Book Review: The Crystal Empire

Book Review: 'The Crystal Empire' by L. Neil Smith

2 / 5 Stars

'The Crystal Empire' first was published in hardback in December, 1986 by Tor Books. This paperback edition (449 pp.) was issued by Tor in February, 1989 and features cover art by Michael Whelan.

cover illustration by David Mattingly for the 1986 hardback edition, courtesy of 'Scifi Art' (tumblr)

'Crystal Empire' arguably is the forerunner of novels and short stories that envisage an alternate Earth where the Aztec empire, with all its devotion to conquest and human sacrifice, reigns supreme, as in Christopher Evans's 1993 novel 'Aztec Century.'

'Crystal Empire' is set in a timeline where the Black Death results in the collapse of Christianity and its replacement by a Muslim-Jewish alliance. By the late 20th century, Europe, and the Near East, are under the control of the Caliphate of Rome, led the enlightened and benevolent Abu Bakr Mohammed VII. East Asia is under the thumb of the Mongol Empire, which seeks to dominate the known world. 

As the novel opens, the low-intensity border wars between the Caliphate and the Mongols have blossomed into full-scale world war, waged with steampunk-level technology. The Caliphate's technological edge is starting to falter in the face of the overwhelming manpower wielded by the Mongols. And more disturbingly, the Mongols are adopting newer technologies in their arsenal - including a primitive submarine.

Desperate to defeat the Mongols and preserve his Caliphate, Abu Bakr decides on a precarious strategy: forming an alliance with the mysterious Crystal Empire of the Sino-Aztecs, whose kingdom, occupying the western coast of the Savage Continent (i.e., North America), is rumored to have advanced technology......and weapons that could turn the tide in the combat against the Mongols.

Abu Bakr dispatches his young, pretty, and brilliant daughter Ayesha on a long and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the east coast of North America, after which Ayesha and her party travel by 'landship' to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. There, the voyagers encounter the novel's lead character 'Fireclaw', also known as Sedrich Sedrichsohn. 

The descendent of Europeans who migrated to North America in an effort to escape the Black Death, Fireclaw is a formidable warrior, and the de facto ruler of the American Indian tribes who occupy the Great Plains. Driven by curiosity, and a desire to prevent the Mongols from overtaking the Savage Continent, Fireclaw agrees to guide the Caliph's party across the Rockies and into the territory of the Empire. 

The journey to the coast will not be an easy one, and at its end awaits a confrontation with the Sun-God who rules the Crystal Empire. An Empire constructed on great cruelties and strange sciences, an Empire where those whose who enter its boundaries never are granted leave to exit. 

I finished 'The Crystal Empire' thinking it a more laborious and tedious read than it should have been. This was unexpected, given that the back story is imaginative (think Indians on steam-powered motorcycles loosening pneumatically-launched arrows at a wooden ship that travels across the prairie, via canvas sails and 20 feet-high iron wheels). 

However, the book is badly overwritten, with too many passages that labor to 'tell,' rather than 'show,' the perspectives and attitudes of the characters. The exposition, and dialogue, often comes across as stilted and difficult to follow (for example, Smith insists on using the word 'e're' instead of 'ever'). A running subplot, involving Ayesha's night-time visions of other times and places, pads, rather than enhances, the narrative. And the novel's closing chapters have the frenetic quality of the climax of a storyline in a superhero comic book. There is so much mayhem, and colossal death and destruction, taking place that the narrative struggles to keep up.

The verdict ? 'The Crystal Empire', for all its careful world-building and character development, fails to fulfil its promise of an engaging alternate world tale. I'm comfortable giving it a Two-Star Rating.