WIJFR: The Gripping Hand

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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, 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.

On my flight to Phoenix last week I finally polished off the last hundred pages of Larry Niven’s and Jerry Pournelle’s “The Gripping Hand.” Written about 20 years after “The Mote in God’s Eye,” the sequel picks up the story of Kevin Renner, Horace Bury, Rod and Sally Blaine, and, of course, the Moties.

It’s been 25 years since the Empire established the Crazy Eddie blockade fleet to prevent the Moties from escaping out of their home system. The aliens have tried different methods of getting through the blockade, but none have succeeded. Bury and Renner, who have been working as undercover agents for Naval Intelligence, think they’ve discovered evidence that the Moties might have found a way out. Bury, who is frightened of Moties and what they represent (due to his experience in the first book), demands to survey the Crazy Eddie fleet to ensure it continues to be effective. What if the Moties have found another way out of their system? Can the Empire possibly hope to contain them?

The first half of the book goes very fast, and since I had just finished the first novel a few months ago, it was easy for me to slip back into that universe of characters and locations. It’s a, pardon the pun, gripping first half of the story. Once the characters (and I don’t think this is a spoiler) get back into the Mote system, however, it becomes a confusing mess of names, characters, and factions: Medina, East India, Crimean Tartars, the Khanate … the list goes on. Whereas the first book dealt only with the Moties on Mote Prime (the main planet), “Gripping Hand” involves all of the different asteroid civilizations … and there are a lot of them to keep straight.

Overall I enjoyed the book mainly because I liked being back with the characters from the first novel and seeing what they were like 25 years after their first expedition to the Mote. But like “Publishers Weekly” said, “Gripping Hand” is an “adequate but inconsequential sequel.”

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