Empress of Forever By Max Gladstone

carol.

I requested this knowing that I loved Gladstone's Craft series, and that he can write an engrossing and unusual fantasy world when he puts his mind to it. Empress of Forever starts a bit like a movie where the Bored Super Rich Person Who Still Doesn't Take It For Granted (I forget which movie that was) Who Walks Away From It All to do something mysterious. The U.S. has become progressively farther along the road to a surveillance state, so the route she takes is complex, and had far too much detail. It allows us to get a BIT of backstory, but only a bit. It is clear very quickly that Vivian is a complete Mary Sue. She wrecks her sailboat, meets up with her BFF who doesn't realize how much crap they are about to be in, then heads to a server farm for standard Movie Hacking Sequence. Apparently, she is then is thrown into the future where some other Mary Stu martial-arts monk-dude (*Totally-Not-Keanu) saves her.

Honestly, that's where I stopped reading.

It could have been the future. It could have been a dream sequence. I found myself not particularly interested, and I was even on vacation. I stopped reading. The selection NetGalley shared with me was billed as "an excerpt," but it felt about an hour too long, which made me quite sad. Maybe Gladestone's The Craft Sequence is his one-hit wonder for me (so to speak). This is a hard pass.

Thanks to NetGalley for the preview.

Petrik

Praise-worthy imagination and world-building, but sadly, it’s time to admit that Max Gladstone’s books aren’t suitable for me.

Empress of Forever has been on my TBR ever since I first heard about it. Judging from the blurb alone, I was immediately intrigued. Just read the blurb, seriously, it sounds so cleverly insane and my god, Gladstone delivers completely on this; stunningly original and cool world-building to witness. That’s exactly what I found to be brilliant from Gladstone’s books, his world-building, action scenes, prose, and ideas always feel refreshing and unique. I’ve read only two books in his Craft Sequence series and the things that worked for me there is even more evident here. I won’t lie that there were a lot of moments from this book that made me truly flabbergasted because it’s extremely imaginative. Time travel, an ancient Empress that could destroy a planet with a single thought, character literally sitting on a freaking comet flying through space, sentient machines, dead planets, and many more insanity that’s crazier than the one I just mentioned; there’s no shortage to Gladstone’s ambitious imagination in creating this novel.

Now then, what made this book didn’t work for me came to the same reason why Craft Sequence didn’t work, his characters always felt lacking in motivations and personality to me. This could be just me, I know a lot of readers who’ve loved Gladstone’s characters in Craft Sequence. I found his characterizations to be not prioritized. Many of the characters lack detail in motivation and feelings that are necessary to make me care for their journey. For instance, Vivian Shao was catapulted to the future at the beginning of the book. The entire storyline revolves around her gathering a crew of misfits to defeat the Empress so she could go back to her present timeline and be reunited with Magda. Why? Viv did say that she wants to return the present timeline, which she hates, and Magda is important to her. However, there wasn’t enough scene that shows that importance; just because she said it doesn’t instantly means or look like she genuinely cares. Viv even looked like she’s having fun more in the future timeline. The only character that I ended up finding interesting was Zanj, that’s it. Not gonna lie, I DNFed this book somewhere around 65% and I just can’t bring myself to continue further because I simply don’t care about the characters’ journey; cool ideas and world-building alone aren’t what I’m looking for in a novel.

It's a shame that I can't love Gladstone's work more. I bounced off Craft Sequence but I really thought I was going to enjoy this one. Empress of Forever is full of brilliant world-building and crazy stories, but unfortunately none of the characters made me feel invested. This is probably where I stop with reading his work.

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Rebecca Roanhorse

Max Gladstone is one of my favorite writers. His imagination is a thing of wonder, and his worldbuilding continuously blows me away. This book was no exception. I saw someone describe this as a "gonzo Guardians of the Galaxy" and that's totally fair. It's a space adventure with a rag tag crew of misfits and it is massive in scope and scale. But it's also very Gladstone, which means it's philosophical and mathematical and lyrical and, honestly, just beyond my ken sometimes - but that's okay. I like the challenge. It won't be a good fit for everyone, but it's ambitious and wild and worth your time. Also, Suicide Queens is my new favorite thing and if I ever start a band, you better believe that will be our name.

