The book, not the expansion. Following your suggestion Arkady. Personally, I don't get the hate other people seem to have with this book. I'll agree its not high culture, but I didn't think it was that bad. Then again, I'll admit I read trashy books and stories sometimes, so maybe my perspective is radically different from other peoples.
So, I ask you why do people hate this book? And, what kind of books or which authors do you normally like?
I just wrote the following down (I started this when Saikoyu posted, so this is 1h15 minutes of writing), from the top of my head. I read EA a long time ago, likewise TBL. So I probably forgot a lot, and got some things wrong. But I hope you still get the idea.
Careful, possible spoilers below
Writing Style
To get it out front: Based on writing style, the book was the worst book I have ever read, and I read quite a few, including other game fiction. It's one of the very few books I did not manage to finish. The only other book I have conscious memory about not being able to finish was a nice philosophy book called "Metaphysics Today". For me, the book was atrociously bad.
Having said that, I'll try to refrain from using too much "horrible", "abysmal", "terrible" and similar adjectives in the following.
Also, please keep in mind that I only read until page 127, where part II of the book starts. It's quite possible that the quality improves immensely after that. Having had that hope for about three fourths of the 127 pages, I gave up on the hope, though.
Character Charicatures
The characters are overstyled to underline the impression the reader should get about them.
Jamyl Sarum is described as a graceful woman, almost fragile, up to the point where she lifts her aide from the ground, holds her up, shakes her, and then throws her to the floor. A worthy Bud Spencer scene - for the Empress? And it is merely done to underline that she's an "important character," a protagonist. A few pages later, Tibus Heth does exactly the same. He's limping with one lame leg through the factory he just helped take over, he's tired, exhausted. Someone upsets him - he suddenly loses all the tiredness, the lame leg, everything, he lifts the guy up, shakes him in the air, and throws him to the floor. Sound familiar? Yes. He's a protagonist, he apparently needs to be superhuman strong.
On the other hand, characters you are supposed to dislike are similarly "explicit". Some corporation CEO is hiring Gallente prostitutes to "prove" to himself that he's "good", and he tries repeatedly to satisfy all three of them. That also includes one of the probably most awkward sex scenes I know of, where I have no idea why it was included in the detail it was - not enough to count as "porn" and restrict the book to a mature audience, but detailed enough to not need any fantasy for the event. Compare The Burning Life, where sex scenes also happen, but use "fade to black" to leave the details to the reader.
This goes on. You get a diplomat who behaves completly undiplomatically, a Karin Midular who behaves as if she never saw politics before, ... cardboard characters everyhwere with the only features being a few hints to underline what the reader is supposed to think of them.
Deus Ex Machina
One of my biggest issues with the story of the book is the permanent reliance on deus ex machina to solve most plot issues. There is at least one DEM event in almost every chapter I read - something happens, the resolution is difficult, out of nowhere and completely unmotivated, the grand savior appears and solves the issue.
This is best described by the first appearance of The Broker (the personified Deus Ex Machina - it does not confuse me that he's pretty much "the" character of the novel). I tremendously enjoyed the chapters in which Tibus Heth takes over the factory. Those are mostly well-written, logical, and tell a good story.
Tibus Heth rises up with his workers, take over the factory, and at the end, they finally achieve their dream: The factory is theirs! Yay! And then they realize that they don't know what to do next. Now they have what they wanted, but don't know what to do with it. They have the corporation police incoming, a large fleet outside ... they have a problem. They never planned this far. They didn't even believe they'd get this far. That is a great story. It's awesome. I loved it.
But I didn't count on TonyG. Out of nowhere, The Broker shows up, solves all the issues, makes Tibus the boss of the corporation and a few others. And to kick the reader in the teeth about having completely screwed up a really nice plot, he does a spiderman/terminator mix and completely needlessly jumps into molden steel with the seemingly only reason being a somewhat shortened travel time.
A scene I can only assume is there because "woah, that's COOL". No, it's not. It's ridiculous.
This then just goes on. A completely undiplomatic diplomat gets taken by some Mysterious Person that comes out of nowhere to the Elders who came out of nowhere (Elder ex Machina), the Empress who comes out of nowhere, etc. etc. etc.
Story Type
The other problem I have with the book is the story it tells. It's not an EVE story. I stopped reading the book as an EVE book after a few dozen pages, and read it as a sci fi book. To me, it's absolutely inappropriate to the EVE world.
Epic Heroes
The book tells an epic tale of universe-shattering magnitude about great heroes.
But what I like about EVE is that there are no epic heroes. I like the dark world where no one is in power, where no one is really in control - everyone is a victim of impersonal forces, has constraints and necessities they just can't circumvent, and even the people with the best intentions are driven to do cruel things, just by following the best intentions.
Even capsuleers, the immortals, the highest beings in the world, are just cogs in the machine, victims of impersonal powers greater than themselves.
