Eon : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Unique view on our future
Review: Greg Bear delivers a fantasy of worlds coliding over time that keeps you heart pumping and the pages turning. This is a must for Greg Bear fans and Sci-Fi lovers alike. The novel will push you to the end of time and back. A must buy.

Rating:
Summary: This is one of only two fully-realized masterpieces by Bear.
Review: I have read all of his books at least once but this is the only one I keep coming back to. Maybe I'm a stiff for post-holocaust scenarios, but the scene that still sends chills is where Vasquez discovers the secret of the Seventh Chamber - BAM! Never one for consistantly strong characterization, when Bear finds a sympathetic set of characters he can feel something about, you can tell it. Only MOVING MARS comes close.

Rating:
Summary: Was My Copy Missing Pages?
Review: I was drawn into this story by the character of Patricia Vasquez, a young mathematician whose brilliant mind might hold the key to understanding the Stone, an asteroid which suddenly appears above Earth in the year 2000, yet which seems to contain in its hollowed-out core the artifacts of a human civilization. Patricia was enough to get me past the fact that in the book the US is still involved in the Cold War, with Communist characters spouting predictable party jargon at every opportunity. But as the fictional world took more and more turns toward the bizarre, with less and less explanation or character development, I was lost. By the end I wanted to ask the publisher to send me the missing pages that would explain the 502 I had just read.

Rating:
Summary: Eon
Review: Fantastic book. One of my two favorites (other is the Mote in God's Eye).

Rating:
Summary: Totally, absolutely, gob-smacked!
Review: Now, look. Don't get me wrong. I don't think Greg Bear is a terrific writer. He is far, far better than that. I don't think "Eon" is a stupendously wonderful book. It is far superior to being simply stupendously wonderful. If you're into hard sci-fi, add this book to your shopping cart. If you enjoy wild and uncompromising speculation, add this book to your shopping cart. If you enjoy getting to know real characters, vulnerable characters - then add this book to your shopping cart. I bought it when it was first released in New Zealand - some six months after its publication in the U.S.A. Not for the first time I wondered why I wasn't living in San Francisco. Six months without "Eon" in my bookshelf!! Unthinkable!

Rating:
Summary: (Eon)A stunning masterpiece
Review: In order to describe just how incredible this book is i would need to be a gifted writer.unfortunately im not so i will keep it simple.Eon is so beautifully detailed and complex yet it neither confuses or loses the reader as the plot gets deeper and more involved.dont get me wrong this is not a book for those out there that get confused by technological garb as the book is heavily laden with it.But the rewards of this book far outweigh the one downside.do yourself a favour and get hold of a copy,it is probably one of the best sci-fi novels you will ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Too many notes
Review: Well, I can't fault Greg Bear for his imagination. He clearly has tons of ideas, many of which are wild and intriguing. His mistake was cramming them all into one novel, producing a hopelessly cluttered work in which so many threads are competing for attention that none of them is allowed any real development or substance. Early on, the book drops hints about the far-out ideas it contains, but devotes way too much attention to Cold-War squabbling which is boring and mundane in comparison, and hopelessly dated in retrospect. When it finally gets into the far-future stuff, the culture and technology are exotic to the point of caricature, more silly than awe-inspiring. It feels a bit like "Gulliver's Travels," but without a trace of Swift's satirical purpose. In fact, it's hard to see any real purpose underlying this story, other than to let Greg Bear unload his wild speculations. I read this book because I was interested in the physical concept of the Way and the technology of sculpting with spacetime; but this, like every other aspect of the story, is never explored with the detail it deserves. The characters have the same problem as the concepts: there are simply too many of them, and none is really given depth.

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading..but Rama was better.
Review: Bear does an exellent job in this book however, it does suffer a couple of flaws. First, as others have pointed out it has aged badly. Written in 1985 the early parts of the book (which focus on earth in 2000-2004)simply don't match up with real history. This flaw is less noticable in the second half of the book but still hurts Eon badly. If you have not read Rama by Clarke I would suggest it as a better book. The secon major problem with this book is the length. To much time is spent developing detail that does not pertain directly to the main plot. It's worth reading, just don't expect another RAMA.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the time
Review: I cannot tell you how disappointed I was when I got to the end of this book. First of all, it took an eon to read it. It was painfully slow with little climatic excitement for build-up. The characters from Eternity (which I loved) did not develop. It is hard to engage the reader in a world when the main characters are all disengaged. What can I tell you? Rather than read this book just imagine what happens to the people of Thistledown when the future meets the present, or the present the past, or whatever. I was so confused by the end I did not care. Actually, I love time travel and alternate reality stories. I think Bear missed an opportunity to give up hope for the future and hope for the universe here though. I wanted a kind of spiritual hope that would make me feel good and reflect upon all things positive in our lives. Instead, his Final Mind left me with a feeling of dread. Bear is too much a visionary for me. I found myself skimming paragraphs rather than trying to construct what he described. I agree with an earlier reviewer that you need a map and guidebook to get through this book. Anyway, read with caution, if you must read it at all.

Rating:
Summary: Suffers from old age
Review: Possibly a masterpiece in 1985, Eon suffers not from Bear's writing, which is excellent, but simply from old age. If, like me, you read Clark's "Rama" series, you read the ultimate work in the genre of 'discover artifact and the culture behind it'. Rama came after Eon but the pupil bested the teacher. Today, Eon remains entertaining and will keep you reading but both the cultures of the humans trapped in the Stone and that of its builders are shallow in comparison.