Who better than a brilliant paranoid to expose the devious plots of others?

Who indeed, agrees Sigmund Ausfaller, one of Earth’s few remaining “natural” paranoids. His bosses feel likewise. Sigmund Ausfaller is the ace up the sleeve of ARM, the Amalgamated Regional Militia, whose Bureau of Alien Affairs on Earth employs a group of paranoid agents, most of them drug-induced, to ferret out the secrets of the Citizens, an alien race known unaffectionately by humans as the Puppeteers. Ausfaller sees conspiracies within conspiracies and his fearful distrust of everyone, most notably the Puppeteers, makes him the ideal agent to seek out the location of the Puppeteer homeworld.

Niven and Lerner’s series of prequel novels to the seminal classic Ringworld began with Fleet of Worlds, an excellent blend of interesting scientific concept and engaging adventure story, and continues with Juggler of Worlds.

This second novels builds upon the first by examining events of Fleet of Worlds largely from the viewpoint of a handful of key characters centered in and around Earth’s solar system. Intrigue and espionage viewed through the eyes of a brilliant paranoid agent makes for an exciting ride in which the reader quite naturally finds him/herself looking askance at every twist and turn in the plot.

Sigmund Ausfaller is relentless in his pursuit of the location of the Puppeteer homeworld, a drive that becomes more determined when the Puppeteers mysteriously vanish from the solar system seemingly overnight. Ausfaller knows that his nemesis, the Puppeteer Nessus, has to be behind this and that fuels his desire to not only discover the whereabouts of the fleet of worlds but also to discover the secret behind the many ships that are disappearing around the edge of the solar system.

The story starts out strong and I immediately took a liking to Sigmund Ausfaller, despite the fact that he is not a character who is tailor made to embrace. Ausfaller would be a hard person to be around but the very things that make him a less-than-cuddly member of society make him ideal for the job of staying one step ahead of a race of beings determined to keep themselves safe at all costs. Ausfaller’s paranoia has caused him to set up contingencies in the event of his death that make him an even more dangerous person dead than alive which means that Nessus has his own problems in trying to scheme and plot to outwit Ausfaller and the agents of ARM.

Traveling back and forth between characters who are diametrically opposed to one another keeps the story fresh, especially considering that Juggler of Worlds treads some of the same ground laid down in Fleet of Worlds. I was initially concerned that I might find the story lacking given how recently I had read Fleet of Worlds but I needn’t have worried, Niven and Lerner keep in interesting. I had read some complaints about this second book including thoughts that this is the weakest of the four, in large part due to a feeling that the novel is composed of several story fragments cobbled together. I was not seeing this at all until the two-thirds point and then I understood. The story does become a bit more fractured near its end and it is difficult to understand why the format changed. The chapters become shorter and at times events are rapidly dealt with and swept aside to get on to the next plot thread and I can see why the novel would engender complaints. I was very engaged with the story by that point and while it keeps the novel from being as strong as Fleet of Worlds it also ended in a way that makes me feel compelled, and excited, about reading Destroyer of Worlds.

If you like government intrigue mixed with thought-provoking science and a health dose of space opera then I highly recommend checking out the first book, Fleet of Worlds. If you get hooked on the universe and the characters, like I have, you’ll have some entertaining reading ahead.