This is pretty much my favorite Niven/Pournelle outing, but the cute anagram naming and the conceit that this is our prehistory were bigger drags this reading than the last. I would have loved a map. ( )

I tried--just not into fantasy. ( )

Copy of my Launchpad review from 2001:
Niven and Pournelle have taken pre-Columbian evidence and legend and woven it into an enthralling fantasy.
The plot revolves around Whandall; a member of an ethnic grouping called Lordkin. Three groups live in the city of the title: the Lordkin, who are socially criminal; they exist by stealing what they need, and pass the days in family and gang politics; the kinless, who work hard and build, only to have their possessions 'gathered' by the Lordkin; finally, the Lords, who live in a walled enclave, with riches beyond a Lordkin's dreams.
Every several years, the Lordkin are consumed by group madness, and commit mass acts of arson; this is seen as possession by their god.
The book is split into several sections detailing Whandall’s childhood in the city, his departure, his life outside the city, and his eventual return.
As with Feist’s Magician and others this is a tale of a boy from humble stock being caught up in the last years of a way of life, and being remade as a hero. ( )

I avoided this book for quite some time due to its unusual premise: Los Angeles in an age of magic. I shouldn't have waited; this books is everything I like about Niven and Pournelle, a big cast of characters in a believable world, and something interesting to think about.

14,000 years ago, the world was magical. However, magic is a finite and dwindling resource. Atlantis has recently sunk, victim of an acute mana shortage. The Burning City experiences periodic conflagrations when the magic that keeps fire from burning inside buildings lapses.

While the Burning City does share a geographical location and some characteristics with the Los Angeles that will follow it 14,000 years later, it also has some unusual differences. It is ruled by Lords of a legal bent who employ highly trained hoplites as an army. The Lords are assisted by their allies the Lordkin, wild and unruly barbarians who support themselves by a random and personal form of taxation known as gathering. Anything a Lordkin can take from the conquered Kinless they can keep. The only thing that keeps the Lordkin in check is their propensity to kill each other.

We learn about the Burning City through the life of Whandall, a Lordkin boy of unusual curiousity and drive. His voyage of discovery is ours as well. This gives Burning City an impressive scope, nearly half a lifetime. We get to share everything in Whandall's life, and see a strange new [old?] world through his eyes.

I enjoyed this book in its own way, even though Niven and Pournelle did grind an axe or two. Who knew that Atlantis' doom was excessive taxation? ( )

Set in the same world as the much better 'The Magic Goes Away', this is literally the story of what would happen if LA was remade into a fantasy city, with emphasis on out of control gang warfare. The characters are fairly interesting, but I found the setting jarring, and because the authors seemed to have an agenda in mind when they wrote it, it dragged at times.
It wasn't terrible, but for Niven and Pournelle, it was disappointing. ( )