Just Finished Reading: Eternal Light by Paul J McAuley



Shortly after winning our first interstellar war against an alien race simply known as The Enemy, astronomers on Earth discover a red dwarf star heading towards us at an incredible impossible speed. Assuming it to be an Enemy attack a warship is dispatched to investigate. When it finds a strange moon orbiting a gravitationally attached gas giant, the Navy call in scientific help to understand where the star came from and what the deep shafts in the moon mean. After probes are sent to investigate the phenomena, they find that the shafts are in fact sub-space conduits leading to the heart of the galaxy. On travelling through they discover, to their amazement, that ancestors of the Enemy are in the process of building new stars using exotic ancient alien technology. Not only does this represent an immediate threat to humanity but, if not stopped, could result in the heat death of the galaxy itself.


The first 50 pages of this book confused me. Even though I like it when an author drops you into the middle of things without explanation I thought that this time he’d gone just a little too far. In consequence I found myself floundering, trying to piece things together and keeping up with the action. What I soon realised, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say, is that this is a sequel rather than a stand-alone novel. What is really embarrassing is that I actually own the original book. Duh! Anyway, after the initial struggle I did manage to clue into the background – thanks to several character flashbacks and explanations – and begin to understand just what was going on. Without ruining things too much – though I expect I should advise you to read things in the right order – it transpired that the Enemy where in fact a break-away group on the run from a greater enemy they called ‘the eaters of all children’. Most of the insights to the aliens are provided by Dorothy Yoshida who had been held captive by them during the war. A natural telepath she had been ‘infected’ by a number of their personalities and was, therefore, considered both a security risk and a security asset. Hired to discover what was really going on by the quasi-immortal ‘Golden’ Barlstilkin and accompanied, at least part of the way, by ex-fighter pilot Suzy Falcon, the trio become part of a much larger plan to stop the aliens in the galaxies heart from destroying everything.


Even after I resolved my initial self inflicted problems with this book I still found it a bit too long and a bit too complicated for my liking. I couldn’t help feeling that the author was being clever for cleverness sake. He did create some interesting characters, especially Doctor Yoshida. The science and tech talk was fascinating and highly believable. The aliens were very alien and very interesting because of that…. And yet…… there was something about the book that made me want to press the fast forward button from time to time. I think that there was just too much going on, some of which didn’t really help the plot all that much. I also felt as if the author didn’t really know how to end it and it felt as if the end was stumbled into rather than planned. He managed to keep my interest all the way through and parts of it were very good indeed but it would’ve been a lot better with a bit more restraint and a bit less relentless wow factor. If you still want to read this after my rather mixed praise you should read Four Hundred Million Stars first – as I should have.