Burning City by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

My reading habits have gotten really bad.  I almost never find time to read, anymore.  It took me at least six months to read this book even though I generally enjoyed it.

It's a fantasy story set, I think, in Niven's Sorcerer's world.  It posits the existence of Atlantis, mana, life in the Americas, etc.

The social setting of the city was a bit hard to follow.  The story was mostly surrounding one character.  So the relationship between various factions and social classes was described from his point of view.  There were Lords, Lordkin, and kinless.  Exactly what the distinction was between these groups never really seemed clear to me.  The Lordkin seemed entirely untrustworthy, so why did the other groups put up with them?  Basically, how the economy could possibly sustain itself.

Another problem with describing the city from this one character's point of view is that there were large sections of the city and the environs beyond that he had little knowledge of.  Yet, they had a tangential effect on events in the book.  So his descriptions were vague and distorted by his upbringing.  I think that contributed to my confusion.

Similarly, the indoctrination to his new life as a trader made for a lot more explanation.  After trying to keep up with the city society, we're dropped into a situation that has nearly nothing to do with the first one.  And then we're brought back to the city.  With my slow reading pace, that caused problems, again.

At the end of the book they tried to imply that the story was based partly on old legends.  And the setting was supposed to be in California.  The implication was that maybe it was sort of true.  I didn't really need that.

Here, all I've been doing is bitching.  But overall, I thought the book was pretty good.  The characters were believable.  There were so many of them, some with similar names, that they were a little hard to keep track of, sometimes.

On Mighty's Total Book Value Scale, Paperback.  A fun fantasy romp.  Without the heavy-handed editorializing on child rearing techniques as in Starswarm.

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