The first two-thirds of this book kept me up at nights devouring each page. However, the book takes a sharp turn into left field when it turns to the culture who actually built the Stone. If you are not a hard-core sci-fi/fantasy reader, this is where you'll start to get completely lost in all the jargon and trying to keep up with the myriad of technological wonders that are introduced. For example, the author throws about 20 complex names of people at you (that are all similar in their makeup) over and over that you try to keep up with thinking they might be important to the story. Alas, it turns out that 19 of them weren't pivotal or even necessary to the flow of the story. It's as if the author wanted to see how many esoteric names he could come up with.

Also, alot of the technology is hard to grasp and yet is covered in the book as if it were common knowledge. I'm sure this is a great book for the really hard-core sci-fi fans, but I would caution the casual sci-fi readers to stay away and instead read a book by Stephen Baxter, such as Moonseed or Titan


Confusing   August 3, 2003
 9 out of 10 found this review helpful

"Eon" may pose more of a challenge when it comes to selecting a rating than any other book I've ever read, since it consists of one half of a solid, well-written SF epic, and one half of a piece of incoherent junk. The story starts out like this: a gigantic asteroid arrives from outside the solar system and moves into an orbit around earth. The United States sends teams of scientists to explore it, and they soon find that the asteroid was a gigantic spaceship of sorts that appears to have come from our own future. Investigations into a library found on board soon reveal that the world is moving towards a massive nuclear showdown. This is the good portion of the book. It is written with intelligence, clarity, and an almost nostalgia-inducing dose of Cold War paranoia. The cast of characters is what most people have come to expect from hard science fiction: not extremely deep or dynamic, but believable nonetheless.

However, it all breaks down about halfway through the book. The story makes a wide turn involving alien invasion, parallel universes, alternate geometries, and some other stuff. The problem, simply put, is that this part of the book is too confusing. The explanations are cryptic and difficult to follow, and keeping track of all the new concepts that get introduced becomes quite a chore. Also, the characterizations collapse during the second half of the book. All of the major characters seem too ready to forget and ignore their previous lives and to accept all of the weird stuff that happens to them. One might, of course, make the argument that some enigmatic writing is acceptable and that "Eon" is a novel one that requires multiple readings, somewhat like William Gibson's "Neuromancer". The problem is that Bear doesn't have the literary style to pull such a stunt off, and I really have no desire to pour through this book time after time trying to fit the puzzle together. While I have great respect for some of Bear's other works, this one could have used some more planning and rewriting.


Fascinating Book   November 16, 2003
 9 out of 14 found this review helpful

This book is fascinating. If you are into science, especially time and space related, consider this book. If you like "Timeline" (Crichton) and "Star Trek", chances are good that you will like this book as well. It reads fairly easily and will keep your interest.


BOOOO.......   December 21, 2005
 8 out of 21 found this review helpful

RIIIIING!!!!! Not only boring, but poorly organized, executed and written (and, did I mention, boring??) After struggling through a few chapters, I tried skimming ahead just to see what was going to happen. Unfortunately, I couldn't even do that because not much actually happens in the first 150 pages, and that which does is so convoluted and unclear, and written in such awful prose, that it is hard to follow. Additionally, although the world is about to come to an end in the story (maybe), I did not really care about the characters, who are more wooden than Billy Baldwin's acting.

Can I be any more clear? This book is terrible.

As far as the writing goes, I'll give you a few choice gems to whet your appetite in case you still want to give this mess a shot:

"Some of the outfits attracted her. Others were positively puritanical--- in a slinky sort of way." (Hmmm... those slinky, puritanical outfits. Can't you just imagine them?!?)

"Men's clothing was no less flamboyant, or somber..." (Looks like men's clothing is also flamboyantly somber. Wish Versace could take a hint from those futuristic, flamboyantly somber humans!)

"Many of the spellings had been simplified or-paradoxically--made more complex." (Gosh! Both simplified AND more complex? How paradoxical! Guess we've covered all the bases there!)

So, if you'd like to read a spectacularly bad, though paradoxically un-good, science fiction disaster, with unexpectedly trite, though inconceivably wooden, prose about astoundingly boring, though unexpectedly laconic, characters, I would highly recommend this disturbingly terrible, though hopelessly awful, book.


Bear had vision...   December 20, 2000
 7 out of 9 found this review helpful

Eon is a book ahead of it's time. Bear painted a picture of mankind becoming dependent on computers and implants, personal data pillars in dwellings, libraries without books, massive use of holography (WAAAAAAAAAAYYY before the holodeck) and other things that our modern life reflects as an almost certainty for our future. Bear shows a future technology that I would love to experience. I know that some of the "history" is dated, but you might look at it from the point of view of the story as one possible time line, not necessarily our own.

It is also interesting to ponder just how marvelously the humans on the Thistledown adapt and thrive in their confined space, and create a world of peace, beauty and eventually god-like technology through hard work and ingenuity.

I didn't care for all the political ideas presented in the book, but I guess that Bear was trying to bring some balance to the story.

Overall, I would highly reccommend this story to sci-fi fans. Others, read it at your discretion, but keep an open mind and try to imagine the scope of the genius of the best two characters in the story...Thistledown and The Way.