Jennifer

This is an action-packed, furiously paced...mess of a novel that I've been trying to read for almost two months. I concede defeat. Watching Max Gladstone try to write a blockbuster space opera is every bit as painful as listening to my favorite indie band going all Coldplay on me. (And not even Coldplay when Coldplay was good.) His quirky imagination - perhaps best exemplified in his necromantic lawyers of Three Parts Dead - is a poor fit for the thrill-a-minute space opera adventure he's trying to write in Empress of Forever. The result is so strained and so curiously hollow that it's painful to read. I just don't care. About the world, the storyline (what there is, under the action), the more or less instantaneous romance, the characters.

The characters might be the biggest problem here. We hardly know or like Vivian before she's whisked off to a far-future world and flung into a series of quests whose rationales we only dimly understand (but please, by all means, be distracted from the underlying pointlessness by the explosions and adventure). Nor does she improve upon further acquaintance, and neither does her merry band of misfits, who fully deserve their cliche.

I did like that the character Zanj is quite closely based on the monkey king of the Chinese epic Journey to the West (trapped for thousands of years - check; magical pain-inducing crown that allows the main character to keep her under control - check). I enjoyed revisiting the epic to hunt for parallels. That was probably the most pleasure Empress of Forever has afforded me.

There's just no reason to read this book. Max Gladstone has written much better ones, and having got this one out of his system, he will (I hope) get back to writing weird, twisty, singular science fiction.

megs_bookrack

Pitched as 'feminist Guardians of the Galaxy crossed with Star Wars'. I'm like...

Yeah.
That's me.

Hand it over!

Bradley

First things first: I had a great time.

As in, this is a goofy, fast-paced, unabashedly hard-SF, galaxy-spanning space-opera mania that mixes cloud-computing universe-spanning quantum-computing with the afterlife, instant travel, world-eating gods, cyborgs, huge space battles, and a HUGE baddie in the Empress of Forever who is literally impossible to defeat because she IS the substrate of the entire universe I just described.

When it comes to the whole grab bag of SF concepts and the way it is all put together, this is no lightweight SF. It made me dance around, happy as a pig in muck, and I pretty much forgave anything else because Gladstone KNOWS his genre inside and out. I thought he couldn't be topped in the UF field, but I should have had a bit more faith. :)

So why aren't I giving this a full 5 stars? Because the plot is kinda standard and predictable. The twist, especially, and although I DID like the backward hints residing in the naming conventions that spelled it all out, the SECOND twist that I expected didn't come.

The characters were pretty fine. The focus did have some self-realization going on and this is definitely a Lesbian space adventure that has a lot of Iron Man overtones. Otherwise, the description in the blurb is accurate. Guardians of the Galaxy misfits, indeed. No complaints here.

Fun stuff, ESPECIALLY after you get through the opening bits in the book. It really takes off once a certain lady gets woken up. Definitely popcorn fiction for the nanotech infected galaxy. :)

Django Wexler

Do I get to write the first review? It's amazing!

Lindsay

Vivian Liao is a Jobs-like tech entrepreneur whose found herself in trouble with the government. While going through her ultimate plan to not-be-waterboarded she's attacked by a bizarre green figure working with technology that might as well be magic. Afterwards she wakes up naked and cocooned in a far future posthuman galaxy where even the substrate of space is programmable, and the whole thing is brutally and capriciously ruled by an all-powerful Empress. As Vivian gathers allies and makes enemies in her mission to return to her time, her presence has a massive effect on the universe around her.

This is too long for what it is. The allies that Vivian gathers are interesting, but the processes of meeting each of them and the groups that they come from is incredibly drawn out, and while fantastical in an imaginative sense, it just ends up being boring. By the time things start actually happening with Vivian's interaction with the Empress, the twist was long-guessed, and any care for a resolution had long been beaten out of me.

