Original Publication Year: 2015
(February 3)
Genre(s): Fantasy
Series: Yes but not named yet.
Awards: None
Format: eBook - Thanks to Tor
Books for providing me with an advanced reader copy of this book (via
NetGalley). My review reflects my honest opinion of and experience with
the book and was not influenced by receiving the book for free from the
publisher.
Narrated by: NA
The Eterna Files tells the story of two secret government agencies,
one in America and one in England, during the Victorian period. They are both investigating the supernatural
phenomena surrounding an attempt to achieve immortality through a mix of
science and magic. This pursuit of
immortality was begun when Clara Templeton as a girl of 11 or 12, trying to
comfort the recently bereaved Mary Todd Lincoln, suggests that great people
such as Abraham Lincoln should never be subjected to death. The quest for immortality begins there and
has been under way for more than a decade on both sides of the pond, when things
start to go horribly wrong and all of the scientists involved are mysteriously
killed.
Unfortunately, The Eterna Files has a promising premise
but this first book, in what promises to be a series, did not deliver on that
promise. It never really gelled for me
and there was very little forward movement. Overall, I felt like I was dropped into the
middle of a complex Gothic setting and storyline and never really caught up or was
able to be immersed in the story.
Part of the problem was the scope
and huge cast of characters. Characters were
still being introduced 30% into the book and I had a hard time connecting with
any of them or even distinguishing who were the most important to the story. Certainly Clara on the American side and then
Spire and Rose Everhart in England. However,
each “agency” on either side also has a number of other crew members and a
benefactor plus several ancillary characters and I was never really sure how important
any of these folks was meant to be and in some cases how they fit in. Even
with the three main characters, I never really got an intimate sense of who
they were despite the fact that they carry a good portion of the perspective
voice. The interactions and actions of
the characters never felt entirely natural to me either and sometimes I was
actively confused about a characters reaction to occurrences. Rose was the one
character I found intriguing. She decided on a career over the normal existence
of a Victorian lady and has used a tragedy in her life to leverage a support
position in the highest levels of the British government.
As may be apparent the story is
split into two narratives, one taking place in America and one in England with
alternating chapters. There is a hint of
tenuous connection between the two storylines but it doesn’t come to fruition
in this book and it often seemed like I was reading two separate books exacerbated
by the lengthiness of the chapters. This
split also threw the pacing off and resulted in it taking longer than necessary to achieve any sort of forward momentum.
I started to get somewhat engaged in the stories around 40% in and
stayed mildly engaged until the end when the book just petered out in
the middle of a scene. For this two
pronged storyline to work I think it needed to be snappier with its pacing.
The book is relatively dark and
Gothic and Hieber does a really good job describing the setting and producing a
tangible atmosphere. However, I was
hoping for a sense of humor and a page turning supernatural mystery. It is described on Net Galley
as a cross between the X Files and the Dresden Files, perhaps because they both
have the word files in their name because I saw little other similarity. That comparison gave me an inappropriate
expectation about the tone of the book which is darker and much more humorless
than either of those franchises. I
noticed that this comparison does not appear in the Goodreads description which
is a good thing. The book most reminded
me, in tone, in the choppiness of the narrative, in the lack of intimacy with
the characters, of The Somnambulist
by Jonathan Barnes for which I also did not care.
FINAL VERDICT: An ambitious book with a promising premise
but in the end it wasn’t for me. 2 out
of 5 Stars.
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