EVE Fiction

I recently finished reading Templar One, and I can't really decide whether I like it or not, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on the novel and maybe hear someone else's opinion. Please keep in mind that I don't want to pretend that I'm an editor or critic, I'm just a guy who reads a lot and enjoys a good book, and what follows is my personal opinion.

I'll try not to spoil any more than I have to, but if you're planning on reading it and don't want to know anything about the plot beforehand, you should stop reading now.

So, first things first. The novel basically assumes that you have read The Empyrean Age and/or are familiar with the lore and history of New Eden. If you haven't, or aren't, you will be very, very confused at the least. I'd go so far as to say that you won't be able to enjoy Templar One at all, so if you plan on reading it, reading the Empyrean Age first is practically mandatory. That could potentially be a bad thing, if EA wouldn't be a decent novel in it's own right. Still, this is directly related to one of the biggest problems with Templar One.

I really can't understand the rationale behind the authors decision to reintroduce most of the cast of the first book. Maybe he did it in the hope that readers of EA would already be emotionally invested in them, or maybe he felt compelled to do it because the ending of EA left a lot of things open. I think he would be right about the former, but not about the latter. Even though the development of the characters between the two novels is rather well done (principally speaking about the former crew of the Retford), I find it hard to suspend my disbelief that these person would scatter across the cluster for three years and then magically be reunited by the events in Templar One. When this happens, it feels overly constructed, and could have been avoided by either introducing new, fresh characters or by not seperating them in the first place.

Speaking of characters, I was surprised to see that not only did the author stick with so many characters from the first novel, but that he also took so much time with the exposition of characters who we either don't care all that much about or where it is beyond me why they were included at all. Do we really need to learn as much about Mens Reppola's family just to give him some diffuse motivation late in the book? Do we really need to spend several chapters with Federation President Jacus Roden just to establish that he is kind of crooked, when basically all he does is order people around? I just got the impression that Tony Gonzales tried to cram as much as he possibly could into this novel, and while I'm all for taking time to establish a round character, it is not always appropriate.

The attempt to somehow involve everything and everyone in the main plot of Templar One is not just limited to individuals, but applies to the different factions of New Eden as well. Potentially, involving all the Empires and several smaller factions in the struggle for the this new technology is an awesome prospect, but in reality it simply results in too many storylines whose entanglement is both confusing and seems arbitrary. Again, I think in this case less would have been more. Why involve Mordu's Legion at all? Sure, it's always great to learn about some of the less popular factions, but when you're already juggling as many different plotlines as the author does in this novel, you should think long and hard if every one of them really is necessary for the story as a whole to work. Even if you disregard all the different individual characters and only consider the major factions involved in the plot, you've got Amarr, Gallente, Caldari, Minmatar, Ishukone, Mordu's Legion, CONCORD, Jove and even the Sleepers all competing for screen time, and for me this resulted in an somewhat incoherent and jumbled reading experience.

The best specific example of this is the final battle for Pike's Landing, in which practically every single faction and character from the novel is somehow involved in. Many of these involvements, again, feel arbitrary and costructed, which is the result of wanting to do too many things at once. I don't think you need to have every single relevant character and faction involved in the finale of the novel for it to be engaging. It works, but only barely so.

All this sounds pretty negative, so I want to stress that all in all, I think the novel is a decent effort. I think Tony Gonzales is a talented and competent writer that would really shine if he'd do a novel with a somewhat smaller scope.


tl;dr: Templar One tried to do too much and would have worked better with a different scope and narrower focus.

I'm just about to begin reading this book. I will return to your post and either agree or disagree with it, in whole or in part.

I have read the earlier two EVE based novels, and I loved the first. The second was a bit strange in its writing style, but in the end I was almost certain I liked it.

I'm such a huge fan of EVE, I doubt I'd hate the book.

My point exactly. I would have loved to see Tony Gonzales try an even more personal approach with Templar than he did with EA. For example, focus the story on one particular Templar to show off the Amarr / Minmatar conflict and to introduce all the "immortal soldier" content, and complement that with, say, a parallel storyline with the rest of the Retford crew or maybe a similar but new group of characters that operate mainly in space to bring Caldari / Gallente and whatever else into the mix.

In other words, the approach that I personally would have liked best would have been: Vince storyline dealing with visceral infantry combat and personal conflict, rest of Retford crew mostly in a ship, traveling through the EVE cluster and dealing with other major factions on a quest to find Vince. Tell as much as possible from the perspective of those characters.

But again, that would have been my personal preference, and I'm sure lots of people will enjoy Templar as it is.