In a post a couple days ago in this comm where I asked for book suggestions, Eon was one of the most often recommended ones. As a result, I went into it with pretty high expectations. To my surprise, I didn't like it all that much. I'm bad at putting my feelings down on ~~paper~~ electrons(?), but I'll try to kickstart the discussion.
Please remember, this is my personal opinion and is no more valid than how you feel about the book. If you loved it, more power to you! I'm not here to bash it, rather I'd like to find out what others liked about the book that I might have missed.
What I loved:
- The scale and setting of it. BDOs have had a soft spot in my heart since the days of Ringworld. Imagining an O'Neill cylinder that stretched forever, with links to worlds every several hundred km, was a treat to my imagination.
What missed the mark for me:
- Characterisation. I never really felt connected to any of the characters. None of them were really memorable to me. Considering how much of the story was focused on political happenings and human drama, that was a bit of a turn off.
- Exploration of the technologies / artifacts. Almost everything was introduced with little to no investigation. The exploration of Thistledown (both the city and the asteroid) was done offscreen, and all we see is one character's reaction to being carefully introduced to it all. A lot of stuff was told, not shown.
- Mysticism. The weird sudden focus at the end on ~~souls~~ Mystery, magical divining rods that only obey their master to open portals to new worlds, etc.
- Visualisation. This is probably a 'me' problem, but I just found it impossible to visualise / understand Greg's descriptions of most of the structures.
- Little to no exploration of the future civ (other than some pretty incomprehensible political exchanges) or any of the numerous other alien civs humanity has partnered with.
- Contrived situations. Why did humans have to evacuate Thistledown to move into the Way? Why, after centuries (millenia?) is there only a single city of humans? There's no shortage of resources or space. There's no reason Thistledown and the entire length between it and Axis city couldn't have been occupied, especially given travel speeds. Why is it this very moment where the Jart finally decide to get off their asses and nuke the Way? Why haven't the Naderites already colonised a thousand planets in alternate universes, given their religious beliefs?
Anyway, I'm interested in hearing other viewpoints about the book, now that you don't have to hold back about spoilers. What did you love or hate about it?
I love the book, but still rolled my eyes at the mystery mysticism. Then again, I haven't reread it in years.
IIRC There is a bit in the book that states the surface of the Way is Terraformed for a billion km or so around axis city. I took that as implying that at least some humans live on the surface and a diaspora among worlds connected to the Way is implied.
I also recall an explanation about evacuation of the thistledown being because they knew that when the way was connected that they'd been whipped into another universe, assumed it was a crap one and yolo'd down the way. Also, that it was forced by the geshels(?) and the naderites were none to happy about it.
I actually prefer my SF to not get too deep into tech details. It avoids the story being dated by the technology of the time of its writing: e.g so much golden age SF describe computers as banks of switches and spools of tapes.
I found that the sequel Eternity, while a bit of a slog, fills in quite a few of those gaps.