A disgustingly sexist book. Reviewing the female characters:
Teela. A 20-something naive earthling who seems to only exist for the 200-year-old male MC to have sex with. We know a lot about her physical appearance (especially how she looks like her sexy ol’ grandma), but little else. Sh is supposedly bred to be naturally lucky, but that’s not really pushed beyond a convenient Deus Ex. Here is an illuminating line of dialogue where the MC tries to cheer her up:
Pril. A literal space prostitute. While definitely not a bad thing in itself, all she does in this book is get insulted for being dumb and have sex with the MC (because he has sold - literally sold - Teela to space-Conan, and needs a new girl)
Unsentient Female Aliens. Not one, but two of the alien races we are exposed to - the ones to which the other MCs belong - have unsentient female members whose sole purpose is breeding.
Drivel. Nothing but sex and fridging. How this managed to win any sort of award, even in the 70s, is totally beyond me. The book isn’t good even if the sexism is taken out: the plot is weirdly paced, aliens are just walking tropes with a single personality trait, dialogue is confusing, etc.
The two saving graces of this book are that a) Niven was not afraid to just go for it and create aliens out the wazoo - they didn’t have to be some sort of ultra-mysterious malevolent background force… some of the MCs were aliens. b) The setting was really, really cool.
I will borrow from another reviewer and repeat this: there is really no story here, unless you think of a story as 340 pages about describing how big a ring is.