Empyrean Age (and Theodicy) does the exact opposite of this kind of story. It's full of epic heroes who are better than anyone else, who are not subject to bad restrictions. Like The Broker who knows everything and can control everything.
Shades of Grey
Next, I love the EVE story because there is no clearcut good and evil. At best, you have only evil. But really, it's shades of grey. The Amarr clearly aren't "the nice guys", but neither are the Minmatar. Minmatar are tribals with quite cruel rituals and treatment of each other. A lot of slaves live a good life, but in the Republic, they often starve.
The Gallente, the shining beacons of democracy, are cruel bastards of public games and mob control. I loved the chronicle about the execution of a traitor, because that's just what I want Gallente to be: Not the good guys, but people who are differently bad.
There is no "right" in this universe, there are only different kinds of "wrong."
Not so in Empyrean Age (and Theodicy), even though he tries. The Amarr are really evil. Tibus Heth is the really good guy - he tries to somewhat make him a dictator, but at least in the first 127 pages, he's the paragon of the caring leader, rescuing his people out of bad situations, risking his life to save some irrelevant worker... (I hope this gets better later)
But this is typical for TonyG if you look at Theodicy. It's the only story in EVE that introduces "the dark jovians" who are behind everything. That's a boring plot. The big conspiracy behind every negative thing is boring to me.
Prime Fiction, Prime Schmiction
Like Theodicy, Empyrean Age runs havoc over existing prime fiction. The ideas about cloning in the book have been discussed in this forum already. There are a number of such occurances. CCP PF is by far not consistent and contradiction-free, but few people created so many contradictions as TonyG - all in the name of writing a "good story", failing at it, and all of them introduced completely needlessly.
Needless Plots
Like with the Deus ex Machina, TonyG has a tendency to pull completely exaggerated plots out of the sleeve for no reason whatsoever.
As a good example of needless stories, take the Elders and Jamyl.
The Republic has been diverting funds to build a fleet against the Empire. That's a great plotline. Whether it's Midular who has been doing this in secret and hiding it with her appeasement politics, or whether it had been Shakor who did it in secret using Midular as a puppet doesn't matter. You can build great plots of political intrigue, of coup d'etat, or half a dozen other possibilities just with this.
But that's not enough for TonyG. He has to bring up "the Elders", mystical beings who are somehow larger than life, totally forgotten, and suddenly coming back. No one believes that THE ELDERS! have returned, but everyone knows them (except for all the player Minmatar, who suddenly, during DT, "remember" them). There has been no mention of Elders before in PF, they were created just for this. And I don't see why.
Jamyl comes back from the dead. I actually liked this, as it picks up an old PF plot of the succession trials. But instead of making a really nice story about the Empire having a strong controversy on Jamyl having done clear heresy, she whips out Doomsday Ex Machina, safes the Empire from the otherwise unstoppable Elder fleet with a single shot, and everyone loves her all of a sudden.
There was no reason to invent the doomsday device there, either. To use the ancient terran superweapon, TonyG not only had to come up with the weapon in the first place and a reason as to why no one so far has found and used it, but also why no one will use it in the future - because this weapon clearly is infinitely more powerful than anything other nations have.
The story could have been told easily without any of this. The Minmatar could have created this fleet without any mystical Elders, and the Amarr could have fought them back without the need for a superweapon. So why does he have to come up with these? No reason other than "but it's a great story" - and no, it isn't.
The Burning Life
Some words on TBL, just to show the contrast here.
Contrary to EA, I enjoyed TBL a lot. But not because the writing style is tremendously good. The style is actually not that impressive for a book. The characters have some awesome ideas (<3 the psychic wreck of an agent because they send people to kill thousands every day), but they stick to the few good ideas - I sometimes miss the coherent whole. And the overall plot of the book is pretty bad. Also, roughly half through the book, you notice that the author was running out of time. The story sounds hastened, as if he needed to get done with it. The difference between the beginning and the last third is pretty strong.
All in all, it's quite obviously an attempt to show every other faction in the universe, and it does a good job at that, but it's not a good book as far as books go.
Still, I enjoyed it a lot. It has really nice ideas, and it excels at conveying the atmosphere I enjoy so much about the EVE.
Empyrean Age is a bad book, and it doesn't even convey the nice atmosphere I enjoy in EVE so much.
This I can agree with Arkady about. Empyrean Age is a total train wreck of a book.
Incidentally. Heth is not a hero. It eventually becomes clear that he is a frothing bigot. Indeed he is an ex (or perhaps not ex) member of the terrorist group that started the original Gallente/Caldari war. Oddly, the tatoo on his forearm that identifies him as such is only ever noticed by the soon to be murdered CEO of Ishukone whilst reviewing footage of the Armour Forge incident. His chief of security is part of the divison that gets this info for him, and he is the current CEO of Ishukone. Oddly, nothing has come of this. The desecrations of Caldari war monuments on Caldari Prime that serve as part of the rationale for the invasion are carried out by Caldari terrorists from Heth's old group who have been biosculpted to look Gallente.
