Eyas :

Rating:
Summary: Wow, What Tediousness! What Boredom!
Review: Bad bad bad! If you care to read my other reviews you will definitely agree. I borrowed this book from a friend (wisest decision in my reading life, so far). I never reviewed books like this. I must be really disappointed. This is not me writing. I have become someone that is entirely not ME.

Rating:
Summary: Oddly Good
Review: Eyas is a very strange book. One of the strangest things about it is the fact that it's good. It shouldn't be good; Kilian writes from a pretty superficial Canadian/Progressive sensibility (check out his map of North America a million years from now, with the Great White North hugely expanded and most of the US gone).

But Eyas has a strange, cumulative power. It starts small, but moves very smoothly into bigger and bigger scale. And the notion of evil Kilian invents is brilliant. I won't give it away, but it's perhaps the best narrative metaphor for the baneful influence of the past you'll encounter anywhere.

Kilian transcends his conscious ideology in this book. Its climax is a Jihad as grand as any in Fantasy, and this Greenish author shows himself to be very adept at describing a complex military campaign. Like Eyas at the end of the novel, Kilian, in writing this book, crashed through layer after layer of ideology to make something greater than its maker.

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: The first two thirds of this book were great. It starts with a tribe who live like Indians. They have a naming ritual for infants which occurs at a cove. A giant sea creature surfaces there and names the baby. The baby in question becomes a heroic warrior named Eyas. The only problem I had with this book came at the two thirds mark. There was a jarring change in focus that could have easily ground the book to a halt. Still, I'll probably read this book again.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but not good
Review: This book was alright. I wouldn't call it good, but it wasn't -horrible-. I did manage to finish reading it, but it was a stretch. A tribe of people living in a primitive society that worships their goddess (a whale that speaks to them) find one day a great ship of the People of the Sun about to crash into the rocks. They rescue three of those aboard the ship, one is the son of the Sun (a ruler who was dethroned and driven from his homeland), one is the Sun's concubine, Silken, and the last is a tiny baby. They name him Eyas. Eyas grows, finding he has an ability to communicate with animals, and a natural affinity with the Brutes (centaurs, lotors, and windwalkers). As he grows, the young Sun grows ever more angry, aloof, and determined to take back the throne that is rightfully his. In short, he runs off to take back his throne, decides he will come back and conquer the peaceful people that raised him, and Eyas decided to round up an army of Brutes to defeat the Sun.

Oh, but wait, this is -also- in a far-flung future and the dead are fighting for the Suns and oh, my, they must destroy Skyland to win. This last bit wasn't introduced until the last eighth of the book. I think the author came up with various ideas -as he was writing-. Had any of this been incorporated in the beginning it would have been -much- better, but he started too small and moved too slowly. This book had a lot of potential, but the climax was just crammed into about twenty pages and disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but not good
Review: This book was alright. I wouldn't call it good, but it wasn't -horrible-. I did manage to finish reading it, but it was a stretch. A tribe of people living in a primitive society that worships their goddess (a whale that speaks to them) find one day a great ship of the People of the Sun about to crash into the rocks. They rescue three of those aboard the ship, one is the son of the Sun (a ruler who was dethroned and driven from his homeland), one is the Sun's concubine, Silken, and the last is a tiny baby. They name him Eyas. Eyas grows, finding he has an ability to communicate with animals, and a natural affinity with the Brutes (centaurs, lotors, and windwalkers). As he grows, the young Sun grows ever more angry, aloof, and determined to take back the throne that is rightfully his. In short, he runs off to take back his throne, decides he will come back and conquer the peaceful people that raised him, and Eyas decided to round up an army of Brutes to defeat the Sun.

Oh, but wait, this is -also- in a far-flung future and the dead are fighting for the Suns and oh, my, they must destroy Skyland to win. This last bit wasn't introduced until the last eighth of the book. I think the author came up with various ideas -as he was writing-. Had any of this been incorporated in the beginning it would have been -much- better, but he started too small and moved too slowly. This book had a lot of potential, but the climax was just crammed into about twenty pages and disappointing.