I will note that one of the more difficult problems of modern SF, how to make a posthuman story relatable, is approached in an interesting way here by simply plonking a regular human down in the middle of them. Unfortunately this is undermined, because Vivian is basically a flawless superwoman, and as such, not all that much more human than the people around her.

I was also fairly uncomfortable with some of the writing around the way Vivian (who's a lesbian) referred to her physical attraction to her love interest in the narrative. It felt very male gaze perspective to me, which just feels icky when both characters are female. I've read plenty of books with lesbians and bisexual women from women authors and this is not how they write about attraction between each other.

YMMV, but this one was not for me.

The Captain

Update 11/27/2020 - Ambivalent? Did I really say that? I hate what I read of this and it still brings up feelings of immense frustration. I be absolutely adverse to finishing this book. The reviews only make me more disappointed at this mess. Boring pirates! Ugh.
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I am a huge fan of the author's work and so was excited for this excerpt. After reading it, I have to admit that I am ambivalent about this story. I really enjoy the three main characters. But the plot is confusing me. Multi-worlds. Weird empress. Dead worlds. A cloud that seems to control this world. I am not adverse to finishing this book to see what the payout might be. But I can't say that I be excited to do so either. I will be interested in seeing what the reviews of the full book will be. Arrrr!

Madhuri Vairapandi

There is nothing Guardians of the Galaxy about this book, to start. That would require charm and characters that carry out ridiculous and delightful hijinks.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I want to start by discussing the premise of the book, which has Viv at the top of her evil game of thwarting the law so that she can make the world a better place. The whole human background story gets completely derailed before we get a real understanding of our protagonist's motives or flaws - everything is surface level and she's supposedly a genius and perfect and antisocial yet super desirable. Barf.

Anyway, plot switches to fantasy sci-fi land, dumping Viv in a world where she "naturally" asserts her leadership, even though she literally has no real skills other than the fact that she is the past version of the evil empress of everything. So she gets Mary Sue'd into significance. Also, there is no real understanding or indication how she developed to the point of eventually becoming the evil empress, so much so that they feel like completely different characters (apart from the fact that they are identical). There are no real personal stakes, as such, because it's difficult to care at ALL about the core conflict between a good hearted woman and her evil future self if it barely has a consistent inner logic.

Now let's talk about the characters. Hong is a monk and Viv is *shocked* to find out that she likes him as a friend, because she has no real friends (except for the one best friend from college that she left behind to her doom, who subsequently turns out to not matter at all because she barely passes Viv's mind). Hong has soooo little depth and Gladstone spends so little time writing anything about him that he becomes a stereotype of a monk that is vvv ardent and muscular.

Xiara, the love interest, provides ample opportunity to have a warrior princess lesbian relationship, where she and Viv spend the entire book trying to figure out whether or not they're super serious about each other while consistently banging. It feels like Xiara was added to the narrative to humanize Viv, and even if it helps portray a softer side of our protagonist, it does nothing to make a real difference because Viv is two-dimensional and poorly written as it is. I also just want to point out that a significant number of the reviews are simply pointing out the gay relationship as if that was a positive point about the book - just because there are gay characters does NOT make a good book, btw.

Zanj is the strongest character in the book. I liked her a lot and wished, once again, that she simply didn't serve to highlight, accentuate, and support our utterly pathetic and uninteresting protagonist. Zanj is the most feminist part of this book, but since she's made to serve the goals of the protagonist who is a trope of a Playboy in a girl's skin, there's really nothing feminist about this whole mess.

Em

This is one hell of a book, and I didn’t want it to end. Fast-paced, fun, empathetic, with a flavor of Douglas Adams, it’s an ensemble space opera adventure populated by brilliant flawed women. Gladstone has written a universe full of beautiful, weird, original worlds and species, and his prose is stellar.

Also it’s super gay.

Rinaldo

4.9/5

The crowns trap our selves. They carve us off from the world. But what is the self? There are pieces of me in all of you, and pieces of you in me. We are all empty of inherent form. Trace the threads of each of us, and you find not just the others, but the entire universe. And what crown could bind the whole universe?

