Certainly, a book for young adults, I understand this is the first of a new generation of science fiction novels written in the 1970s where the author attempts to create new worlds entirely set in 2850. A crew of aliens and humans are put together, including Speak, Nessus, Louis, and Teela, around whom the whole story seems to revolve. Nessus, for example, is a Pierson's Puppeteer which has two forelegs and a single hindleg ending in hooved feet and two snake-like heads instead of a humanoid upper body. The heads are very small, containing a forked tongue, extensive rubbery lips, rimmed with finger-like knobs, and a single eye per head. His brain, however, is not contained in the heads but in the hump from which the brain emerges. ‘Speaker to Animals’ is a warlike Kzin who is an eight-foot-high biped with pangs and claws. Louise and Teela Brown are humans, and provide a love interest.
The book purports to introduce a new narrative style which I found unattractive and difficult to follow, but if you are willing to open your mind to a new way of thinking, I guess this book offers some sort of appeal. Those who manage this seem to propose this as a classic of the genre. For me, the scale of the creation of Ringworld defies imagination and thus is decidedly unattractive. The book seems to focus unnecessarily on procreation and sex, with a plot line that seems to be all over the place. I can see that this type of imagination either grabs you or else it leaves you cold.