Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Tor Books (1995), Paperback, 448 pages
Description
Wide and smooth, the Road was seared into planet Destiny's rocky surface by the fusion drive of the powered landing craft,Cavorite. TheCavoritedeserted the original interstellar colonists, stranding them without hope of contacting Earth. Now, descendants of those pioneers have many questions about the Road, but no settler who has gone down it has ever returned. For Jemmy Bloocher, a young farm boy, the questions burn too hot--and he sets out to uncover the many mysteries ofDestiny's Road.
User reviews
LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
Jemmy Bloocher is accused of murder. He flees and finds himself travelling along the road created by the landing craft the Cavorite made. No one has ever gone down this road and returned. It follows the whys and wherefores of how people live and survive on this planet. Not exactly my kind of thing
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but not a bad tale of a colony. Show Less
LibraryThing member Mendoza
This is one of those SciFi books that is really more of a character study but in a SciFi setting.
Forced by circumstances, Jemmy leaves his home - a colony of Earth people that had been left on a distant planet that built Spiral City. He takes off down a road that had been formed by the landing
I don't feel this is one of Niven's better novels. There are gaps in the time-line that glared out at me and inconsistances abound.
Towards the end Niven attemps to put in exlanations of why this world works the way it does but it doesn't really jive and I was just thankful to be ending the book by the end.
Forced by circumstances, Jemmy leaves his home - a colony of Earth people that had been left on a distant planet that built Spiral City. He takes off down a road that had been formed by the landing
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craft that had originally brought the colonists. No one who has ever travelled down the road has ever returned. Jemmy doesn't have any choice and there begins his journey.I don't feel this is one of Niven's better novels. There are gaps in the time-line that glared out at me and inconsistances abound.
Towards the end Niven attemps to put in exlanations of why this world works the way it does but it doesn't really jive and I was just thankful to be ending the book by the end.
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LibraryThing member DavidLErickson
This was an interesting story, but exceedingly slow. I understand Niven's narrative had the uphill battle of creating an entirely new civilization on an alien world and I think he did a great job pulling it all together in the end. Much of the last couple chapters was an infodump where Jemmy
I think this would've worked better for me if the book was 20-25% shorter.
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finally learns the secrets of the caravans and uses it to free his people from ancient tyranny.I think this would've worked better for me if the book was 20-25% shorter.
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LibraryThing member CharityBradford
I liked this book and how I was able to follow this one person's whole life. It just didn't go anywhere, well, it did, but I got boggled down in the world. I just couldn't visualize it and that made it hard to read.
LibraryThing member buffalogr
Boring book. Listened to this as long as I could stand. The sci-fi happened long ago before the book began and the book was just one, long, soap opera. I got bogged down in the main character's life events and couldn't extricate myself from the minutiae, so I quit reading. Maybe it has a good
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conclusion, but I'll never know! Show Less
LibraryThing member DanTarlin
I haven't really read Larry Niven much, not even Ringworld, and I wanted to give him a try. Destiny's Road is a story of a colony from Earth to a planet called Destiny, over 200 years after its establishment. The story is a mystery really, as we follow Jemmy Bloocher as he travels from Spiral Town,
Jemmy is forced to leave Spiral Town after killing one of the merchants, and has to change his identity. We follow his travels as he strives to learn the parts of the planet's history that is kept secret from Spiral Town and the other villages on "The Crab", the strip of land they farm and cannot leave.
I wanted to try Niven alone after reading 2 books he wrote with Gregory Benford, which frustrated me because, while the story was cool, the writing was difficult to follow. I hoped that I could get the cool story with better writing.
But alas, not this time. I like that Niven creates a world with what I presume is plausible science (also true of the Benford books), but he just isn't good at explaining this stuff to the lay person. By the end of the book, some things became clearer, but I guess I don't want to work that hard to understand what's going on. And while the mystery is great, and unfolds nicely, Jemmy's travels are odd, disjointed, and random with too many characters who aren't adequately fleshed out.
I need to try Ringworld.
Oh, one more thing: would it really have killed him to put a map of Destiny somewhere in the book? I guess he didn't want to include it at the front, since details of the colony were part of the mystery. But I would have liked to see a map somewhere in the second half of the book, so I could visualize the layout better.