Empress of Forever is one of those rare books where things go crazy, hodge podge elements are thrown together, conflicts keep escalating, and everything fries your brain in the end of the day, but somehow it works and it gives you ecstatic feels.

In its heart, this book is Max Gladstone's love letter to Journey to the West, but it's also a bizarre chimera of Zelazny's Lord of Light, Herbert's Dune, Gladstone's own Craft Sequence, and even a healthy dash of The Matrix.

Empress of Forever follows the journey of Vivian Liao, a tech genius and billionaire, not unlike Tony Stark or Elon Musk, as she's thrown thousands years into the future in space by the enigmatic Jade Empress. Out of her element, she must survive and readjust herself in a world too strange for her senses, with the help of Brother Hong, a monk of esoteric space monastery Mirrorfaith, and Zanj, a legendary bloodthirsty and bestial pirate queen.

The structure is similar to Journey to the West where a feeble mortal monk Tang Xuanzang (the inspiration of Viv) must take a journey to the west to retrieve sutra and gain enlightenment. In their journey, both Xuanzang and Viv receives help from ragtag demon-like beings. They are also constantly tried with various obstacles and tests, with plethora of demons and spirits hunting after their flesh. Ignorant about the ways of wilderness and demons, Xuanzang and Viv also have to rely on their companions in order to survive.

As a fan who grew up with Journey to the West, Empress of Forever delighted me with a lot of tributes, from Spider Demons, the Bull Demon King, Ruyi Jingu Bang/Wukong's Golden Banded Staff, Golden Horn King and Silver Horn King, to 72 chapters that reflect Wukong's 72 transformations.

“You’re not who you think you are,” Viv said. “You’re a dream. That’s all. But don’t take it too hard. So are the rest of us.”

Sinofuturism, Isekai, and Ego-Death
After the rise of Afrofuturism in sci-fi via Black Panther and N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth, I've been craving to read Sinofuturism SFF; where the culture, folklore, philosophy and values of Pan-Chinese cultures are transposed into SFF setting. In this book, Gladstone took Chinese and Buddhist imageries like jade, vajra and preta (hungry ghosts) into bizarre science fantasy setting, where space monks fighting with diamond clubs; shapeshifting beast spirits roaming around and taking names; a metaphysical Cloud where all souls and data gather and travel; and nanomachine preta that can shapeshift, devour various materials, and archive them.

These crazy worldbuilding elements along with the wacky humour also remind me to Ryu Fujisaki's Hoshin Engi where he adapted The Investiture of Gods into this bizarre and hilarious science fantasy manga. Visual wise, I can also easily imagine this book being illustrated by the late Jean Giraud 'Moebius' or Katsuya Terada.

Moebius' 40 Days in the Desert

Katsuya Terada's Dragon Girl and Monkey King

Since Viv is transported to another world where high-powered beings are able to cultivate advanced technology into high powered magic feats, this book also reads like the wildest xianxia (immortal heroes) and isekai (other world/portal fantasy) that I've always wanted to read. The problem with xianxia and isekai light novels are that more than often, the authors tend to skip the heavy lifting task of solid worldbuilding and plotting, resulting in bland power fantasies.

Don't get me wrong, in its heart, Empress of Forever is also a power fantasy, but it is power fantasy done right. In some parts, this book reads like a love letter or even a soft sequel to Lord of Light where a Buddha (the Enlightened One) goes to a quest to liberate beings from divine shackles. When I read Lord of Light, I expected to see Buddhist philosophy and high octane magic battles, which I did get after a fashion, but in this book everything is cranked up to eleven. In fact, there are a lot of esoteric Buddhist undertones in this book, discussing the concepts of self, mirror and illusion, attachment and non-attachment, liberation of beings, hunger as the desire of the flesh, even ego-death.

The only thing that prevents this book to get a full five-star rating for me (although it gets really close) is its slightly rushed pacing and character relationships. I feel this book has enough materials to be translated into a duology or even a trilogy, and the last 15% of the book feels particularly too frantic albeit still very, very strong and compelling.

