Book Review: EVE: Templar One by Tony Gonzales

EVE: Templar One by Tony Gonzales

Genre: Science Fiction, Gaming Tie-in

Publisher: Gollancz (February 2013)

Wendy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

My husband tried for a time to convince me to play EVE, the futuristic massive multiplayer online game about corporate space intrigue, piracy and politics. I couldn’t get beyond the whole “spreadsheets in space” concept of the game. When the company released Dust 514, the console version, we briefly considered having me serve as his ground forces, but ultimately, his interest in EVE crashed and burned and mine failed to launch in the first place.

Still, his talk about the game itself did intrigue me enough to pick up this audiobook from the library, and it helped me make it through some of the technical aspects, such as the various classes of ships, the drones and, most importantly, the cloning process, which is taken to a whole new level in Templar One. That background was certainly an advantage for me, but I think the book could hold up on its own without it.

The blurb explains that war has reached a new level with the introduction of the cloning process, but it fails to give any depth to the concept beyond the trauma of repeated death. At the point where the story takes place, cloning technology already exists and many of the characters make use of it. The key to Templar One is that a new breed of clones has been introduced, one that is advanced well beyond the ones already in play, and relies on the deletion of the subject’s past life. Once you know that, it should become obvious that all this is leading up to said subject remembering his past life and questioning his purpose. This is exactly what happens about half way through the book, but it’s also at that point that it finally dawned on me that Templar One isn’t merely the subject matter, but the main character.

And therein lies the major problem. There are a tonne of characters in this story and almost every one of them gets airtime to the point where I could not tell them apart. They were each unique and interesting, but not enough time was spent with any of them to make the choice to have so many points of view worthwhile. Some characters even appeared for only a moment during battles, with entire pages dedicated to their POVs, only to have them die by the end of the section.

The story delves deeply – very deeply – into the political and corporate machinations that shape this universe, as well as the mysterious history upon which the universe is based. There is a lot going on, but I was mostly able to follow along. It is actually very well written with exceptional dialogue, characterization, action and descriptions, but the constantly changing characters some how failed to work overall.

Though ultimately not enough to get me to play the game, I was still very impressed with the level of detail that went into the lore.