Rating: 
Summary: Appalling drivel
Review: This is one of the worst books I have ever read in any genre. You could go on and on about the flaws in Eon, cardboard characters, stupid, old fashioned ideas (the cold war is still raging) and odd, out-dated ideas about women, despite the attempt to make a female scientist one of the main characters (she is even more cardboard than the rest)
The fact is this is a boring book, poorly written, without any characters you can like or even empathise with. Yes, the plot sounds great in the blurb on the back...but all in all reading this book is less fun that watching paint dry. What a waste of time!
Rating:
Summary: Two deadly secrets.
Review: This book contains two deadly secrets.Deadly secret number one has to do with what the book's major characters will discover when they travel down the time-tunnel that forms one endless end of the interior of The Store, an asteroid that suddenly appears in our solar system one day and which contains relics of the future. Think 'Rendezvous with Rama' with the science ramped up several notches and the interest level ramped down by a similar amount. Deadly secret number two has to do with the fact that this book was written at all: It probably shouldn't have been! There are so many 'major' characters that all of them end up getting short shrift, with a consequent two-dimensionalism that makes them of no interest whatsover. We're never allowed to care about them. There is so much 'hard science' that the speculations about possible anomalies in the space-time continuum overwhelm whatever small story idea was present in the first place. If I do say so myself, I am not an unintelligent reader. I'm no physicist, but I do know enough physics to enjoy the aforementioned Clarke book, and other hard science authors such as Larry Niven. But the physics in this book are so far over my head that I can't tell whether they're above or below me. In fact, I suspect they're a bit over the author's head, too. My final complaint has to do with this author's fascination with
The End of the World as We Know It. In this and other books, he seems absolutely obsessed with the idea of blowing the world up in one way or another. If you don't mind, I think I'd rather blow up the book!
Rating:
Summary: "I Just Could Not Get Into It."
Review: I got up to around 100 pages before I put this book down. The premise sounded good and I liked the potential conflict with the Soviets over the strange asteroid that settled in Earth orbit. But the tour through the Stone and the explanations of its features seemed very matter-of-fact and failed to hook me. Some of the characters were a bit stiff. I would have liked to have seen more inner reaction about all the Stone's wonders from the main character, Patricia.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best SF books of the late 20th century
Review: Eon stretches your mind, literally since it deals with higher dimensions to achieve the plotline. It led me to buy the subsequent "Eternity" and "Legacy" and I didn't regret a penny
Rating:
Summary: The only fantastic book ever found for [$]
Review: ...This is the only one I've kept. I beleive that even though this is fantanisy, we, as a people are always closer to the events that lead to the Thistledown's creation that one might hope. The events that lead to the "Death" are the same political manuriving and jockeying for position that happen every day. But onward to the meat of the story... Eon will take more than one read to fully grasp, and some of the storylines can be very nearly as intriguing as the first read. I've read Eon many times, as I am doing today. It is as interesting this time as it was all others. Read it and see, and read Eternity while you're at it...
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Fiction from the End of the Cold War
Review: Besides being a very entertaining and somewhat epic near-future space adventure, Greg Bear's novel "Eon", having been published in 1985, will likely be very interesting to anyone old enough to have experienced and appreciated the last years of the Cold War in the 1980s. It was somewhat serendipitous that I came to read "Eon". I found myself away from home with no reading plans. I visited a comic book store that had some used books for sale. This book "Eon" appeared to be the best of the available sci-fi and the price was only [amount]. I am now very pleased that I happened up on this bargain. In "Eon", after some interesting fireworks just outside our solar system, an asteroid with some very strange characteristics mysteriously settles into a neat orbit around the Earth and its moon. The surface of the asteroid indicates intelligent activity in its past and investigators find some very interesting things inside. Because I greatly enjoyed Greg Bear's slow revelation of it in the story, I will say no more about the contents of the asteroid. I enjoyed the technical descriptions of interesting space (and other) technology in this novel, and I found the strong and romantic personalities of the several main characters refreshing. However, the characteristic of this novel that I found most interesting and thought-provoking was the tension in the story that was brought about by the Cold War context. In 1985, when this novel was written, I was 20 years old - old enough to have experienced the Cold War and participated in "the mindset" associated with it. Reading "Eon" was quite a flashback experience for me. It was fascinating to me to realize how much my mindset has changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Even writing those names here evokes strong memories and strange emotions. Reading the novel now, nearly 20 years later, I think I realize much of what the author was trying to convey. The context difference offered by science fiction stories often helps authors to make something seem obvious that would not seem obvious in the normal real context. I think the author was trying to indicate to Cold War participants of the time how difficult it is for individuals and collectives to correctly prioritize ideas and activities with regard to their self-interest. In other words, compare the priorities of the participants of the Cold War with that of human survival. I don't know that I would have fully realized those things had I read the book when it was first published. Reading "Eon" was, for the reasons stated above, a very interesting experience for me. If you are old enough to have experienced even a portion of the Cold War, reading "Eon" will likely be an interesting experience for you, too.
Rating:
Summary: Slow Reading... Very Descriptive Sci-fi world. Amazing!!!
Review: This book is fantastic but its two other sequels are not worth reading. The story is about a very large mysterious asteroid that takes up an orbit around the earth. The only problem is that the inner dimensions do not match the outer dimensions. The story becomes a race between the Russians and the Americans to see who can get to the asteroid first to study the findings. Eon is about another world, which exists inside this rock, but is also a portal to a dimension called THE WAY which is inhabited by millions and billions of different species. The WAY is also going through a dramatic change and it is up to the explorers to discover what the WAY truly is and why the asteroid has arrived to orbit the Earth. Lots of story and action but be careful because the actual descriptions of the places in this book require a lot of imagination. Great story, great plot, lots of action and a great character called Olmy. My bet is that the Matrix filmmakers will try and give this book a bash sometime. It is said to be un-filmable but maybe they can pull it off. The production company is also called EON... hmmmm...
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but unfinished
Review: Interesting story beginning with the eploration of the classic "unknown object", followed by political conflict, at bit of fighting, aliens, and .. the end which is a anti-climax.
Rating:
Summary: Big disappointment
Review: Friends and colleagues had hyped this book for years, so I finally bought it and slogged through its 500+ pages. The book suffers from a common failing of "hard" science fiction: a lack of humanity. Bear does try by providing a three-dimensional heroine, but focus on her is constantly lost in anachronistic machinations of Cold War politics and nearly unintelligible Thistledown politics. Also: Thistledown is never fully explained and never fully presented to us as an understandable place where humans or their descendents live; characters like the Jarts seem thrown in only to goose the plot; the explanation of time and universe travel was inadequate (how can a divining rod be the mechanism for finding Patricia's proper space and time?); and the romantic scenes, although appreciated by my prurient and adolescent mind, seem to be tacked on as an afterthought and unrealistic insofar as who chases whom.
Rating:
Summary: Modern Classic
Review: I first read EON when it was initially released. I have re-read it twice since then and it still has oomph. The novel takes a number of themes and combines them into a literate, mind boggling, action packed adventure. The characters are well developed, and the reader cares what happens to them. Only Bear and Benford can evoke an eerie sense of wonder at starnge new ideas with style and fluidity. Other hard science fiction writers have ideas just as mind boggling but lack the finesse to send chills down the spine and evoke a personal sense of wonder. The theme of the novel involves multiple timelines so seemingly dated references need to be put in context. If the reader goes with the flow of the story and refrains from analysing until all is revealed then they can expect one big bang for their buck.
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