The Moon Maze Game Mass Market Paperback – 25 Sep 2012

I was excited when I learned there was a Dream Park novel I had not yet read, and jumped on the chance to get it. I anticipated the further adventures of Alex and Millie Griffin, Tony McWhirter, Acacia Garcia, and an assortment of Gamers and Dream Park employees I cam to care about in the other three books. As it turns out, that's not what we get. By rights, "The Moon Maze Game"should be titled "Dream Park: The Next Generation."

Alex Griffin and his wife, Millicent Summers, make cameo appearances, and Acacia Garcia and Tony McWhirter are referred to though not seen. But the protagonists are Scotty Griffin, Alex and Millie's son; and his ex-wife, Kendra. Essentially, the novel has an entirely new cast. Further, the action takes place not in Dream Park, but on the Moon at Heinlein Base -- an homage to Robert A. Heinlein's many stories and novels set on (or in) the Moon. This poses a problem for me as a reader. Niven and Barnes wrote as if with the presumption that the reader has read at least some of Heinlein's lunar stories (particularly "The Menace from Earth" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress") and therefore understands lunar conditions without the need for explanation. Having read Heinlein's works set on the Moon, I had no trouble following things; but for someone who does not read classic science fiction, I can see more than a little head-scratching.

There are wheels within wheels in the Moon Maze Game, as there are with the other three Dream Park novels.Some of these plots make sense, especially in light of what went before in "The Barsoom Project." Others seem to be contrived, and badly at that. One thing that annoyed me was the Game Master - Lore Master relationship. Niven and Barnes attempted to recreate the antagonsim between Richard Lopez and Chester Henderson, but instead achieved only a vicious petulance, which fortunately for the book is overtaken by the actual events of the story. They seem to have forgotten one rule of the Dream Park universe: Gamers are not going to want to play a game in which ALL the players are killed out, which was the Game Master's intention. This is very much relevant, as the Moon Maze Game is being played on the Moon and very few people could ever afford to go there to play it. With a game like that, everything has to be scrupulously fair. Game Master Xavier's feud with the Lore Master and another Gamer that he thinks done him wrong twenty years ago simply does not ring true; it feels more like childish petulance.Or, as Lopez put it to Chester in the first novel, "Be your age. Where would I SELL the game that killed off Lore Master Chester Henderson?"

The characters who are Gamers and Lunies playing as Non-Player Characters, and the Lunies who live in the Moon and assembled the parts for the Game could have been developed better. While they are not cardboard cutouts, they don't have a lot of depth. The villains who are involved in a coup back on Earth and a kidnapping on the Moon are cardboard cutouts, and do not develop anything resembling depth until very late in the novel, when it is far too late for the reader to care about them. Some of the creations the Game Master created for the Game have more substance! If you are caught up in the story or one of the subplots, this won't bother you. But if you are reading it critically, it grates on your nerves. I expected better from this writing team, as they have delivered better in the past.

The plot does move right along, though, once the scene of the action shifts from the Earth to the Moon. Once Niven and Barnes get us to Heinlein Base, the action if not the characterization is everything I've come to expect from a Dream Park novel. I simply wish they had taken the time to develop the characters more completely than they did. The problems they set themselves, of non-Lunar acclimated Gamers playing an extremely complex Game (and more than one game, at that) in a climate and under conditions alien to them are all solved nicely within the parameters they set up. There is no deus ex machina, and all comes right in the end. If you are a Dream Park fan, you won't be displeased.

I simply wish Niven and Barnes had spent the time to take their story through one more draft before sending it to the publisher, that's all. That action would have turned a good read into a GREAT one.

This is one of the Larry-Niven-Steven Barnes "Dream Park" collaborations, and it's a good one. As in the other three (Dream Park, The Barsoom Project, and The California Voodoo Game) the story takes place in a near-future high-technology setting. The sorts of gamers who played fantasy & role playing games around a table in the 1980's and on computers in the late Twentieth/early Twenty-First Centuries can get a total immersion effect (holographic videos and other special effects) in a Dream Park setting. The extremely high cost of setting up the games is recouped by charging admission and by selling the premier of each game as a movie. Since most of the premier playing is done by famous, highly-ranked members of the International Fantasy Gaming Society, the movies sell like hotcakes.
But there's more. In each story there is a group of bad guys who manage to infiltrate or invade the game for the purpose of larceny, murder, terrorism, or other skullduggery. This particular game is set in the world of H.G. Wells' novels, and the facility used is at a Moon colony.
Niven and Barnes are geniuses (genii?). You'd think that, after three previous stories, the plotting would get old. You'd be wrong.
The Kindle price is right and the book is a good read. Five stars.

Like most devotees of the the Dream Park series, I view the first novel as the pick of the litter. In addition, I was disappointed in both "Barsoom" and "Voodoo". Accordingly, my expectations for this effort were both modest and somewhat cynical. I am, gratefully, pleasantly surprised.

While still not reaching the literary and plot excellence of "Dream Park", "Moon Maze" was an enjoyable journey; the story has good pace and several interesting characters. Rather than be a simple redux of the "Griffin" character, Alex's son has his own skill set and psychological impediments. In particular, I appreciated the weaving in of the game within a game concept, which permitted the utilization of true villains.

The game descriptions were one of the weaker elements: my impression is that the authors, in their struggle to lend authenticity and visual drama to the story, lost their way, a bit, with overly complex imagery and metaphors. It was almost as if they had too many tools to work with. Compared to the classic original, the writing in this area falls a bit short.

Nonetheless, the novel provides an entertaining journey; this was a good sequel and, I surmise, the final entry in the genre.

I liked the first book in this series (Dream Park) and absolutely loved the follow-up (The California Voodoo Game). This, on the other hand, was a big disappointment.

Spoilers follow.

We're set up for basically two different plots here, the stereotypical "evil genius gm out to get certain players and yet stay within the rules of the game" and the rather more interesting "professional kidnappers go after one of the players". The first is dropped once the second becomes known to the players. The game itself didn't seem all that interesting to me, but I'll admit that because of what happens the reader is only getting disjointed pieces to look at. There's more than enough ideas here to make a good book, but we don't get that. We get cardboard characters being pushed around a board. Most are barely one-dimensional. We get the terrorist with the Irish accent, the player that everybody loves who is handicapped, the politician on his way up who sells out. One member of what we are shown to be a possible budding relationship is killed off with no reaction from the other member at all. The final twenty pages probably didn't take much longer to write than they did to read. I don't mind the occasional mindless adventure in my fiction, but I don't expect it from Niven and Barnes.

Purists should wait for the paperback, everybody else can just skip it.