Book Review: 'Beowulf's Children / The Dragons of Heorot' by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes
‘The Dragons of Heorot’ was published by Orbit Books (U.K.) in 1996. The cover illustration is by Fred Gambino.
Given the title ‘Beowulf’s Children’ in the U.S., this is the second volume in the so-called ‘Heorot’ series, the first being ‘The Legacy of Heorot’ (1987), and the third being ‘Starborn and Godsons’ (2020).
[ My review of ‘The Legacy of Heorot’ is posted here. ]
‘Dragons’ is set twenty years after the events of ‘Legacy’. Having secured their island redoubt, Camelot, from the hostile life forms indigenous to the planet Avalon, our multi-ethnic, sexually liberated team of colonists have set up a safe and prosperous society that fulfills the dreams and wishes of everyone who agreed to place themselves in cryosleep for a one-way trip to colonize the stars.
However, as the novel opens, discontent is rising among the 280 sons and daughters – known portentously as the ‘Star Born’ – of the colonists. Smart, physically impressive, and ambitious, the Star Born chafe at their elders’ prohibitions against setting up colonies on the mainland of Avalon. Whiling away their time with orgies, glorified boy scout camping trips, surfing, and pranking the old folks, is only increasing the impatience of the Star Born and their de facto leader, a golden boy named Aaron Tragon.
Cadmann Weyland, the hero of ‘Legacy’ and the embodiment of the legendary Beowulf, now is older and a little wiser, but still the authority figure in the colony. Weyland is willing to allow the Star Born greater autonomy in setting up operations on the mainland, but the collective trauma the colonists suffered at the hands of the monsters causes them to overmanage these efforts, angering Tragon and his followers.
But even as tensions between the Star Born and their parents threaten to give rise to overt violence, the wildlife of Avalon presents a new danger to the Earthmen who thought they had tamed an alien world……….
‘The Dragons of Heorot’ is a mediocre book. I had to struggle to get through it.
I gave ‘The Legacy of Heorot’ four stars, because it was a well-plotted, action-adventure sci-fi novel with touches of horror. I was rooting for the monsters all throughout the novel (which probably was not the authors’ intentions) and while the colonists won in the end, there was a sufficiently high body count that I was satisfied that the monsters got their due.
‘Dragons’ suffers in comparison. Its length of 594 pages works against it, because the authors fail to provide a single, focused narrative as they did in ‘Legacy’. ‘Dragons’ is not an action novel but a world-building novel, meandering and scattered.
For example, there is exposition on the cultivation, processing, and consumption of coffee on Avalon. There are lengthy passages describing efforts to convert the indigenous herbivores into the equivalent of pack animals. There are passages that provide ‘first person’ insights into the thinking and behavior of one of the monsters. And the presence of much bed-swapping triggers plentiful soap opera-style melodramas.
The monsters don’t make an appearance until nearly 200 pages into the novel, and then, only in a brief and cryptic fashion. Afterwards, they primarily stay offstage, emerging every now and then to lend some brief momentum to an otherwise dull narrative.
The book’s denouement, which commences on page 532, is lumbering, obtuse, and seems to take forever to unfold, probably the result of having to accommodate ingredients from three authors. It is gratifying in the sense that the monsters finally get do so some crunching and munching on the colonists, but this seems a thin reward for having to plow through the preceding chapters.
For a book published in 1995, the prose in ‘Dragons’ reads as if it was composed in the 1970s. Dialogue is wooden, and segments detailing the emotional and psychological conflicts of the lead characters have a trite quality that indicates that Niven and Pournelle are not all that motivated to try and emulate the advances in the qualities of sci-fi prose brought about by the New Wave era and the cyberpunks.
The verdict ? I finished ‘The Dragons of Heorot’ with no interest in pursuing the final volume in the series.
‘Dragons’ mainly will appeal to those who are keenly interested in the fate of the protagonists in ‘The Legacy of Heorot’. All others can pass on this novel.
