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Title: The Gripping Hand

Author: Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven

Narrator: L. J. Ganser

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-20-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1240 votes

Genres: Romance, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Robert Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read". The San Francisco Chronicle declared that "as science fiction, The Mote in God's Eye is one of the most important novels ever published". Now Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, award-winning authors of such best sellers as Footfall and The Legacy of Heorot, return us to the Mote, and to the universe of Kevin Renner and Horace Bury, of Rod Blaine and Sally Fowler.

There, 25 years have passed since humanity quarantined the mysterious aliens known as Moties within the confines of their own solar system. They have spent a quarter century analyzing and agonizing over the deadly threat posed by the only aliens mankind has ever encountered - a race divided into distinct biological forms, each serving a different function: Master, Mediator, Engineer, Warrior. Each supremely adapted to its task, yet doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. For the Moties must breed - or die. And now the fragile wall separating them and the galaxy beyond is beginning to crumble.

Members Reviews:

Just not as good as the first

This book wasnt for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I don't know who would enjoy this book after the first one. It was a fairly miserable sequel.

Would you ever listen to anything by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven again?

Probably not.

What aspect of L. J. Gansers performance would you have changed?

The performance wasn't that bad, the story was the problem.

You didnt love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Not really. Too silly on an ending, the characters got weak.

Any additional comments?

I wish I'd liked it.

Sequel to "The Mote in God's Eye"

"The Mote in God's Eye" is one of my all-time favorite science fiction novels. When it appeared it took a truly novel, very anthropological approach to the subject of aliens, and it managed to make the Moties some of the most interesting aliens in the world of science fiction. This sequel picks up the story several decades after the original and spends the first half of the book reintroducing characters, reprising the plot line of the first book, and introducing a few new players (most of them descendents of people in the original). This reintroduction is long, tedious for someone who has read the original, and probably confusing for someone who hasn't. The second half picks up the pace because the Moties are back in the picture, and Pournelle and Niven do a great job of extrapolating the effects that contact with humans would have had on the Motie civilization. In summary, you definitely have to read the first book before you read this one, at which point you should fast forward through the first half of Gripping Hand as fast as your audio player will allow -- or get the WhisperSync version and skim to the middle and THEN listen. Ganser's narration is solid, but not worth the hours of listening required to get to the good stuff.

I was wrong all these years

I have never finished this novel despite The Mote in God's Eye being my favorite novel. I don't know if it was my extremely high expectations or I was just judging it too harshly.