on the cover, but after the zillionth dredging up of sexual mores among the colonists and useless paragraphs devoted to coffee (which contained glaring factual errors), I was almost fed up. I don't believe Niven nor Pournelle had much to do with this project and that their names appear solely to command $4 per word from the publisher. Their respective writing styles are absent except for some obvious cut and paste operations, and the book is a dismal failure. Barnes is written all over this book and it shows.

Standard Niven, pournelle and Barnes , a good story, well told and gripping.
Even better on a Kindle. Full marks

I got this book as I have got the paper format but never seemed to have it with me when I got the time to read.
I don't regret it, although I did find the prequel better its still a good original story that I kept going back to.
I hope they do another in this series.

I read the description of this book and thought it was one I had not got. I bought it to read on holiday on my Kindle only to discover (on holiday) that I already have this in paperback form as The Dragons of Heorot. That said it is a cracking read.