Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

3.5 / 5

Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

I didn’t know what to expect from Lucifer’s Hammer. I can’t remember how this book even got on my radar, let alone in my audiobook collection, but there it was. It was probably recommended by Audible when I was trying to use up a credit. Sure, Audible, I trust your recommendations blindly. Also, I don’t want to somehow get screwed out of this credit. We’ve all heard stories.

No matter how it got there, I’m glad it did. Even though it was pretty far outside the norm of what I’ve been loving and craving lately, Lucifer’s Hammer had a lot to offer.

Goodreads Synopsis:

“The gigantic comet had slammed into Earth, forging earthquakes a thousand times too powerful to measure on the Richter scale, tidal waves thousands of feet high. Cities were turned into oceans; oceans turned into steam. It was the beginning of a new Ice Age and the end of civilization. But for the terrified men and women chance had saved, it was also the dawn of a new struggle for survival–a struggle more dangerous and challenging than any they had ever known.”

We start off this little adventure at a party for the wealthy and/or important. (Notice the use of and/or. Not all important people are rich, and not all rich people are important.)

The party is attended by rich guy, rich guy, rich lady, a documentarian, rich lady, and a REALLY rich guy. They mostly talk about things not interesting enough for me to remember, but then one of the rich guys talks about discovering an asteroid. You know, up in space. Due to his money, he has nothing to do but stare up at the stars. Mr. Documentarian says something like, “How interesting. How about we make a TV show about your comet? We’ll call it Dancing with the Stars?” I’m paraphrasing a little.

The party ends and the rich people go back to whatever the hell they do (see above Leo gif) and the beginnings of a TV show are put in place. We meet more characters (a lot more characters) and things are moving forward at a snail’s pace.

This is where knowing nothing about this book really started to affect me. I wondered if anything was going to happen. Ever. If I wanted to read a book about rich people sitting around and drinking I’d re-read Gatsby!

Eventually, after what seemed like too long, things happen. The comet says, “hey, I want to come to the party. I want to sit around and scoff at the rest of society. I want to pretend to be fancy and drink brandy until everyone in the room pretends to be embarrassed for me.” So the comet comes to Earth, and the world loses its mind.

Oddly, at this point in the book, it becomes very similar to shows like the Walking Dead. No, there aren’t zombies running around trying to eat brains.

The interesting thing about stories like Lucifer’s Hammer and the Walking Dead is that though they might have a different catalyst (a comet vs. a crap load of zombies) the result is very similar. Once the initial threat of the catalyst is handled, the biggest threat people face is other people. That’s where we find some of the most interesting conflicts in the book.

What was probably LH’s biggest strength was its characters. As I said earlier, there were a lot of them. For quite a while, you feel like you’re meeting characters for no reason. Even as the true story started to develop, you’re left wondering why we’re following so many different characters, and why we continue to meet more and more with almost every chapter. But then the authors start bringing them together in unexpected ways. Characters that I thought had no chance of interacting in any way are suddenly joining forces, or planning to attack each other. And as I’m sure you can imagine, by the end nearly every character is connected in a big old spider-web. The metaphorical kind. Not the massive space spider kind that could have hatched from the a comet in a completely different kind of book.

Not only were the characters’ paths handled with meticulous skill, but each character was very deep and developed. When large casts aren’t given the attention needed, a lot of the characters tend to blend together into mediocrity. That didn’t happen here. Most stood very independent from each other.

To wrap up, the plot wasn’t a complicated series of twists and turns, but the real story was in the characters’ reactions to the events and other people all around them. I didn’t know what I was in for with this book, but I’m glad I stuck it out. It was a solid, enjoyable read.

Fun fact about this post: This is the first time I got to the end of a post without a fun fact jumping out at me…