What do you think?
Rate this book
Crystal Empire
Earth is ruled by three mighty empires: The Saracen-Jewish Empire led by the Caliph of Rome, the Mughal-Arab Empire, ferocious in its determination to destroy its neighbor, and the great Sino-Aztec’s Crystal Empire, led by a living God.
Little is known about the Crystal Empire, which spans most of western America. But it is the most powerful force surviving on Earth and its might is unchallenged.
One man, however, will change that. Sedrich Sedrichsohn, a legendary fallen fighter, has a chance at redemption and nothing will stand in his way to reclaim his life and his purpose, even if he must fight the Sun-God himself.
Little is known about the Crystal Empire, which spans most of western America. But it is the most powerful force surviving on Earth and its might is unchallenged.
One man, however, will change that. Sedrich Sedrichsohn, a legendary fallen fighter, has a chance at redemption and nothing will stand in his way to reclaim his life and his purpose, even if he must fight the Sun-God himself.
449 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
About the author
L. Neil Smith
39 books69 followersL. Neil Smith was a Libertarian science fiction author and gun rights activist.Smith was born in Denver, Colorado.
Smith began publishing science fiction with “Grimm’s Law” for Stellar 5 (1980). He wrote 31 books, including 29 novels, and a number of essays and short stories. In 2016, Smith received the Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement for his contributions to libertarian science fiction.
He was editor of LEVER ACTION BBS [now defunct], founder and International Coordinator of the Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus, Secretary and Legislative Director of the Weld County Fish & Wildlife Association and an NRA Life Member.
Smith passed away on August 27, 2021 in Fort Collins, Colorado at age 75 after a lengthy battle with heart and kidney disease. Smith is survived by daughter Rylla Smith and wife Cathy Smith.
Smith began publishing science fiction with “Grimm’s Law” for Stellar 5 (1980). He wrote 31 books, including 29 novels, and a number of essays and short stories. In 2016, Smith received the Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement for his contributions to libertarian science fiction.
He was editor of LEVER ACTION BBS [now defunct], founder and International Coordinator of the Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus, Secretary and Legislative Director of the Weld County Fish & Wildlife Association and an NRA Life Member.
Smith passed away on August 27, 2021 in Fort Collins, Colorado at age 75 after a lengthy battle with heart and kidney disease. Smith is survived by daughter Rylla Smith and wife Cathy Smith.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 7, 2015
It's the alternative universe that would have been had the Black Plague completely wiped out Europe, enabling the Muslims to complete their conquest of that continent. There are two competing Muslim empires, the Sarasen Jewish Empire in Rome, and Mogul Arab Empire in the East. The Americas remained largely unknown to Europeans apart from a very small group of Vikings who had settled along the East Coast. What's left of Christianity is a pitiful blood cult followed by a few of the American Vikings, hardly recognisable as such by our world's frame of reference. The rest of what our world calls the Americas is controlled by the Aztec empire whose development hadn't been impeded by the arrival of the Spaniards, its technology augmented by the arrival of Chinese adventurers. They are the Crystal Empire.
Sedrich, the son of Sedrich begins the first chapter as a boy who, like his blacksmith father, likes to invent things. Oln Woeck, the local priest of the blood cult, doesn't approve of new inventions. He controls most of the town both through coercion and manipulation -- that is, everyone but Sedrich Owaldsohn and his family. Sedrich Senior is honoured as a local hero, and is not fooled by Oln Woeck's religious mumbo jumbo. The first section of the narrative follows young Sedrich into manhood as he learns to use his father's great sword and develops a relationship with his neighbour's daughter, Frae Hethristochter. Oln Woeck also has designs on young Frae, and manipulates his father into promising her to him. According to the culture, a marriage is only official when a baby is conceived, so young Sedrich and Frae do it in secret. The evil Oln Woeck still gets the upper hand, and in the end, Sedrich has to flee the village, minus his left hand, his father and lover both dead, and not knowing if the new born child survived or not.
Ayesha is the young princess of the Caliph of Rome. At night she has strange dreams of winged flying machines, noisy metal carriages on wheels, and battles fought with powerful weapons the likes of which didn't exist in her world. Her father is fighting a war against the Caliph of the Mogul-Arab Empire, and things don't look good. His only hope is to solicit the help of the unknown emperor of the Crystal Empire. He hopes that by offering his daughter to him, he will send help in the form of his weird and wonderful technology. So Ayesha is sent, accompanied by her aged teacher, Rabbi David Shulieman, the adventurer Machamet al Rotshild, and a number of others, off to the other continent.
