

?Niven's work has been an intriguing and consistent universe, and this book is the keystone of the arch. But who will sit on the Ringworld Throne? Now it looks as if the Ringworld itself needs a Protector. And the Ghouls have their own agenda?if anyone dares approach them to learn.Įach race on the Ringworld has always had its own Protector. Incoming spacecraft are being destroyed before they can reach the Ringworld. Something is going on with the Protectors. legendary beings brought together once again in the defense of the Ringworld. The human, Louis Wu the puppeteer known as the Hindmost Acolyte, son of the Kzin called Chmeee. A place of untold technological wonders, home to a myriad humanoid races, and world of some of the most beloved science fiction stories ever written! the most astonishing feat of engineering ever encountered. He manages to kill them all, but returns wounded to the control center, where he fights and is killed by a Ghoul protector Louis has created.Come back to the Ringworld. Bram shoots down ARM and Patriarchy ships attacking the Ringworld, and then tries to overthrow the other vampire Protectors who control the rim wall. Since there are signs of several Protectors on the Ringworld, Louis returns to the Hindmost to be restored to health in exchange for service, only for the pair of them (along with a Kzin named Acolyte, son of Chmeee) to be enslaved by a vampire Protector ("Bram").

After ten years of wandering around the Ringworld and aging, the Hindmost convinces him that he killed far fewer people than expected. Meanwhile, Louis Wu decides to die of old age instead of asking the Hindmost for rejuvenation, as self-punishment for his helping the Hindmost to restabilize the Ringworld at the end of The Ringworld Engineers, killing (as he thinks) a trillion hominids to save the rest. The Ghouls find one of the Hindmost's spying devices in the factory and transport it all the way to the rim, to ask for help against the Protectors who rule the rim. With the help of two Ghouls, who know that the nest is located under an abandoned floating factory, they manage to cast out the vampires. This book consists of two main plot threads, which only come together towards the end of the book.Ī variety of Ringworld hominid species, led by the Machine woman Valavirgillin (from The Ringworld Engineers), join together to kill a large nest of vampires (the shadow nest) which has been feeding on all of them. He wrote it as a replacement after being unable to finish his contracted novel The Ghost Ships, the sequel to The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring. It is the direct sequel to his previous work The Ringworld Engineers (1980).


The Ringworld Throne is a science fiction novel by American writer Larry Niven, first published in 1996.
