Subject: Review: "Eternal Light" by Paul J McAuley

From: [email-masked] (p-m agapow)
Date: 13 Sep 1996 16:02:37 -0400

"Eternal Light" by Paul J. McAuley
		A Postview, copyright 1996 p-m agapow

The galaxy was a battleground for thousands of alien families, feuding for
millennia, engaging each other planetary-scale weapons.  Years ago humanity
was inadvertently drawn into the battle and now struggles to understand the
genocidal aliens.  Dorthy Yoshida knows the aliens better than anyone.  But
deep in the past a rogue star was launched at high velocity towards Earth.
Dorthy falls into the hands of a crazed immortal millionaire who intends to
meet the interstellar missile and confront the enemy there.

McAuley's novels ("Red Dust", "Pasquale's Angel", "Fairyland" et al.)  are
always ambitious, entertaining and worth reading but there's often a feeling
a disappointment when you read them that what aimed to a great story was
"merely" a good one.  In line with this faintly damning praise, "Eternal
Light" is a flamboyant, wide-screen epic that continually threatens to be
magnificent but never quite attains that.

To play the comparison game, McAuley's world is like something out of Alfred
Bester (esp.  "Tiger Tiger / The Stars My Destination"): dukedoms on Titan,
megalomaniac business men, doomed heros, corporate dominated Earth,
colourful and baroque.  The background is pure Larry Niven: wormholes,
schemes spanning eons, cosmological engineering on a scale that makes the
Ringworld look like local road works.  The surprise is that McAuley is
comfortable in both styles and deftly threads his plot through them.

Unfortunately, having placed his story on such a grandiose level, McAuley is
not quite able to resolve it satisfactorily and the climax is a bit of a
letdown.  This is perhaps unavoidable for it's problematic how you can raise
the stakes and keep the tension without getting ridiculous (e.g. "The fate
of this - and several other universes - are at stake!) or losing touch with
the personal aspects of the story.  Anyway, up until that point "Eternal
Light" is an energetic and entertaining read and as such comes recommended.
[***/interesting] and snuff Morris dancing on the Sid and Nancy scale.

%A Paul J McAuley
%B Eternal Light
%I Avon/Nova
%C New York
%D 1991
%G ISBN 0-380-76623-X
%P 424pp
%O paperback, Aus$13.95

paul-michael agapow ([email-masked]), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse
[archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]