"It is the year 23349 AD. The human race has no living memory of Earth, or its origins beyond a mysterious collapsed wormhole called the EVE Gate. Mankind has prospered in an age of posthumanism, but a powerful class of immortals are slowly taking control of the New Eden cluster. An epic war between the nation states, fought by fearless ship captains who can never die, is decimating the mortal populations of thousands of worlds. Stuck in a deadly stalemate, combatants are desperately seeking an edge that will turn the war to their advantage, no matter what the cost. Following the events of EVE: The Empyrean Age, EVE: Templar One brings back the crew of the Retford as they find themselves caught in a maelstrom of events surrounding the discovery of a major scientific breakthrough. A deadly game of espionage, deceit, and brute force are all brought to bear as …
"It is the year 23349 AD. The human race has no living memory of Earth, or its origins beyond a mysterious collapsed wormhole called the EVE Gate. Mankind has prospered in an age of posthumanism, but a powerful class of immortals are slowly taking control of the New Eden cluster. An epic war between the nation states, fought by fearless ship captains who can never die, is decimating the mortal populations of thousands of worlds. Stuck in a deadly stalemate, combatants are desperately seeking an edge that will turn the war to their advantage, no matter what the cost. Following the events of EVE: The Empyrean Age, EVE: Templar One brings back the crew of the Retford as they find themselves caught in a maelstrom of events surrounding the discovery of a major scientific breakthrough. A deadly game of espionage, deceit, and brute force are all brought to bear as competing interests race to seize the technology before it forever changes the way wars are fought-- and life is understood. EVE Online is one of the largest and most successful science fiction massive multiplayer online games today. Boasting over 370,000 players on a single shard, the sensation that has become EVE is growing every year. Tying into the next great expansion of the EVE universe, this is a quintessential story that will help readers fully immerse themselves into this phenomenal world. "--
Unlike The Empyrean Age, this work is a much more compatible style of storytelling for the New Eden universe. I don't know if the difference in physical formats of the two books - the other one an almost-pocket-size print, this one a proper one - should've been a giveaway from the start, but Gonzales offers an enjoyable path of more elaborate stories, and less cheap exchanges between the personalities detailed.
It's kind of hard to picture EVE The Game meshing with EVE The Novels, since The Game is known for the "bad behavior" of it's players, while The Novels feature characters who are respectful, even in war. But that's what I enjoy so much about these books: they breath life into a world known only for it's controversies.
I didn't know at first that this was a continuation of The Empyrean Age, because it's been so long since I read that one that I didn't recognize the characters. Like TEA, Templar One was written and released to coincide with a major game update. For TEA, it was Apocrypha and the appearance of "w-space" and the Sleepers. For Templar One, we learn the back story of just how DUST 514 begins to fit into the EVE universe.
I haven't read a sci-fi war story like this one since the early BattleTech …
It's kind of hard to picture EVE The Game meshing with EVE The Novels, since The Game is known for the "bad behavior" of it's players, while The Novels feature characters who are respectful, even in war. But that's what I enjoy so much about these books: they breath life into a world known only for it's controversies.
I didn't know at first that this was a continuation of The Empyrean Age, because it's been so long since I read that one that I didn't recognize the characters. Like TEA, Templar One was written and released to coincide with a major game update. For TEA, it was Apocrypha and the appearance of "w-space" and the Sleepers. For Templar One, we learn the back story of just how DUST 514 begins to fit into the EVE universe.
I haven't read a sci-fi war story like this one since the early BattleTech books, where the characterizations manage to shine through the level of technical name-dropping that's absolutely required for the work to earn it's cred as a tie-in. Gonzales either has an army of EVE lore scholars feeding him authentic sounding intel, or he's a sci-fi tech writing genius, able to mix imagery and technobabble in equal measure without it sounding forced and over-the-top.
It's been quite a while since I've played EVE, and while I recognize many of the organization, ship, and place names, there were a lot more that just went over my head, so I don't think one needs to be a fan of EVE to get something out of this book. Gonzales does a great job of explaining what you need to know in just the right way so even if you can't put a name to a pixel, you still know that seeing a titan warp into the sector is Really Bad News.