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a hick city that is the original landing spot of the colony but that is totally dependent on the Caravans that come twice a year from a mysterious other place, about which the merchants will not speak. The key element the Caravans carry are Speckles, the only source of potassium on the planet, without which everyone's mind will turn to mush.Jemmy is forced to leave Spiral Town after killing one of the merchants, and has to change his identity. We follow his travels as he strives to learn the parts of the planet's history that is kept secret from Spiral Town and the other villages on "The Crab", the strip of land they farm and cannot leave.
I wanted to try Niven alone after reading 2 books he wrote with Gregory Benford, which frustrated me because, while the story was cool, the writing was difficult to follow. I hoped that I could get the cool story with better writing.
But alas, not this time. I like that Niven creates a world with what I presume is plausible science (also true of the Benford books), but he just isn't good at explaining this stuff to the lay person. By the end of the book, some things became clearer, but I guess I don't want to work that hard to understand what's going on. And while the mystery is great, and unfolds nicely, Jemmy's travels are odd, disjointed, and random with too many characters who aren't adequately fleshed out.
I need to try Ringworld.
Oh, one more thing: would it really have killed him to put a map of Destiny somewhere in the book? I guess he didn't want to include it at the front, since details of the colony were part of the mystery. But I would have liked to see a map somewhere in the second half of the book, so I could visualize the layout better.
Show Less
LibraryThing member dimi777
Jeremy changes names each time a phase of his life finishes, at the same time he plays different roles, gets different personalities. All these changes, all this long travel help him to realize what is his goal, what is his destiny. The hero follows the Road of Destiny and finds the real meaning of
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his life. Excellent fiction. Show Less
LibraryThing member HenriMoreaux
Strange planet - check
Mystery path or road - check
Unknown history of settlement or town - check
Crime or altercation resulting in sudden banishment from home - check
Destiny's Road has all your classic elements for a quest slash adventure romp. Set on the alien planet of Destiny the book follows a
The tale of adventure across the planetscape and slow uncovering of secrets and distortions was well paced and I certainly enjoyed the unexpected events as they unfolded. They were far enough out of field that they're unexpected but not so far that they're silly or break the your immersion in the story.
It's good futuristic scifi tale, felt the ending could have been better however I can see what the author was trying to do there.
Mystery path or road - check
Unknown history of settlement or town - check
Crime or altercation resulting in sudden banishment from home - check
Destiny's Road has all your classic elements for a quest slash adventure romp. Set on the alien planet of Destiny the book follows a
Show More
young man who flees from his home with more questions than answers.The tale of adventure across the planetscape and slow uncovering of secrets and distortions was well paced and I certainly enjoyed the unexpected events as they unfolded. They were far enough out of field that they're unexpected but not so far that they're silly or break the your immersion in the story.
It's good futuristic scifi tale, felt the ending could have been better however I can see what the author was trying to do there.
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LibraryThing member teknognome
All in all, a decent book. There are some interesting ideas in world-building - otterfolk, the Wind, the control experiment. I didn't appreciate as much some of the narrative choices, particularly the nature of how the secret about the Cavorite was revealed, along with what all was going on. It
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felt underwhelming; part of this was the nature of what was revealed, and part was how it was revealed and how the main character reacted to it. But even so, it made for an interesting story in an interesting world. Show Less
LibraryThing member GretchenLynn
This was an interesting world to delve into. The main character is from a colony on a new world, and as far as he knows it is the only colony. His life seems on track until a surprise event forces him to leave his town and he starts to find out more about his world. He is smart, and curious, and
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this drives his adventure. It is an interesting book to read because the main character - the voice of the story - is so ignorant of his surroundings that the reader is often left in the dark since the character hasn't quite figured this out yet. I enjoyed following his adventure and discovering his world along with him. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1997-04
Physical description
448 p.; 17.2 cm
ISBN
0812511069 / 9780812511062
Local notes
Omslag: Carol Russo
Omslagsillustration: Michael Whelan
Omslaget viser en person, der står på et udsigtspunkt nogle kilometer borte og kigger på en tydeligvis meget planlagt by. med nogle hundrede huse.
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Destinys Road
Omslagsillustration: Michael Whelan
Omslaget viser en person, der står på et udsigtspunkt nogle kilometer borte og kigger på en tydeligvis meget planlagt by. med nogle hundrede huse.
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Destinys Road
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Pages
448
DDC/MDS
| 813.54 |