It's always hard to follow up a great book with an equally enjoyable sequel. While I have speculated that this is because the best ideas tend to get used up in the first book, it goes without saying that so many sequels fail to live up to their predecessor. With "The Gripping Hand," Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle present their attempt to follow up the success of "The Mote in God's Eye," and while it is an admirable effort, I believe that it falls short, if only just.The first book in this two b...

The Gripping Hand (1993) is Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s sequel to their popular 1974 novel The Mote in God’s Eye, which you probably want to read first. This review will have a couple of spoilers for The Mote in God’s Eye.Recall that by the year 3017 AD, humans had designed the Alderson Drive — an interstellar transporter which allowed them to jump out of our galaxy to colonize different star systems. Then they discovered the first alien species — the Moties — who were excellent engineers

WARNING! Minor spoilers of the prequel to The Gripping Hand, The Mote in God's Eye, are contained in this review.The Gripping Hand is the sequel to one of my favorite science fiction novels, The Mote in God's Eye. I had no idea there was a sequel until I stumbled upon a copy a while back. I was surprised to see that though I distinctly recall reading Mote it was not on my list of books read. (I have since corrected this electronically.) I started to keep a list of books I read circa June 1979. C...

I enjoyed this probably more than my 3 star rating would indicate. Non-planetary Moties, some returning characters from The Mote in God's Eye and some new, space battles and political strategy--all pluses. But the big minus for me was that most of the book seemed to be build-up and all the action was really crammed into the second half of the book.

This sequel to The Mote in God's Eye is a two-time DNF for me. I like the first book so much and I kept thinking, even if the sequel's not as good, it has to be worth reading, and I really want to find out what happened with the Moties. And both times--several years apart--I got about half-way through, bogged down and quit. The storyline just got too slow and confusing and I completely lost interest.I was reasonably engaged with the first half of the story, which involves a mystery with a Mormon...

This is the sequel to The Mote in God's Eye, and everything that made the original book remarkable is missing, while everything that bothered me about it is back with a force. What made the original so compelling was the central mystery around the true nature of the aliens with whom the protagonists make first contact -- I can't talk about that without spoiling the first book to readers unfamiliar with it. There's very little of that sort of driving enigma present in The Gripping Hand. The novel...

I first read this in 1994 and had low opinion of it. Re-reading it now I think there's more to it than I understood. It has two large problems. It's sequel to one of the most highly regarded science fiction novels ever so it would have to be of the stature of the Divine Comedy to not seem a let-down. I think it also suffers from too many ideas in too few pages (412). This causes the development to seem sketchy. It probably needed about a thousand to fully develop its burden. But then it would ha...

THis is the sequel to A Mote In God's Eye (Murchison's Eye in the UK I think). Pournelle and Niven have worked together brilliantly to bring this complex story to completion. It's a great examination of the need to understand the other person's motivation before committing to major action.

Very slow first half book, it got better but off it goes to listia. =)

It's no easy task to write a sequel to a masterwork, let alone with a couple decades in between, but "The Gripping Hand" manages to the task. The Empire's blockade is collapsing, whilst the Empire is more powerful and consolidated than ever before thanks to the work of Kevin Renner and Horace Bury working as Imperial Spy with enough license to do the deal as they see it. Lord and Lady Blaine are relegated to Sparta at their institute with a break-through technology in dealing with the Moties. Th...

Long-awaited sequel to The Mote in God's Eye. It doesn't live up to its predecessor, but Mote is perhaps the best first contact s.f. novel ever, so it's understandable why Hand fails to hit the mark.Roughly the first half of the novel, before Kevin Renner and company return to the Mote system, is slow-going, but I appreciated the opportunity to see a bit more of the Empire itself, especially the capital world of Sparta. The character of Horace Hussein Bury is also fleshed out much more here than...

Sequel to The Mote in God's Eye.After a quarter of a century, the Moties are poised to return, and humanity has to try to deal with it.Just didn't hit me at all.

25 years have passed since the Moties were locked into their solar system by the human blockade.In the plot of The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven Horace Bury, the man given thje job of keeping the alien moties under control, and his assistant Renner find out that a new jump point to the motie system may open up allowing the moties to escape. Mean while a worm is invented to allow moties to live without reproducing.If moties don't reproduce they die. Burry and Renner discover the jump point just in...

Really quite a good SF book with one major fault, being that it is a sequel to The Mote in God's Eye one of the best SF books ever written. This sequel has much to like as far a military sf and in-depth social-political plotting in regards to both the humans and the aliens the Moties. The understanding of the Motie civilization via the lens of Arah history was also quit interesting. Some of the characters from the first novel are there with a concentration on the former Navy navigator and the Ga...

Have you ever watched a sequel to a movie that you really liked, and partway into it realized that the whole purpose of the movie was for the stars to have a paid summer vacation? (Yes Ocean's Twelve, I'm looking at you.) The plot is thin, marginal characters from the original show up, there are a lot of exotic locales and gratuitous makeouts between characters (onscreen or off), and basically everyone in the production, if not the audience, is having fun.The Gripping Hand is that concept applie...

love a good sequel :)

This is one of those rare novels that I just can't finish. If I'm halfway through and I still have found not an iota to like, I'll pack it in. When I was younger, I toughed out everything. "I never put a book down, no matter how bad!" Whatever, Young & Stupid Me. Life is too short to slog through terrible shit.Now, I loved "The Mote in God's Eye". That was a four-star sci-fi space opera epic. This...I don't even know what to say. A lot of people found fault with the shallow characterization of t...

4.5 stars rounded up. I first read this story many years ago when it was first published. Now having gone through it again, this time as an audio book, I have to say the story has held up very well. In fact I think I enjoyed it more the second time. Niven and Pournelle gave us a gripping story with lots of space action and interesting aliens.This book can be read alone but to get the most from it, it would be best to read The Mote in God's Eye first.

Storyline: 3/5Characters: 2/5Writing Style: 2/5World: 3/5I've looked forward to The Gripping Hand. In fact, I've thought better of the series' first, The Mote in God's Eye since I first read and enjoyed it. It captured politics really well, particularly the politics in limited information scenarios. Thus what resulted was a space opera full of diplomatic brinkmanship, thoughtfully written. Niven and Pournelle do something similar in The Gripping Hand except they don't devote nearly as much time

Eighteen years after publishing The Mote in Gods Eye, Niven and Pournelle have written a sequel that, while not as novel, is more thrilling than the first tale of alien savants. I think that the opening mystery tale involving “New Utah,” and the possibility that the Moties have at last escaped into the Empire of Man is an unnecessary set up. Even so, it is more interesting than much of the slow build up that follows. But the patient reader is finally rewarded with another amazing look a Motie ci...