Very good story, well written! ( )

Bob Shaw's third novel, The Palace of Eternity combines huge themes - life, death, stellar engineering, life after death and panspermism - in an economical package. Bob Shaw could always be relied upon to cram more ideas into his well-realised worlds than many other writers working at twice his length.

The human race is locked in a long-running interstellar war with an alien race we cannot communicate with. The novel's hero, Matt Tavernor, helps develop a weapon that isolated colonists can use to defend themselves, but then retires to a world colonised mainly by artists. When the military comes to that world, Tavernor knows that the war will follow. In trying to stop it, he is killed - and that's only part-way through the novel! A transcendant middle section leads on to Tavernor's resurrection in the body of his own son. When the aliens attack the colony world, he and his sister/step-daughter are taken prisoner by the aliens - the first time this has ever happened. A resolution follows.

As an engineer by profession, Shaw realised his worlds in terms of the inventions that seemed fantastic to readers but everyday to his characters. He was always capable of throwing off all manner of ideas in a few words. For example, as a child, Tavernor had witnessed the death of his father in an alien raid, because in getting Tavernor to safety, his father had been unable to shoot accurately at the aliens with an automatic weapon held in one hand only. So in later life, Tavernor developed a gyro-stabilised automatic rifle. Shaw's deft touch was to say "The military never understood Tavernor's requirement in the specification, that the gun should be able to be fired accurately with one hand whilst dragging a child with the other...He called it the 'Tavernor Compensating Rifle', though only he knew what it was compensating for." (It is many years since I read the novel, so I paraphrase.) Only a writer of Bob Shaw's calibre could have told so much of one character's life story in a few words describing the technical specification of a weapon.

Bob Shaw was beloved in the fan community; some felt that he didn't devote enough time to his novels and he tried to cram too much into a short space. Yet in later years when he tried writing to greater lengths, he never seemed comfortable, preferring to pack ideas in to inspire and delight his readers and friends. For me, The Palace of Eternity was a page-turner with new wonders wherever I looked and vivid world-building taking place in my mind's eye. His better novels do not deserve to fade into obscurity. ( )

This novel gets a lot done in a little over 200 pages with a great deal of concision. It's a strange novel featuring a Laumer type hard boiled ex military central protagonist, and a Stapledonian metaphysical cosmic conciousness. Interstellar war, life after death, and rebirth are themes considered. It begins to feel a bit contrived as it draws to it's conclusion, but it's still a neat little read, albeit veering on the wild side. He's good at drawing characters with simple, deft strokes.
Three stars. ***
Recommended with some reservation -not for everyone.

One of the Pringle Top 100 SF novels.
Another odd pick. ( )