So I finished Templar One last night. My overall impressions? It was better than Empyrean Age, but that's not saying much for the quality of Templar One. Templar One was, generally, a bit of a mess of a book and had numerous weaknesses from a pure writing standpoint. I'm not going to even delve into any continuity problems (I only noticed a few and at least one of them [the oft-denigrated Terran station from 14000 years before the EVE Gate collapsed] I can fairly confidently claim was a result of poor editing rather than Tony just not knowing better) or conflicts with EVE's style and tone (of which there were many, but others have covered in greater detail). Rather, I'm looking at it simply from the writing perspective.
The biggest issue was that there were no protagonists or antagonists and it had no real conflict. The novel was about a bunch of characters all working toward the same general goals. Mordu's Legion, the Federation, and Ishukone all had identical goals (getting Templar tech) and never worked against each other in any way; in the end, they all end up working together. About 2/3rds of the way through, the Amarr essentially had the same goals as well. The presence of other factions was minimal to the point of irrelevance. Heth and the State were background players who essentially only tacked on extra (unneeded) motivation for Mens, while the Republic was so absent from the narrative as to have been rendered irrelevant. The only group that may have been working slightly against the characters was CONCORD, but they also had virtually no effect on any of the plot. They were there, but ultimately nothing they did had the slightest impact.
A small case could be made that the Other was the antagonist, but it did nothing in the book aside from make Jamyl fall from the podium. Its actions, too, were ultimately irrelevant in the narrative. It set the plot in motion and has vaguely defined sinister motives (at least according to Grious), but it did little to actually advance those motives. It certainly did not actively work against any of the characters in the novel or attempt to prevent them from succeeding. It was just there. A bit of information that had no real relevance to the plot of the novel.
Finally, the pacing and plotting of the novel was jumbled and there was far too much unnecessary parts. For example, the background of Jacus Roden was entirely pointless. It added nothing to the story. Nothing presented impacted the plot in the slightest and it only presented a small expansion of Roden's personality, one that was utterly detached from Roden's portrayal in other parts of the novel (which does make sense, as 70 years had passed, so he should not be the same personality wise). There were other, similar sections that really had no point being in the novel and only served to make it longer. For the most part, these were sections that were prefaced by "XXX years ago", though some of them (such as the scene where Gable is captured by the Valklears) at least serve to set up other parts of the action. The novel could have been 100 pages shorter and been much tighter if such sections had been excised.
Now a novel without a central conflict or defined protagonists or antagonists can work, but it requires exceptional writing and characters to pull off. Templar One has neither of those things.
The characters themselves were all basically flat. No one had much beneath their surface, with a few small exceptions, and even those were not really explored much. Characters were all driven by one basic thought pattern and that was it. The actions of any individual were mostly predictable given the circumstances they were in. No one did anything surprising or unexpected or human. They were all clearly there to push forward a plot and little else.
The writing wasn't actually too bad. But there were numerous problems. One of the biggest ones was the frequent misuse of common sentence constructions. There were a lot of them, but there were two that particularly stuck out to me.
The first came early in the novel. The line goes something like "That was the honest truth, if not a pathetic one." This is not how the "It was XXX, if not XXX" works. That phrasing is supposed to be used to imply that the second clause is of greater magnitude, but may not be reached, than the first, which is definitely reached. Examples of proper usage are "It was a snow storm, if not a blizzard" or "He was the richest man in the world, if not the entire universe." The way it is written in the book makes no sense. What was intended (I believe) is the "The truth may or may not be pathetic, but it was at least honest." Instead, it comes across as "The truth is honest, but it probably hasn't reached pathetic yet."
The second came later in the novel. Two characters are standing next to each other, one is tall and one is short. I think it's Gable standing next to someone (I don't remember who). The line is roughly "Standing next to him, she was barely 150cm tall." This phrasing is intended as a comparison of two things, with the one in the second being compared in proportion to the one in the first, where generally the second is considered exceptional in some way. For example "Next to him, she seemed small" for someone who is normally tall or "Next to the Jove, the Caldari seemed primitive" or similar. In the sentence as given, the character is ALWAYS 150cm tall, it doesn't matter who she is standing next to. Her height does not change when different people stand next to her. Additionally, she would seem short next to almost anyone. At 150cm, she is short for any adult woman.
There was also a tendency in the text to be repetitive with the class or type of a thing, especially early on. If a ship was established as a Panther-class gunship, every action would be performed by "the Panther-class gunship" as opposed to simply "the gunship". The same thing with weapons and the like. The text was written as if the reader needed to be constantly reminded of facts presented a paragraph or two before. Or like it was ham-fisted product placement ("This is most awesome Dodge Charger I've ever seen! I'm going to take this Dodge Charger out on a spin around town. Everyone will be so impressed with my new Dodge Charger.") I'm not sure if this problem arose simply because it was assumed the readers would be idiots (which is a cardinal sin in writing, in my opinion) or if it was an attempt to create some sort of DUST 514 "brand recognition". Either way, it was abrasive and jarring.
The dialogue was at least unobtrusive. I rarely read a line and groaned because of how much it sounded like something nobody would ever say. But at the same time, it was not particularly striking. There were a lot of predictable conversations, with dialogue that was essentially generic and could have come from any of the characters.
Finally, there's the issue of the portrayal of women and how they're all essentially shown as weak, incompetent, and in the subservient to men. Others have touched on it better than I could. Suffice to say, when the most powerful and important women in the novel all have scenes where they're passively submitting to mental and sexualized domination by men, there's a problem.
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Topic: Templar One [[Spoilers]] (Read 40500 times)