The Integral Trees

This summer I have chose to re-read books I read or tried to read back in high school. I'm positive that books I read when I was 15, or 16 years old will read differently now that I'm in my 40's. The Integral Trees and it's follow-up book, The Smoke Ring were such books.

I remember this book as a book about "space fairies." Humans live in this weird alien fairy type planet where they mutate into flying fairy-like creatures due to the low gravity environment.

Well...... I guess this book was sort of like that, if you squint your eyes and cross them as you read it.

I'm not sure how I managed to forget how much real hard science is in this novel. I also shudder to realize that Larry Niven would probably die if he heard this novel described as "the space Fairy novels." The interesting question would be, would he die of horror or would he die of laughter?

In reality, this novel is an intricately built world with plausible mutations based on the science of low gravity living. I found the geopolitical struggles to be fascinating. My one negative would be that the characters might have been a little flat compared to the glorious and gorgeous world building. I must say I am looking forward to re-reading the third and last book in this series.