EVE Fiction

Order of release will be perfect. Empyrean Age, The Burning Life and Templar One. As far as the game world is concerned, all the events are being reflected already.

This is true, and the events from The Empyrean Age do precede Templar One, however the events in the three books occur in the following chronological order:

1. The Empyrean Age
2. The Burning Life
3. Templar One

Sounds good. I'll start with Empyrean Age then. Thanks everyone.

Burning Life was written by a different author. It's not fair to disregard Tony Gozalez's work in Templar One because someone else's book sucked.

There is nothing wrong with Burning Life other then we went from such a high and epic story that Tony put out in EA to a story where even in the end...nothing actually happened. I loved hearing about the Sisters of Eve...that book almost made me want to start a S&R Wormhole corp affiliated if only in an RP sense to the SOE. But I found the examples and descriptions of the various pirate NPC leaders to be not at all what I had come to think of such people. I was especially dissapointed with the rendition of Master Kuvekai as some sort of wheel chair bound man requiring machines to keep him alive and then see something like this a few months later http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejX0Rym0NZw&list=PLF614A7A6461E61E1&index=12

I believe we'll have to agree to disagree. I bought Empyrean Age the day it was first put on sale, and read it eagerly. I wasn't expecting an Asimov, or Heinlein, but I did expect something akin to some of Warhammer 40k's novels (to put an example). And Tony's writing is on par to that: clear, entertaining, and to the point. So the form was fine for me.

Problem, for me, was the plot. Too many things breaking the cannon established 'til then, too many new things coming out of nowhere, and characters that way were too powerful for what they should be, ended up making me feel completely detached from the novel. There's an element in literature called "suspension of disbelief", that makes you accept anything that happens in a novel (or film, or whatever) because it's in the universe... but if it gets pressed on too hard, it breaks, and the reader is completely detached. It's what happened to me.

And this is an important thing: to me. It's a subjective thing, I'm not saying they're bad novels or anything, I just didn't like them for the explained reasons. Surely many people liked them, and certainly my opinion can only go as far as Empyrean Age goes as it's the only one I've read.


What comes now contains spoilers, I don't know how to add that tag, so if you haven't read the novel and intend to do so, don't go on:

Some examples of what I mean, may contain some inacuracies as I read it years ago:

-The Broker: not only has more money than anything/anyone (which is something rather unbelievable), but also a doppleganger skill no one can expect and predict, the possibility to be everywhere he needs to... etc. He's very short of a God-like character. Oh, and he has a flaw, some kind of disease that gets carried on when he changes clones... which I believe makes no sense medically-wise.

-The Empress: not only gets a weapon way too powerful (okay, old tech, was established in cannon, so acceptable) but also has psychic powers (which were not), the ability to read minds, etc.

You get the point. To a minor degree, similair things could be said about how Heth overthrows the regime, or the twist in the Minmatarr plot. So, in the end, what you get is a story when all characters are worthless, except the God-like Deus Ex that propel the story in whichever direction they desire without any problem to do so (except the action of the other Deus Ex, of course).

EvE is a universe of human beings, or transhuman if you prefer, but with set boundaries to what is possible. And too many characters break those boundaries to make it believable, and thus, interesting.

I was under the impression that this is exactly what happened, only those who were using Jump Clones were effected, as modifications to the hardware was done before transference to a new clone, thus having no outward sighs of tampering.

Correct, it doesn't make medical sense, since it's more of an informatic virus/corruption on the brainscan data, than an actual disease, as is explained in the book.

People have already pointed at the implants thing. IIRC it was explained in the EA, not T1.

To answer the original post: I would advise reading all of the books in chronological order, but the order doesn't really matter as long as you read Empyrean Age before Templar One.



I was curious about this ability and remembered reading its explanation in the books, as others have said. Please correct me if I am wrong. It describes this "mind reading" ability in Templar One, chapter 20, second "section" beginning with "By the time the Empyrean War..." after a few pages. What follows is a slight *spoiler* describing why it occurs. Avoid reading if you haven't read the books yet.

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TL;DR: It doesn't apply to all capsuleers or anything; only a very small subset of people within the Empire who had clones at a certain time.

Basically, Grange reverse-engineered Jove mass communication technology, built the Matriarch's Citadel for Jamyl, selected personnel for it, and applied the Jove (bio) technology to said personnel when Karsoth purged the Empire's clones. Only the people at the Matriarch's Citadel, and those who knew of its existence, were "cerebrally entangled with Empress Jamyl. Her implant is the broadcast source; entangled 'receivers' were installed in the recipients." Please read the entire section for the full description of the technology; I won't summarize it here, as it would become a larger wall of text. And again, please correct me if I'm incorrect in any way.

First: I LOVE, dearly, all three of the EVE Novels. They're a very good read and all three of them are very well written.

About Jamyl Sarum's ability to read the Mind: (SPOILER:)

It's also guessed by some of the Hard-Core Amarrias that God touched her mind during that messed up transfer to her Clone. And that God has given her that ability.
Yes, that sounds like some kind of unrealistic story, but you never know...
I want to make clear here that I, personally, don't belive in God, BUT we don't have a 100% proof that God doesn't exist. From that point of view, maybe God does exist and the Amarrians have his favour, especially Jamyl Sarum. I know, not really a scientific explanation... But since the EVE Universe tries to stay logic and since this is based on the Future of our own "reality", the thing if God exists or not is without proof. So it would also be without proof in New Eden. So MAYBE God exists and Jamyl Sarum got her abilities that way.
I somehow find my explanation doesn't really do justice to what I really wanted to say but right now I somehow lack the ability to wrap it onto clearer words. I trust you get the idea of what I mean.

To the Psychic ability.
In the "A Burning Life" Novel is this Part where Drem and his Team go to see this mythic Cult that is somehow connected to the Angel Cartel. The Leader of them, admits that they are enhanced with Jove Tech, and that she has also psychic abilities (she can also forsee things that happen to certain people). I can't recall her Name...Was it... "Hona"? It's a while since I have been reading the "A Burning Life".

So if Jove Tech has given her the ability to posses Psychic powers, maybe Jamyl got her's on a similar way?

I also want to point out that Jamyl has forseen things that happen. She knew where she had to send her Agent in order to find Falek. She didn't simply feel WHERE he is, she foresaw it somehow (at least that's the impression I got while reading The Empyrean Age).
Which again matches with Hona's abilities she (assumingly) got because of their Jove Tech. While reading other's minds / communicating with them via a Psychic ability would work via Implants, the ability to foresee things can not be explained that way. So I find the reasoning of Implants / Clones are the connection for the Psychic communication not valid enough.

Just ideas... Feel free to dismantle them.