How they all meet is a part of the engrossing narrative, but the party that nears its destination includes not only Princess Ayesha and her retinue, but also Sedrich Sedrichson who has now been living for many years with the native tribes, and, much to Sedrich's chagrin, the evil, shifty, Oln Woeck.
Then, they accost the unknown. I'll just give out one detail, hoping it's not a spoiler: the Chrystal Empire gains it's advantage by spying on other alternative universes and learning their technology.
The characters are all well drawn and the story takes many an interesting turn. Well worth the read.
Sedrich, the son of Sedrich begins the first chapter as a boy who, like his blacksmith father, likes to invent things. Oln Woeck, the local priest of the blood cult, doesn't approve of new inventions. He controls most of the town both through coercion and manipulation -- that is, everyone but Sedrich Owaldsohn and his family. Sedrich Senior is honoured as a local hero, and is not fooled by Oln Woeck's religious mumbo jumbo. The first section of the narrative follows young Sedrich into manhood as he learns to use his father's great sword and develops a relationship with his neighbour's daughter, Frae Hethristochter. Oln Woeck also has designs on young Frae, and manipulates his father into promising her to him. According to the culture, a marriage is only official when a baby is conceived, so young Sedrich and Frae do it in secret. The evil Oln Woeck still gets the upper hand, and in the end, Sedrich has to flee the village, minus his left hand, his father and lover both dead, and not knowing if the new born child survived or not.
Ayesha is the young princess of the Caliph of Rome. At night she has strange dreams of winged flying machines, noisy metal carriages on wheels, and battles fought with powerful weapons the likes of which didn't exist in her world. Her father is fighting a war against the Caliph of the Mogul-Arab Empire, and things don't look good. His only hope is to solicit the help of the unknown emperor of the Crystal Empire. He hopes that by offering his daughter to him, he will send help in the form of his weird and wonderful technology. So Ayesha is sent, accompanied by her aged teacher, Rabbi David Shulieman, the adventurer Machamet al Rotshild, and a number of others, off to the other continent.
How they all meet is a part of the engrossing narrative, but the party that nears its destination includes not only Princess Ayesha and her retinue, but also Sedrich Sedrichson who has now been living for many years with the native tribes, and, much to Sedrich's chagrin, the evil, shifty, Oln Woeck.
Then, they accost the unknown. I'll just give out one detail, hoping it's not a spoiler: the Chrystal Empire gains it's advantage by spying on other alternative universes and learning their technology.
The characters are all well drawn and the story takes many an interesting turn. Well worth the read.
August 4, 2013
The book had a fascinating, although terrifying, idea on the development of technology, but for the reader to discover this, he/she must go through a long tedious journey. Violence was overboard, unrealistic (why they call it a fantasy, I guess) and unnecessary like watching a Quentin Tarantino movie.
May 28, 2009
A parallel universe where the plague wiped out most of the population. An interesting take on what civilization and technology would look like as new powers and religious rise or flourish. Oh, and there's a damsel in distress.
February 20, 2009
Not bad at all. A departure from his normal libertarian sci-fi, but still with libertarian overtones. It is loosely connected to his Confederacy universe, though the well-read reader doesn't realize it until well into the book. Very enjoyable.
August 1, 2014
Pretentious, preachy, and utterly worthless drivel.
May 29, 2019
As hard as I tried, I just could not get into this one. The idea behind this alternate history is really cool, and I'm always interested when the Aztecs are involved, but this wound up being a disapointment.
To sum up, the black death wiped out most of the Europe's population, setting the stage for the Sino-Aztec, Islam and Mughal empires to dominate the world. Technology is pushed forward by the insights of "dreamers" who get ideas from visions of alternate realities. This really piqued my interest, but upon reading it, I had a really hard time engaging with the characters, the setting and the overall story. Also, I enjoy alternate histories, and a good dose of fantasy can be lots of fun, but I had some difficulty believing in the logic of this particular setting (even if it's fantasy logic, there still has to be some logic!) and visualizing this alternate world.
As unengaging as this was, there are some cool ideas here and maybe it's worth giving another try some time down the road.
2/5 Stars
To sum up, the black death wiped out most of the Europe's population, setting the stage for the Sino-Aztec, Islam and Mughal empires to dominate the world. Technology is pushed forward by the insights of "dreamers" who get ideas from visions of alternate realities. This really piqued my interest, but upon reading it, I had a really hard time engaging with the characters, the setting and the overall story. Also, I enjoy alternate histories, and a good dose of fantasy can be lots of fun, but I had some difficulty believing in the logic of this particular setting (even if it's fantasy logic, there still has to be some logic!) and visualizing this alternate world.
