[Book review] Empress of Eternity by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

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This review contains minor spoilers.

I’m beginning to think that the prevalence of fantasy is slowly squeezing out science fiction.  I don’t think sci-fi will vanish entirely, but it does seem to be around a bit less nowadays than I remember from years past.  As such, I make a concerted effort to cast my net wide for sci-fi novels and see what’s out there.  This is what led me to Empress of Eternity, the newest standalone novel by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

Far in the future, Earth’s dominant feature is a massive canal, more than two thousand miles long and impervious to any damage.  Its origins are lost to the mists of time, but there are those who believe that it contains powers unlike any imagined.  Many study it, but few come close to solving its secrets.

In three different time periods, scientists are close to doing just that.  But in each of these eras, political unrest and violence mar their efforts.  On the off chance that the canal might yield valuable information, forces of these governments will stop at nothing to control the canal and eliminate any who stand in their way.  But the canal’s builders may not be as dead and gone as everyone thinks, and soon, they too get involved in a conflict which could unravel the very fabric of the universe.

I’ve read Modesitt’s science fiction before, but not his fantasy.  I found myself reacting to this novel the same way I did to the other one I’ve read—I mostly enjoyed it, but I ended up shaking my head over the way it was presented.  I think that I’ve finally figured out what is throwing me about his writing: Modesitt writes science fiction as if it were fantasy.

I know that requires an explanation, so I’ll provide one.  Much of what fantasy traditionally presents are elements that can be “observed”—interactions between cultures, the effects of magic on its surrounding environment, the reactions of people to events that intimately affect their welfare.  Science fiction is, by its very nature, more about technology, the far future and things that aren’t necessarily based in the familiar.  These are things that most often rely on explanation than observation.  As an example, I could watch two people talking and make a pretty good guess as to how well they get along, but I couldn’t watch someone power up a computer and extrapolate how it works.  And that’s how Modesitt writes his science fiction.

There’s only so much that can be hand-waved away in science fiction, and in my opinion, Modesitt steps across that line.  A good portion of the novel is spent watching people open and close doors and windows in the canal and one of its stations, and then suddenly there’s time travel and avatars of those who built the canal and lots of technical talk.  It strained my suspension of disbelief quite a bit.

On top of that, the canal is written as a cross between a MacGuffin and a deus ex machina.  It spends most of the book as a MacGuffin, as people run around frantically trying to work it, possess it, or destroy it, but not doing anything in and of itself.  Then, about three quarters of the way through the tale, it suddenly comes to life and gets all three sets of characters out of their predicaments by turning into a weird sort of movable superhighway, complete with rainbow effects.  I wish the sudden change would have been led up to more smoothly.

All that said, I admired the author’s acumen at creating complex societies and their political struggles.  There are three of them, though, and so none of them really get the attention that I would have liked.  For most of the book, the rise and fall of those in power is tantamount, and there are so many details that I would have loved to see.  For example, one of the societies is a hive mind, and their methods of communicating and being so in tune with each other were very interesting.  Since these three time periods are so far apart, I would also have loved to have seen how each eventually rose from the others, as they’re all so extremely different.

The author also wove in many little pokes at people who wantonly destroy the environment for their own gains, much as he did in Haze.  Here, however, it feels less blatant and more like an integral part of the story.  Modesitt begins with the premise that each society is dealing with the effects of massive climate change that threatens the planet, so it interweaves the whole story instead of being thrown it at random.

I think I should make a concerted effort to read one of Modesitt’s fantasy novels for comparison to the science fiction that I’ve already read.  It might change my perspective on his writing style.  In any case, Empress of Eternity is an interesting story, if possessed of some problems that I couldn’t quite get past.  Even so, it’s got enough strengths to be of interest to those looking for something on the harder side of the sci-fi spectrum.

This book was provided by the publisher.