Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt
Sunday, February 5, 2012 at 10:43PM 
First published in 1997 by HarperCollins
In the year 306 of the post-apocalyptic world as Silas Glote knows it, few things are as valuable as the only surviving copy of a Mark Twain novel. How Karik Endine acquired A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and why he kept its acquisition a secret, is a mystery. An even greater mystery is why Karik bequeathed it to Chaka Milana, a young woman he barely knew, just before he killed himself.
Eternity Road is Jack McDevitt’s contribution to the enormous body of post-apocalyptic fiction. The apocalyptic event, identified only as “the plague” until an epilogue sheds a bit more light upon it, occurred in the distant past. Among the other legends and rumors that captivate the imaginations of those who live in the Mississippi Valley is the existence of a place called Haven, a repository of knowledge somewhere to the east. Karik once led an expedition to find Haven; he returned alone. Years later, shortly after Karik’s death, a new expedition is mounted. This one includes Silas, Chaka, Karik’s son, a woman who renounced her priesthood, a woodsman, and a couple of others. They confront danger and hardship, encounter wondrous remnants of the forgotten technology left behind by “the Roadmakers,” meet people who are friendly and some who are not, and generally experience the sort of adventures that are common in quest stories.
McDevitt is one of the best storytellers in science fiction so all of this is interesting and entertaining, but the story isn’t nearly as exciting and the characters not nearly so compelling as those in his Academy or Alex Benedict novels. Character development seems half-hearted and the obstacles the characters encounter on their journey lack the imaginative brilliance that characterizes McDevitt’s best work.
A minor gripe but one that bothered me: Everyone of importance in the novel is able to read English. They have no difficulty, for instance, understanding A Connecticut Yankee. They can even read a translation of Tacitus. It is difficult for me to believe that the ability to read and write survived for so many generations but an understanding of science and technology did not. It seems to me that literacy would vanish at least as quickly as the knowledge required to repair an internal combustion engine or to build a steam locomotive. If books on paper did not survive the centuries, why were parents passing along to their children the ability to read but not the ability to generate electricity? Did the plague wipe out engineers but spare English majors?
Illogic notwithstanding, a weak McDevitt novel is still a better effort than many sf writers can produce: the writing is fluid, the pace is swift, and the story is capably crafted. The novel’s best moments require the reader to puzzle out where the characters are and what they’re seeing, provoking fun little “aha” experiences (as in, “aha, they’re looking at a satellite dish!”). Eternity Road should appeal to fans of quest and adventure novels and post-apocalyptic fiction, although readers familiar with McDevitt’s better novels may be disappointed.
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Reader Comments (2)
Hi, thanks for your great review. I wondered if you could do me the great service of emailing me what happen in the book, I only ask as I'm reading it myself and have just got to the train part but I can't get into it as much as I've tried. I can't find spoilers anywhere! No worries if you don't have the time/want to. Keep up the good work!
Hi Sara,
I've never been asked for spoilers before. Do you plan to stop reading the book at this point? If you really want, I'll send you an email telling you how it ends, but only if you're certain you don't want to discover the ending for yourself.
Anyway, thanks for your comment and for reading the blog.