Conclusion
Empress of Forever is a bizarre high-octane science fantasy love letter to Journey to the West. It might not be for everyone, since it contains heavy worldbuilding and esoteric Buddhist discourses, but for those who dig those elements, this book is a treasure worth acquiring in an interstellar journey across the galaxy

Always know the shape you take—know it so well you can shift it to your purpose, so well the form gives way to formlessness again.
What is a grain but a seed?
And from a seed, you can grow anything.
Like, say, a family.

Rachel (Kalanadi)

I tried reading this twice, and both times I got about 5% through and just thought.... it's not working for me. I couldn't make myself care about the kinda Mary Sue-ish rich girl character who gets whisked off for alien adventures or something. Gladstone's Craft Sequence apparently works far better for me.

Adah Udechukwu

Empress of Forever is a bit good though the novel is complicated and its length is quite annoying.

Acqua

That's A Cover

...also apparently this is gay, so

Jack

I think that, around the half way point, I had thought to myself, "Oh, I kinda predicted this would happen". And while, that might have a grain of truth, the ride just kept going, and I kept on enjoying myself as certain twists showed me that there was still so much more to see about this story.

Empress of Forever is one of those delightful SF novels where you're shown what imagination can really do with the genre. Like Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief (this being the only SF novel I've read that approaches from the more creative, yet hard (maybe?) soft end of the genre), technology and the fantastical blend into one. And it ends up being so delightfully weird and wonderful at times. A race of beings that can meld with ships on a biological level, an order of warrior monks, a pirate queen bent on ravaging the universe. When I put them like that, they almost sound mundane, but it's in the telling that the spring to life.

Okay, so. Plot. Plot's pretty standard. Girl gets teleported to another land. Needs to find a way home. And then it takes a turn and morphs into something else. We're all familiar with it, but it's still a change of pace. The pacing of this ranged from breakneck to well done. Often times, we'd find ourselves flung from one confrontation to the next, with only moments to breath in-between. The later half of the novel went from one high to the next, but only because the grounding had been built and maintained at a much slower pace for the first half.

Character wise, the story revolves around Vivian Lee, a modern day woman from our world, transported to the far future. She, in comparison to the motley crew that springs up around here, is relatively normal. She has no special powers, no grasp of technology that makes her a god like being. She was a genius back on old Earth, but what does that matter when everything you know is no longer relevant. So she gets buy buy making friendships, forging alliances. And people flock to her. In part, some of this feels rather easy - as if being a mysterious relic of the Empress (which is what Viv is seen as),this gives her access to people. But it doesn't make her infallible. There are more than a few moments wherein Viv must reflect on how her actions take on a self centred approach to the adventure, putting her wants first, and everyone else somewhere down the chain. There's this moment, a bit over halfway where she realises that Hong is actually a friend, someone she could rely on if she trusted enough, and realises that she never really does that. People are simply things that she uses, in one way or another; business partners, lovers, workers, and more.

So, yes, I liked how we got these flashes of insight into Viv trying to be better throughout the story. Because that's what it came down to in the end, confronting the reality of what we've become and deciding that, no, things can be different, that they can be better. You see that from most of the main characters, whether it be in regards to tradition, up bringing, or the very nature of us. Change is sought, and found.

Okay, enough nonsensical rambling.

9/10, rounded up.

rachel, x

▷ Representation: Viv (mc) Chinese-American & lesbian; sapphic scs.

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Faith Erin Hicks

This was so anime. A true hearted heroine defeats an unstoppable villain using the power of friendship! I loved it.

Jason

5 Stars

Wow, Empress of Forever is an awesome read. Max Gladstone is one of my very favorite authors who writes adult fantasy. This however is borderline hard science fiction. Bold, ambitious, and of course operatic. This is truly an imaginative read. I absolutely loved it.

Jamesboggie

My reading group chose Empress of Forever for our September meeting. I went in completely blind, and was disappointed by what I found. It is a space opera with a bog-standard fantasy plot, incomprehensible action, and a half-baked moral message. The cool ideas of the Cloud, the Bleed, and the pilots of Orn fail to redeem the novel.