As unengaging as this was, there are some cool ideas here and maybe it's worth giving another try some time down the road.
2/5 Stars
March 13, 2023
That was the most pointless book I’ve ever read. The pacing was terrible: the first 300 pages of the story was basically a glorified backstory, and we didn’t get to the real “plot” until the last 100 pages. It felt like a completely different book at that point and because there was so little build-up of the actual plot, it was difficult to actually care about the consequences of the overly dramatic, “exciting” ending. And besides, nothing was really resolved, in the sense that the story felt no better/worse off at the last page than at any randomly chosen place in middle.
This book could have easily been a 100-150 page short story or prequel novel instead of the 450 page long thing that it was. There were so many parts that were bizarre and completely unnecessary. It was hard for me to tell what the point the book was even supposed to be.
It was fun being forced to read this by my boyfriend, who found this in a used book store, but for any other case, I would say don’t waste your time. Because this book will certainly waste yours.
This book could have easily been a 100-150 page short story or prequel novel instead of the 450 page long thing that it was. There were so many parts that were bizarre and completely unnecessary. It was hard for me to tell what the point the book was even supposed to be.
It was fun being forced to read this by my boyfriend, who found this in a used book store, but for any other case, I would say don’t waste your time. Because this book will certainly waste yours.
June 23, 2019
This is a very silly book.
February 20, 2024
Quite impressive in some ways, but too hurried towards the end, and too violent all the way through.
February 4, 2025
Supposed to be alternate history. That plan lasted one chapter. The novel degenerated to school boys pulp adventure like Tarzan john carter of mars or Conan
April 21, 2010
L. Neil Smith is particularly known for his libertarian science fiction, especially his alternate history "North American Confederacy" series that is kicked off with The Probability Broach. Personally, I find those books rather farfetched and too polemical--and I consider myself a libertarian. The Crystal Empire is different. One Amazon reviewer said that if there was a libertarian message in this one, he didn't see it, and another reviewer who says he finds Smith's philosophy "idiotic" agrees and says this is one of his favorite novels period.
I wouldn't go so far. This isn't a five star book for me. But of the almost dozen books by Smith I've read, I'd say this is his best precisely because it doesn't read as libertarian propaganda. It's similar in premise to Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt but predates it by over a decade. In this timeline, the Black Plague proved even more disastrous than was the case in our own history, with 90 percent mortality rates that caused the collapse of Western civilization and Saracen-Jewish, Mughal-Arab and Sino-Aztec Empires arose to fill the vacuum. The first chapter especially was terrific, with a killer last line. Decades have passed since I first read this novel, and I still remembered that opening well and it still had impact. The next hundred or so pages I found a bit slow, but it picked up considerably once Sedrich Sedrichsohn meets damsel-in-distress Ayesha. Although I wouldn't put this novel up there with the very best of science fiction, it's a well-imagined alternate history and world and a good adventure yarn.
I wouldn't go so far. This isn't a five star book for me. But of the almost dozen books by Smith I've read, I'd say this is his best precisely because it doesn't read as libertarian propaganda. It's similar in premise to Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt but predates it by over a decade. In this timeline, the Black Plague proved even more disastrous than was the case in our own history, with 90 percent mortality rates that caused the collapse of Western civilization and Saracen-Jewish, Mughal-Arab and Sino-Aztec Empires arose to fill the vacuum. The first chapter especially was terrific, with a killer last line. Decades have passed since I first read this novel, and I still remembered that opening well and it still had impact. The next hundred or so pages I found a bit slow, but it picked up considerably once Sedrich Sedrichsohn meets damsel-in-distress Ayesha. Although I wouldn't put this novel up there with the very best of science fiction, it's a well-imagined alternate history and world and a good adventure yarn.
April 30, 2012
After being very disappointed in the last of Smith's novels that I read, The Gallatin Divergence, I was unsure about starting this one, but I am a big fan of alternate histories. I much preferred this one, although the ending seems rushed - which is a bit odd for a 500+ page book. The premise is good - European nations are nearly completely wiped out by the Black Death. The narrative then jumps forward to the late 20th century.
The story is interesting, and the characters generally easy to engage with. The story builds nicely until the ending, which I found not only abrupt, but somewhat incomplete.
The story is interesting, and the characters generally easy to engage with. The story builds nicely until the ending, which I found not only abrupt, but somewhat incomplete.
October 26, 2013
I didn't understand what was going in this book and didn't care much for the characters so I gave up.
Did Not Finish
May 8, 20151990 not finished
April 10, 2026
Brilliant. The author takes a wild premise about the Black Plague and runs with it.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews