I stayed up till midnight to finish The One-Eyed Man: A Fugue, With Winds and Accompaniment, the latest novel by my favorite author L. E. Modesitt. The book had some problems but I enjoyed it overall. In fact I will re-read it, as I do most of his books, to catch the nuances.
The hero, Paulo Verano an ecologist from the world Bachman, is sent to evaluate the ecological impact and risks that humans may have to the world Stittara. The book mentions several times that Stittara would be abandoned were it not for it being the source of anagathics, drugs that enable people to maintain their looks and health nearly to the end of their lives.
Paulo knows he is getting into a risky area. The anagathics are enormously profitable and no one would want to abandon the planet. Yet there are some strange phenomena, including sky tubes, never fully defined but apparently long structures that float in the sky. No one has ever been able to sample a sky tube and there has been speculation they may be alive, similar to jelly fish. Paulo is well aware that the government that hired him hopes he comes back with a nice, safe, sanitized study that shows no ill effects to the environment from humans.
It’s clear that the Unity government cares deeply about the environment and forbids damage to alien life. There are (of course) opposition parties and it is due to pressure from one of these parties, the Deniers, that Paulo is hired to conduct his study. It’s not at all clear what the issue is that the study is supposed to appease, but it isn’t germane to the story.
There are subplots but they are sketched. There is tension between the outlanders and the city folks; between the corporations doing research on the Stittaran natural anagathics and the Service, between the planetary council and the Unity Survey Service, and more. For some reason Modesitt sketches these but does not explore them. We see characters from each of these groups but their motivations are unclear and the reasons behind the tensions are not revealed.
Modesitt showed the political wrangling by letting us eavesdrop on bits of conversations between plotting members of the groups. These conversations were never complete, never enough to tell you what the characters wanted or feared. I felt like the subplots were dangled in front of us, then whisked behind a curtain just as we got close enough to see the rationale.
There were some annoyances. Modesitt again made spelling changes, duhlars for dollars, that were silly. We got a little economic diatribe about taxation. Interesting, yes, I always find Modesitt’s ideas worth consideration, but it did nothing for the story.
Several of the characters made no sense at all. They were not cardboard cutouts, but their motivation and exactly who they were and why they mattered wasn’t at all clear. The Syntex succession shenanigans added a plot twist and motivation, but hardly deserved the pages Modesitt spent.
I felt as if I were Paulo, muddling through the tensions and people, all with different objectives that none ever wanted to state and with ecological impacts that he could almost see but never measure. Those parts were frustrating.
The actual environmental sampling and trips were dull. Paulo found nothing, yet he knew there was something. We could tell there was something with the sky tubes and the ever-present purple and gray grass that had not changed in millions of years. One of the corporations planned a deep drilling test that would touch the planet’s core. Paulo found that horrifying. Yes, it seems like a very bad idea to drill a hole down to the molten planetary core, but this was somehow connected with organisms like the sky tubes and space. I re-read this part and still didn’t quite get it.
The ending was solid in that Paulo shares his thinking with us as the sky tubes, drilling, alien predecessors from 150 million years ago. But it felt so rushed. And it was incomplete. We didn’t get real answers about the sky tubes, or any more insight into Stittara.
As usual Modesitt built in a love story with a strong female character. This part reminded me of the The Ecologic Envoy, where the two are afraid to love, haven’t spent much time together, yet feel a sense of connection. The other parallel is that the characters must leave and go elsehwere.
The Unity government didn’t make sense. It’s mentioned that Stittara is over 73 light-years from Bachman and it takes about 75 years to reach, although far less for the traveler due to relativity. The fastest way to send a message is by physically taking it. If one can only communicate at the speed of light, then star systems must be close together. Characters mentioned the time delay several times, noting that after 150 years no one at Bachman will care about Paulo’s study. Given the delays, how does one have a central government with Unity-wide elections.
I always enjoy Modesitt’s novels with their strong sense of morality, multiple layers, challenging plots and characters. I didn’t like this as well as some others but it was still worth reading. Did I mention staying up till midnight to finish?
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