Empyrean Age is not a bad book, and Tony Gonzales is not a bad author.

...

Okay, there are basically two ways in which people will react to that sentence. The first is "ZOMGWTFBBQSOURCE!!!1!" the second is "Yes."

In other words, people will either rage, or agree.

I'm not sure whether it's just a standard case of the loud and unhappy being more visible than the quiet and content, but it seems to me that "Empyrean Age" may well be the single most controversial thing ever to come out of CCP. Which is weird, because it really shouldn't be that polarizing.

This book is... well, it's good-average. It's a B-, a 2-2. A 75%. Perfectly entertaining, but nothing outstanding. No envelopes were pushed in the writing of this novel. Would have benefitted from a more dilligent and assertive editor. At the same time, however, it is a long, long way from being bad.

So I'm honestly puzzled by just how much some people hate it. Mostly, these folks complain about how the Amarr were "treated". They complain about how the whole race is populated by pedophiles and mass-murders.

This confuses me, because a quick re-read reveals only one pedophile, who is forced to flee in fear for his life, and one mass-murderer, who winds up... well, effectively dead. All the other Amarrian characters are dutiful, faithful men and women who find strength and solace in their faith, and do their duties while trying to be the best people they can be. Hell, I found the principle Amarrian, Victor, to be a far more likeable character than the principle Gallentean, who I once took some pleasure in describing as "a smug, whiny, arrogant, spoiled, misogynistic brat of a navy lieutenant who can't seem to get over the drunken one-night stand he had with his rampantly hormonal bitch of a commanding officer."

I could ramble on and on. People complain about how the Federation are portrayed as saints, and the Amarr as monsters. How the Caldari "Just goose-step all over the poor, ever-reasonable Gallente". About how their pet race wasn't made out to be the good guys (when I'm pretty certain that nobody was), or how..

Like I said, I could ramble on and on.

The point here is, the "Empyrean Age" that *I* read was not a bad book. I've read several books in my time, and this wasn't one of them. You want bad? Try the "Split Infinity" series by Piers Anthony, or "The Ship who Sang" by Anne McCaffrey. Or pretty much anything by Harry Harrison. EA isn't exactly a "Hyperion" or a "World War Z", and TonyG is definitely no Iain M. Banks or Dan Simmons, but, critically, it succeeds in doing the one thing that a book should do - keep you gripped from cover to cover.

People will insist on finding something to be utterly unreasonable about, I suppose....