Eyes of the Void
Review
Eyes of the Void, by , is the second book in the The Final Architecture series. It takes place during the new war with the Architects, as Idris and the crew of the Vulture God discover where the Architects come from.
The plot focuses on the Parthenon Int program, the study of Originator ruins on a desert planet, and the rescue of Idris from a deathworld where he’s able to explore Unspace with an Originator machine. The tighter focus and smaller number of locations help Eyes of the Void feel more coherent than Shards of Earth, which often felt like we were bouncing from adventure to adventure without a clear throughline. The characters also have more agency here—saving themselves instead of relying on deus ex machina like they did in the previous book.
But the writing is still… workmanlike at best, comparable to The Three-Body Problem or House of Suns. repeats himself over and over and over, maybe worried the reader won’t remember or pick up on things the first time. At one point I ran into this sentence:
They crossed to the docking field just as the planet was coming into view, a veiny gas giant like an infected testicle crawling up the horizon of Hismin’s Moon and leaving precious little of the sky free of its malign radiance.
I put the book down and stared into space for a few minutes thinking, “This series won a Hugo award.”
So why do I like this book? The universe’s mysteries are keeping me going. I want to know what the entity in Unspace is, and what its connection to the Architects might be. I want to see how the war ends. Normally, worldbuilding alone isn’t enough to hold my interest, but in this case, it’s doing the job.
This book reminded me of a few other works of fiction:
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The Parthenon garden ships, with their blend of nature and structure, feel like Culture ships, especially Sleeper Service from Excession.
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The way everything has a price—even getting the police to ignore a murder—is like the Corporation Rim in Exit Strategy.
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The settlement in the Originator ruins, with its awkward integration into alien architecture, recalls Makkathran in The Dreaming Void.
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Tothiat parasite–host naming (Emma and Neth becoming Emmaneth) works a lot like how the Trill are named in Deep Space 9.
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The planet Matachin is a clear homage to the Matachin Tower in The Shadow of the Torturer.
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An intelligence embedded in the fabric of Unspace parallels the mind stored in the magnetic field of a black hole in Eater.
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Ahab, the Naeromathi consumed by vengeance, is obviously modeled on his namesake from Moby Dick.
Once again, I’m going to take a break to read Honor of the Regiment, and probably The War of the Worlds and Network Effect, before finishing the trilogy with Lords of Uncreation.