Empress of Eternity

LE Modisett, Jr is, it turns out, a beloved and prolific author. Though I hadn't heard of him until Kevin got me one of his recent books, Empress of Eternity, for Christmas. It turns out this is probably not the greatest entry point to his work. Although that may be for the best, since I do not have time to follow another author right now. I'm never going to work through my to-read list as it is.

It's not that this book is bad. But it is difficult. It had a very steep learning curve, throwing the reader into three different cultures, each with their own only slightly-related techno jargon. The book flips between three different timelines, with barely enough pages for the reader to get used to one before the story switches to another. It helps that the three stories proceed mostly in parallel, but it still took a lot of brain power to sort through everything and keep the characters straight.

In the back half of the book, the timelines start bleeding into each other, and the ways they paralleled each other earlier become more important to the story as a whole. It's interesting to see everything come together. But it would have been better if I'd come to care about the characters or gain more than a surface understanding of the societies they inhabit. The whole book, and especially the ending, felt rushed. Ultimately it seemed to be all flash and no depth, which made for a quick, but not wholly satisfying read.

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