Empress of Forever starts as a really cool story about a billionaire tech mogul using an advanced AI creation to take on a corporate-government conspiracy and free the world. I was so down for that. Then it took a hard turn into an action packed escape from a prison space station. Not quite as interesting, but not too bad. As soon as I adjusted to that, it changed again into its final form - a galaxy spanning quest to gather allies and confront the big bad Empress. That’s a standard fantasy plot that I tend to find uninteresting.

The quest takes place far into the future. The galaxy is mirrored by The Cloud, a swirling blue cloud of data that records every atom of matter. The Empress is the undisputed ruler of this galaxy, and has unrivaled control over the Cloud. Well, unrivaled except for the animalistic Bleed. This universe definitely relies on the Arthur C. Clarke law “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

That is actually one of the biggest flaws of the novel. There seem to be no clear rules for the world. Characters can travel through the Cloud at undefined FTL speeds. Characters can step into higher dimensions and change shape at will. There is lots of talk of destroying worlds and eating stars. It is all quite amazing, but terribly ill-defined.

That lead to another huge flaw. This novel is packed with battle scenes, but they lack a sense of import or threat. The characters never seem to be in any real danger. I never believed Zanj could even be hurt. The stakes are not really clear. Even the action is hard to visualize, with characters moving fast enough to melt sand and changing shape at will. I could not invest in the action scenes on any level, and quickly found myself skimming entire chapters as a result.

What comes in between those action scenes was not much better. The plot is driven by protagonist Vivian Liao. Viv is described as a genius - a brilliant tech wiz, an indomitable business mind. I really did not see her genius in action. She is the most vulnerable and least informed character in the novel, and I never saw any compensatory skills or knowledge. I do not understand why characters would follow her to challenge the Empress. She has chosen one syndrome - she’s important only because we are told she’s important.

This space opera has a moral message as well. Without spoiling major plot revelations, Viv is “torn” between the will to power and loyalty to friends. It never really affects her decisions, but she broods about it and faces a sudden moral choice during the climax. Her ambition is inexorably intertwined with her friendships from the moment she meets Hong. The resulting moral message seems superficial. It feels like it was added just to give the story the appearance of depth. I found it distracting and perplexing.

The writing itself is mostly good. I found it easy to read. The writing was breezy. It had short chapters broken at good moments, which kept me rolling through it. The dialogue was good. My one real complaint was the overuse of repetitive imagery. Apparently, lots of things sing and dance in space.

Empress of Forever is not as bad as my complaining probably makes it sound. It was more disappointing than anything else. It had fun elements (like the cyborg monks and the pilots of Orn), but they did not coalesce into a fun whole. I am sure some others will like it more than I did, but my reading group clustered from a little above OK to a little below.

CHARACTER LIST (abbreviated)

Carysa Locke

Oh. My. Gosh. I LOVE this book. It's described as "Star Wars meets Guardians of the Galaxy". But I find shades of Firefly, Killjoys, and honestly this is some of the best SF I've read in years. It has galactic spanning adventure, humor, vivid storytelling, unforgettable characters, and deep and imaginative world building. The prose is right up there with Willam Gibson or Frank Herbert. Intellectual, lyrical, huge in scope and somehow deeply emotional. This is my first book by Max Gladstone, but it won't be my last. I see why he was nominated for a Hugo. I am so glad Netgalley gave me to the opportunity to review this book, because I might not have given it a chance as a new-to-me-author at full price, but I'm telling you right now: it's worth every penny. Right now, Empress of Forever is my favorite book of 2019, and it has propelled its author onto my "must-buy" list.

There is SO much I want to say, but I can't because I refuse to spoil it for anyone. Do yourself a favor: if you're a SF fan, buy it. Read it.

Sana

WOWOW, WHAT A RIDE

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'The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought.' WELL, DAMN. ALSO, THAT COVER EXUDES A DON'T-FUCK-WITH-ME BADASSERY

More reasons I want this in my life: 'a big, planet-smashing space opera, set in a majestic and mysterious universe, with a cast of fierce and driven characters at its heart.'

Source

Carlex

Three and half stars.

