Juggler of Worlds

200 Years Before the Discovery of the Ringworld

By: Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's Summary

Covert agent Sigmund Ausfaller is Earth's secret weapon, humanity's best defense against all conspiracies, real and imaginary, and all foes both human and alien. Who better than a brilliant paranoid to expose the devious plots of others?

But Sigmund may finally have met his match in Nessus, representative of the secretive Puppeteers, the elder race who wield vastly superior technologies. Even after the Puppeteers abruptly vanish from Known Space, Nessus schemes in the shadows with Earth's traitors and adversaries.

As a paranoid, Sigmund has always known things would end horribly for him; only the when, where, how, why, and by whom of it all eluded him. But even Sigmund never imagined that his destiny would be entwined with the fates of worlds...

©2008 Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic Reviews

"[Niven and Lerner] clearly enjoy revisiting aliens familiar from Niven's menagerie while spinning an elaborate tale of interplanetary intrigue. Their many fans will, too." ( Booklist)

boring rewrite

This book reminds me of one of those "clip show" tv shows where they clip together past scenes to make a new show when the writers are too lazy to come up with anything new.

This book is mostly a behind the scenes look at the known space short stories of Niven, but from the view of the ARM and Nessus. Like what they thought about Beowulf's journey to the center of the galaxy, or what happened after he encountered the antimatter system that destroyed the GP hull, etc. They are just all strung together in a mish mash with seemingly no plot to the story at all.

Very disappointed. Niven can do much better. I wonder if he even wrote any of it or just signed his name to it?

not as good as I expected

repetitive and repetitive and....
fragments of other stories.
I've read this before in other collections.
and he reiterates himself within the short story format.
meh.
I love his work but...
meh.
ptui.
meh.
FOAD.

Narration

This narrator’s work is usually excellent.
Accents were painfully overdone, especially Beowulf Shaeffer and Carlos Wu.

narrator is great but horrible at the same time

so I have read this book before and the one before it (Fleet of Worlds) and I liked the books, there were a couple of parts that were strange but over all it was great

the narrator is great but horrible at the same time, he does a great job and is easy to understand but after every sentence it is ended with a long trailing off of the word last spoken, even words that make no sense to say like that

what I am talking about is he will say something that ends with the word "world" and will say it like "worllllddd" taking way to long to stop talking, or the word "outing" will be said like "outiiinnnggg" - but words that dont lend them selves to being said that way are said like that also "sense" is said like "sennnse"

its just so dam annoying to the fullest and I cant believe this was allowed to happen in the recording

listen to the sample and you will see what I mean

the book is great so thats good

Bounces around a bit

with what almost seem like mini stories with abrupt and sudden conclusions lacking detail and feeling incomplete like there was more of the story to be told within. This may be an effect of having the story read to you. They all fit together toward a rational and satisfying conclusion, however.

Mostly a rewrite of "Crashlander"

This is an 8 hour rewrite of Crashlander from the Sigmund/Nessus point of view, with 4 and a bit hours of new material at the very end. I felt slightly ripped off (hence only a rating of 3).

Complicated story

Like game of thrones. Not as many characters but sometimes hard to follow who is screwing who.

Not Bad at All

Some of the reviews were rather harsh on this book, but I found it to be much better than they claimed. Some of the jumps in time left me confused at times, but I soon caught up.

fantastic read , great narrator

I was really confused when I got started. this book fills in the gaps from all the other books in the ring world, crash Lander, etc.... this fills in a lot of the blanks but when I started to listen I thought I had already heard this one. Give it a chance it's a great book.

spectacular performance

This story as well as the supporting performance is much improved over previous works which themselves were very good. The flow of the story is much easier to follow then previous works especially at the very beginning. the performance of the voice talent was exceptional.

Really good use of the existing lore

Really good use of the existing universe and lore while still telling a new story