Eternity's End

Rating:
Summary: A truly amazing book !!
Review: A intensely enjoyable escape from reality!
ETERNITY'S END has all you could ever ask for.
Once again Jeffrey Carver has given us another incredible novel.

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Summary: A tale of pirates and sailing ships transposed to space
Review: A space opera which seems to really be a pirate tale, but set with spaceships in the distant future. The hero, Legroeder, escapes from a pirate outpost at the beginning of the book. He'd been kept captive there and forced to sail their ships for them after a ship he was on was captured by the pirates many years earlier.

Making his way to a civilised world, he finds himself accused of assisting the pirates in the capture of that ship. It seems that someone is trying to scapegoat him. Trying to clear his name with the assistance of his lawyer, Harriet, Legroeder gets caught up in the related mystery of a "Flying Dutchman"-like ship which went missing over a century earlier but is still seen from time to time.

Legroeder gets deeper and deeper into trouble and flees to join an alien race which wants to send spies into the pirate stronghold. He has to contend with machinations all around him. Legroeder can never be sure who, if anyone, is his friend.

There are several opposing political forces - mainly the alien race, and two different bands of pirates. The non-pirate humans don't play much of an independant role, they're just there to be manipulated by different groups of pirates. The background is a war fought a century earlier between humans with implants and humans without; those without won, and those with became pirates. Human society seems to have become moribund since, and one of the pirate societies seems to be where progress is taking place.

These implants and augmentations seem to be the only real science fiction aspect to the novel. Legroeder is given implants of his own by the aliens; they are autonomous AIs which converse with him in his head.

I found this novel quite a struggle to read. The plot could have been a ripping yarn, but in fact most of the time it wasn't very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Good adventure story
Review: Carver starts off this book with heart pumping action that doesn't stop for much all the way through. It's a good tale of adventure with a comfortable mix of pulp novel ingredients like private eyes, space pirates and a host of believable, if slightly two-dimensional characters, along with more up-to-date ideas like cyber augments and a bit of political intrigue that makes this mystery feel very much like a Grisham novel on LSD. I'm not comparing quality, but the plot was enough to keep me interested through the somewhat large number of pages.

Despite a truly panoramic vision of the future, Carver stays on track and keeps the descriptive prose short and sweet. Like Asimov, he doesn't get lost in distracting details. Be warned, though, the numerous jaunts through the flux (hyperspace) can be somewhat unusual. The flux rigging is certainly his most original invention - a place where quantum indeterminacy allows the pilot's consciousness to have an incredible degree of control over the reality of the ship and its surroundings - but, to get the most out of the flux, the reader has to be willing to pump their imagination up to full volume. I recommend this book to anyone who likes a slightly dreamlike blaze through a galactic conspiracy.

There's a measure of political and social commentary such as with the Fabri natives and the corrupt government officials, some highly fictional armchair cosmology such as with the Deep Flux, and the occasional car chase and love triangle thrown in for spice. Stylistically, it brings to mind the earlier work of Robert Heinlein with the fast-paced and occasionally sardonic surrealism. Readers who demand profound truths out of every page might do well to steer clear of this one. But I enjoy a roller coaster ride as a lighter break from more serious books, and I'm going to be looking for more of Carver's books when such a break is needed. Eternity's End promised a breathtaking journey and Carver delivered.

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Summary: fast paced, colorful awesome book
Review: Have been reading sci-fi since i was a kid. Have read all the great authors and think this is probably my favorite of all time. Super easy read, colorful and awesome adventure. Think the guy who said it was awful never saw the book.

james torrisi

Rating:
Summary: THIS IS AN AWFUL BOOK
Review: I forced myself to read the first 78 pages, then gave up disgusted and threw the thing in the garbage.

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Summary: Good space opera
Review: I really enjoyed this book. The universe and history Carver created is interesting and believable. I like his interpretation on interstellar travel and his characters. The only thing I might fault it for is for a few chapters where reality pretty much follows no rules - which could ruin a story - but he doesn't do anything ridiculous with it. I definitely plan to seek out more books by him.
This is apparently the sixth book of his to take place in the "Star Rigger Universe" - but it doesn't read like it's the sixth in a series. It firmly stands on its own as a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Good space opera
Review: I really enjoyed this book. The universe and history Carver created is interesting and believable. I like his interpretation on interstellar travel and his characters. The only thing I might fault it for is for a few chapters where reality pretty much follows no rules - which could ruin a story - but he doesn't do anything ridiculous with it. I definitely plan to seek out more books by him.
This is apparently the sixth book of his to take place in the "Star Rigger Universe" - but it doesn't read like it's the sixth in a series. It firmly stands on its own as a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Action and sense-of-wonder galore
Review: I was pulled into *Eternity's End* by the notion of a Flying Dutchman spaceship, and found so much more than I expected. I just loved this book. The Flux and the Flux interface fascinate me. Carver pulls off the admirable feat of making something illusory, subjective, and "virtual" feel utterly real and yet profoundly unknowable--he vividly describes what is essentially indescribable. The frisson of the unknown grows persistently more eerie the deeper the characters go. I loved the Narseil, and the process of getting to know them through Legroeder's eyes (and especially the mild estrangement from human culture that I felt at one point, making me realize how immersed we'd gotten in Narseil culture). I enjoyed the heck out of the pirates and the cyber enhancements. The opening chase scene is only the beginning of a wild roller-coaster ride--you get a breath to look around now and then and ponder some intriguing new information, and then the author throws the next twist at you and you're off again. There are "silent running" scenes with all the tense appeal of the best submarine adventures, and exhilarating dogfights, and character interactions fraught with intense and complex psychology. This is topnotch space adventure and an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but it works on many deeper levels, too. I am dying to read a sequel. Please write one, Jeffrey Carver!

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Summary: Jaunty if familiar action sci fi
Review: This book posits a future history in which human civilization is controlled by declining societies, while "outlaw" groups provide an alternative approach which is, by turns, both chilling and promising. Folks are wired, cyberspace reaches its logical limits, and conspiracies abound. The central love story is odd and yet workable, but it's the action that dominates in this story of a fellow who escapes from space buccaneers only to find dark doings back on his home world. This is a modern sci fi,
with frequent nods to earlier era work, but all in a post-this, post-that world. This is one of a series of "rigger" books (a "rigger" steers a ship in surreal hyperspace travel in a "flux"), satisfying hard science, interesting soft plot. Nothing all that new here, but not a bad flight.

Rating:
Summary: A Wild Ride!
Review: This is the first book I've read by this author and I am impressed.

The story covers an amazing amount of ground as we follow the hero from the frying pan to the fire and back again, but the story is amazingly compact considering the setting and the ambitious plot.

Scene building is kept to a minimum. Other authors could have filled a trilogy out with this same story by writting page after page of descriptive prose and still fail to capture the stark beauty of Carver's brief but powerful descriptions of scenes. For example, more happens in this novel than Stephen R. Donaldson's entire "Gap" series and that sucker, although satisfying, consisted of five books!

I wouldn't be surprised if this book gets a nomination for a Hugo or Nebula award.