Imagine that all the information in the universe can be apprehended and therefore used; for example for traveling great distances by an integration in a sort of hyperspace. Imagine a galaxy in which anyone can connect with this informational aether, can interact with it, and more, anyone have a part of themself in this galactic cloud, that is, like a “soul” (and incidentally it provides a solution for the traditional problem of how to understand the alien languages). Anyone except… our protagonist, Vivian Lao, a genius millionaire from our planet Earth.

Now, put aside everything I have told you. What I have commented is awesome, "senseofwonderful", but this is only the background: what deserves to stand out above all is that this that it is purely good space opera.

That is, apart from the well developed worldbuilding, some events in this novel are simply absurd, but this is why we call it space opera, doesn't it? In other words, Empress of Forever does not pretend to be "serious" science fiction, in space opera it must prevail above all the adventure and the enjoyment of the reader.

I must say that Mr. Gladstone is a competent writer. Maybe this novel is a bit longer than it should be, but only a litte, because I enjoyed the surprises and the plot twists, the dialogues, and also the characters, these coherent enough to tell us a great galactic adventure.

As an extense novel that one is, we can search for a lot of influences: the grandeur of a galaxy full of information like Vernon Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and Dan Simmons' great Hyperion saga; also about an heroine estranged from Earth, like John Carter on Mars or Buck Rogers; and it reminds me also some superhero stories, galactic variant, like Guardians of the Galaxy… It does not really matter, Empress of Forever has sufficiently originality of its own to be a good and very entertaining science fiction novel.

J_Jens

I received an uncorrected ARC (advanced reading copy for the uninitiated) via social media - I won it in a contest Tor was holding.

I'm sure any tightening up will happen, as the first few chapters were a little clunky, but otherwise my copy...

It was a punch in the heart. This is what SF *is* and this is what it should be. Possibilities. Madcap adventure. Love. Sex. Fun. Space. The pain of parting, yet carrying someone with you, their echo. Discovery. (Of yourself and worlds.) Destroying. (Samers again there.)

So yeah, SF was and is about pushing boundaries to me. Acceptance, representation, and blasting through the tatters of our normal grey days, to see the glittering stars beyond.

This is the first time I've read Gladstone, and it won't be the last. I feel fortunate indeed, and I will be buying a copy upon official release.

Rachel

I still have to go back through the book and gather all my notes and quotes but this book was STUNNING! It's a non stop thrill ride and I loved every minute!

charlotte,

that enemies to reluctant partners to found family goodness!!

Rep: Chinese-American lesbian mc, wlw mc

Tijana

Zamislimo da je neko ukrstio, recimo, Bila Gejtsa i Ilona Maska, ali da je to ukrštanje ispalo seksi kineska lezbejka. E, to je glavna junakinja ove knjige, Vivijen Lijao.
I taman je toliko iritantna jer Vivijen SVE zna, SVE ume, SVE može, čak i kad je iz bliske budućnosti (u kojoj pokušava da uspostavi singularitet i zavlada svetom) neko para-božansko biće tj. carica iz naslova knjige katapultira u vrlo, vrlo daleku budućnost u kojoj po prirodi stvari sve njene veštine ne vrede ni prebijene pare. Vivijen je majstor snalaženja i ima bubašvabin kapacitet za preživljavanje i da je bilo samo do nje malo sutra bih dočitala ovu knjigu.
Srećom, Vivijen vrlo brzo okupi oko sebe grupu prijatelja tj. ekipu zbog koje ovo uopšte vredi čitati:
- Honga. Hong je monah-ratnik, dakle znate celu priču, večito smiren, odan prijatelj, teži prosvetljenju i bori se kao Mišel Jeo;
- Hsijaru. Hsijara bi u nekoj epizodi Zvezdanih staza bila Kirkova devojka sa lokalne zaostale planete a ovde je Vivijenina - smrtno se zaljubi u nju na prvi pogled, izgleda fenomenalno i ima skrivene neverovatne veštine tipa... ona je iz naroda koji se spaja u mentalnu celinu sa svemirskim brodovima tako da su najbolji navigatori u svemiru;
- Zandž (? transkripcija je za sva imena odokativna, žalim); Zandž je nekakva majmunolika poluboginja-svemirski pirat koju je carica zatočila na tri hiljade godina i koja je u skladu s tim puna gneva i želje za osvetom. Zandž je ubedljivo najzabavniji lik u knjizi. Ubedljivo. I ima čarobni svemirski brod koji može da koristi i kao koplje/mač/štagod.
- Greja. Grej je detence i duh iz boce! Ovaj... ne, Grej je razumno biće nastalo iz triliona nanomašina kao i cela njegova familija, ali da se ne lažemo, Grej je maloletni duh iz boce koji tokom knjige odrasta i uči se zajedništvu.