The crew of the Retford, who you are obviously supposed to sympathise with, are very irritating. Their constant squabbling made me wish they'd just hurry up and die.
The Elders. They have stolen a good chunk of the Gallente aid money to the Republic to build three huge fleets (and nobody noticed). They have planets that they use as sanctuaries in the Great Wildlands (and nobody noticed). They supposedly use their spy networks to track down and, overnight, kill all the Amarrian/Ammatar infiltrators within Midular's government (who RSS don't seem to have noticed). They have also worked out a way to circumvent the core nation's Jump Portal jamming (which is how they jump a fleet into Yulai before the war as a warning to CONCORD). For some reason they haven't seen fit to share this with their kin in the Republic though.
Oh yes, and they are never described and you never hear one speak.
The Nefantar, it turns out, weren't traitors at all. Instead they pretended to collaborate in order to protect the Starkmanir. Which is odd because I thought the Starmanir rose agains the Ammar after the Day of Darkness, when the Nefantar had already turned?
All the Amarr portrayed, with the exception of one with severe brain damage and memory loss, are shown as cartoon villians. Vitoc is shown as being routinely used to subdue slave populations, as opposed to only being used on slaves in key positions. Granted this is on Sarum held worlds and they have a reputation for being cruel. But still.
CONCORD, it seems, keep the control system that lets them dispatch ships to an emergency in little or no time in one place on their HQ in Yulai. No backups in case of a disaster of some kind (or a honking great fleet destroying the place).
Tony G woud appear to suck at plotting, characterisation and continuity.
Quote:The Nefantar, it turns out, weren't traitors at all. Instead they pretended to collaborate in order to protect the Starkmanir. Which is odd because I thought the Starmanir rose agains the Ammar after the Day of Darkness, when the Nefantar had already turned?
Oh god. I never noticed that one.
The Starkmanir genocide happened YC -289.[
1] I could not find any reference on when the Nefantar betrayals happened, but if I remember correctly from some COSMOS stories, those were during the initial invasion of the Minmatar Empire (YC -881)? Anyone with COSMOS knowledge have appropriate references? :-)
Kady quite appropriately sums up my view on EA/Theodicy.
My biggest problem with it is his "metaplot" stuff and his powerful, almost non-human characters (Dark Jovians, Elders, etc, to some extent even The Broker). Epic stories about How The World Really Is, discovering the real evil who really controls it all, being hired by powerful and ancient things to save the world, etc, can be good stories (this book isn't, but they can be). They can also make a wonderful pen-and-paper campaign with a clear beginning and clear end, but they are not, IMO, good background for a sandbox MMOG, because we cannot all be the handful of guys who find out the truth.
And EVE is, before anything else, a sandbox MMOG.
(2010-10-15 23:59)Arkady Sadik Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:The Nefantar, it turns out, weren't traitors at all. Instead they pretended to collaborate in order to protect the Starkmanir. Which is odd because I thought the Starmanir rose agains the Ammar after the Day of Darkness, when the Nefantar had already turned?
Oh god. I never noticed that one.
The Starkmanir genocide happened YC -289.[1] I could not find any reference on when the Nefantar betrayals happened, but if I remember correctly from some COSMOS stories, those were during the initial invasion of the Minmatar Empire (YC -881)? Anyone with COSMOS knowledge have appropriate references? :-)
Thing is. It would be reasonable to use the idea that a clan or some other sub-group within the tribe was feigning co-operation in order to shield the rest of the Minmatar from the worst Ammar excesses. But the book pitches it as if the bulk of the tribe had these motives. The governor of the mandate turns out to be a undercover agent and a good chunk of the Ammatar fleet responds to her call to betray the Empire.
Pretty odd for a nation that, until a few years ago, had been fighting a border war with the Republic.
Thanks, I almost had the idea that I missed out on something later in the book.
Anyone else notice how the Ammatar changed over time? In early descriptions[
1], they were not a tribe, but that
"a fair proportion of the old Minmatar aristocracy, or tribal leaders, were among them." I think this changed with COSMOS, though. (Not TonyG's fault, for a change!)
Okay, so I'm not finished with it. So I won't declare hatred just yet. I will say it is weakly written, but you know the old saying about pizza? "When it's bad, it's still pizza"...well my opinion is "Well, it's still EVE."
This is mostly because I have not read very many chronicles, and most of any lore or flavor I have is from IC interactions, or information obtained from npcs. I would venture to say that once I've read as much decent EVE fiction, I will likely hate it too.
I can say that I have been completely convinced never to read this book.