I try to read at least a few small-press releases every month and my latest find was Onet's Tale by Jack Eason, a science fiction epic published by Missouri-based IFWG Publishing. A major reason I initially wanted to read this novel was because of the author; Eason is a 62-year old debut novelist! Originally born in Suffolk, England in 1948, he spent most of his life in New Zealand before returning to the place of his birth to live in “semi-retirement.”
I talk with a lot of aspiring authors and many of them use the excuse, “I’m too old.” From now on, whenever I hear anyone using their “advanced” age as an excuse to not pursue their dreams of becoming a published novelist, I’m just going to say, “You don’t know Jack. Jack Eason, that is…”
Onet’s Tale is very much an “old school” science fiction read, comparable in tone and nuance to works by Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Samuel R. Delany. It spans eons and is essentially a story of good versus evil, or more specifically, an exploration into the nature of good and evil. A being known as Onet, a virtually immortal Khaz—“the oldest species across the cosmos”—narrates, a tale that is described as a “story of how evil grows and spreads its tentacles, corrupting the most innocent among us.” It all begins when a group of prisoners working—and inevitably dying—in a mine on a remote planet stage a revolt against their captors and, miraculously, get off the planet and are able to tell their tale of horror to leaders in the Planetary Alliance. It seems that their subjugators, the Drana—a ruthless warrior-race obsessed with conquering and exploiting all worlds—were mining a planet not in their territory. After diplomacy between the Planetary Alliance and the Drana fails, a grand-scale battle ensues…
The setting eventually changes to another planet, known as Kallorn, where the survivors find sanctuary and attempt to create a fledgling community and in the process of exploring the planet stumble across an ancient library and Shu, an avatar that reveals transcendent wisdom to the group. But with wisdom comes responsibility and soon that wisdom leads to “an orgy of destruction across the cosmos.”
The setting changes yet again to Earth, millennia later, where Onet awaits the consequences of the evil that his kind has created to finally arrive…
This story was epic in every sense of the word but I couldn’t help but feel as though it was “condensed,” for lack of a better term. If this were published by one of the Big Six (Simon & Schuster, Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin, Macmillan, and Hachette Book Group), I’d guess it would’ve been stretched out into a trilogy at the very least with more of a focus on character development, narrative fluidity, backstory, etc. I wasn’t particularly overjoyed by the choppy narrative—it gave the read an unfinished feel—and I would’ve liked to see more overall description and character development. The majority of characters were two-dimensional, and although that happens frequently in grand-scale SF/fantasy storylines, I didn’t find myself emotionally invested with any of them aside from Akhen.
That said, I was impressed with how Eason incorporated a myriad of subject matter into the storyline—especially Egyptian and Sumerian mythology—and I loved the Serlingesque ending.
So, bravo Jack Eason, for penning an ambitious and provocative science fiction epic. Here’s one reviewer who will be anxiously awaiting your next release—just don’t wait 62 years to write the next one!
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