Ako do sada nije postalo jasno, Gledston se nije baš mnogo trudio oko S u ovom SF. Baci na vas koncept koji je tako očigledno preuzet iz bajke (ili ovde iz nekog klasičnog kineskog romana) i onda usrdno kaže: "Ali za to je bio odgovoran njen 'nanom'! Nanotehnički izmenjen genom, kapirate!" i sve okej. Zapravo, okej je utoliko što je pisanje ili makar retorika na značajno višem nivou od spejs opera mog detinjstva, i što je zamišljeni svet gusto i maštovito naseljen i prikazan, i što Gledston vidljivo uživa u tome što radi i dobar je u tome. Toliko da se knjiga može s guštom iščitati čak i uprkos glavnoj junakinji.

Sarah

General thoughts that may or may not become a review:

- It's got a lesbian protagonist!!!
- One of the most important relationships in the book is a female friendship that's given the same focus and narrative structure as a romance, but in a completely platonic way.
- The plot structure is very much like a traditional quest storyline -- rag tag group of characters find each other and have adventures on the way to defeating the evil empress. Personally, this plot type isn't my favorite, and I think any problems I had engaging with the novel in the first half where because of this. But by the last fourth, I listened to the audiobook for something like five hours straight.
- The found family trope is in full force here.
- I love Zanj so much.
- I predicted some of the big plot twist, but there was an element to it that I totally didn't see coming.

TW/CW:

Angela

Full Disclosure: I made it through 8 chapters, to 19% of the book. And there I gave up. Let me tell you why.

Rest of review at The Alliterates

1 March 2020:
$2.99 on Kindle

Tim Hicks

I am calling this fantasy, as other reviewers have, because it goes so far beyond "this could happen" that it gets into fantasy's "yeah, I know, but what if it did anyway?"

+1 for a daring reach in the enormous scope of this. -1 for having reached a tad too far. I really don't like the big thick books like this that keep introducing a Really Really Powerful Baddie who's untouchable until our hero drops a plastic spoon in just the right place, and in the next chapter here's a new RRPBaddie that can change a milkshake into a machine gun with a thought, except that the hero makes a brave speech and the RRPB becomes a staunch ally. And so on.

Here's a culture with magic armor, and a song-based culture that means they can pass knowledge down through the generations in their blood, so that if a starship should inexplicably appear, any of them can step in and meld with it. Yeah, sure.

I blame the recent Big Movies, where each one has a more powerful bad guy. What do you do to go past Thanos?

This feels like an attempt to put Banks and Reynolds and Star Wars and a few others all into one novel. Didn't work for me.

There are noble themes throughout, but too many characters we can't care much about, and too many "WTF? Why would anyone have thought THAT was a good thing to do?"

But most of all, I kept feeling that any of six characters could at any time snap two fingers and shazam! suddenly we're in Brigadoon or 1512 Venice or inside a brown dwarf star because why not? Or perhaps in a snowglobe held by a 40-foot turquoise lizard that has made it like Pratchett's little Roundworld model at Unseen U.

If anything goes, nothing matters.

Title	:	Empress of Forever
Author	:	Max Gladstone
Rating	:
ISBN	:	0765395819
ISBN-10	:	9780765395818
Language	:	English
Format Type	:	Paperback
Number of Pages	:	480
Publication	:	First published June 18, 2019
Awards	:	Locus Award Best SF Novel (2020)

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

Empress of Forever Reviews

Empress of Forever Reviews

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