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Aeternum
"A historical fantasy like no other" (AuthorsReading.com)Evolution is painful...
Mika is a continuous, living energy evolving through generations of various life forms, carrying the memories of every past existence, and eventually, she becomes human. It's at this stage that she connects with another like soul, Ari, and they find each other lifetime after lifetime. In a battle in Carthage, a Viking invasion of Spain, a super rock band, and into the future.
However, even a love that's seemingly immortal can crack. What was once a love story that spanned lives, becomes a revenge story through the centuries. While their time might be unlimited, Earth's isn't. Will the two be able to reconcile before the end of days? Or will their eternal energy drift apart into the cold, lonely expanse of space?
290 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 8, 2018
11 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Robert Tobin
1 book4 followersRobert is an award-winning, produced playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is also the founder of the AstonRep Theatre Company in Chicago. Most recently, he won the award for best literary adaption of Anton Chekhov's short story Misery into a stage play at the "Art of Adaptation" festival in Chicago. Over five-years in development, Aeternum is his first full-length novel.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 3, 2019
Aeternum is a fascinating highly original fantasy novel that is also in part a work of historical fiction. The premise of Tobin’s novel is that from the beginning of life on Earth, there was one life form that arose, one energy, that never dissipated. All other life forms died and never returned. But this one spirit after dying is reborn. It’s a story of reincarnation.
This being’s rebirth isn’t guided by karma but rather by a combination of randomness and progress forward in evolution. It moves from more primitive plants to single celled animals to multi-celled animals, through dinosaurs and birds to mammals and eventually humans. Although not a perfectly straight line--sometimes it bounced back into earlier forms--it eventually lived almost exclusively as a human becoming at some point every race, gender and social class there has ever been. Through every experience of social oppression and privilege. Each time he/she/it moves on, it retains most of their previous knowledge...although as the memories add up they also tend to drive them a bit insane. The addition of new memories and learnings becomes at times extremely painful.
Oh, and I lied. This being isn’t the only one. Turns out there is a second being. At last they find each other. And what at first seems like it could become an eternal partnership, falls victim to disturbing circumstances and misunderstandings. What starts as potentially an eternal love affair quickly devolves into eternal hatred and revenge. It’s an epic journey through time that takes us into a far distant future and explores what happens to the human race through our final days.
Tobin does an outstanding job of presenting characters who walk a line between being eternal and yet deeply flawed and human. Within his fantasy context, I found them highly believable. And he also presents the historical time periods with believability. I’m not a student of history, but I found them convincing. And the plot was packed with twists and turns that I found always unexpected…sometimes inexplicable but always fascinating. Tobin keeps you guessing what will happen next and his far future is unlike any other I’ve read before as well. An excellent work that I highly recommend.
This being’s rebirth isn’t guided by karma but rather by a combination of randomness and progress forward in evolution. It moves from more primitive plants to single celled animals to multi-celled animals, through dinosaurs and birds to mammals and eventually humans. Although not a perfectly straight line--sometimes it bounced back into earlier forms--it eventually lived almost exclusively as a human becoming at some point every race, gender and social class there has ever been. Through every experience of social oppression and privilege. Each time he/she/it moves on, it retains most of their previous knowledge...although as the memories add up they also tend to drive them a bit insane. The addition of new memories and learnings becomes at times extremely painful.
Oh, and I lied. This being isn’t the only one. Turns out there is a second being. At last they find each other. And what at first seems like it could become an eternal partnership, falls victim to disturbing circumstances and misunderstandings. What starts as potentially an eternal love affair quickly devolves into eternal hatred and revenge. It’s an epic journey through time that takes us into a far distant future and explores what happens to the human race through our final days.
Tobin does an outstanding job of presenting characters who walk a line between being eternal and yet deeply flawed and human. Within his fantasy context, I found them highly believable. And he also presents the historical time periods with believability. I’m not a student of history, but I found them convincing. And the plot was packed with twists and turns that I found always unexpected…sometimes inexplicable but always fascinating. Tobin keeps you guessing what will happen next and his far future is unlike any other I’ve read before as well. An excellent work that I highly recommend.
February 23, 2019
Spectacular vision
Sometimes the logic escaped me but this was a great read.
The universe of the book spans earths history and demise. It is at times inventive but the universe has been created to examine man's relationship to the earth and to fellow man.
Complex but satisfactory in many ways.
Sometimes the logic escaped me but this was a great read.
The universe of the book spans earths history and demise. It is at times inventive but the universe has been created to examine man's relationship to the earth and to fellow man.
Complex but satisfactory in many ways.
May 14, 2019
The love story that stretches across centuries and past lives, builds the foundation of Robert Tobin’s Sci-fi novel, Aeternum. Mika and Ari cross path recurrently during their countless lifetimes through a never-ending reincarnation, both aware of every past lifetime they ever lived. It doesn’t take much for their immortal love story to become a revenge story through centuries. As Earth’s end approaches closer, they have a last chance to reconcile. Meanwhile, Tobin takes readers on a tour of ever-occurring evolution from the sack of Carthage through a Viking invasion of Spain to humanity’s uncertain future.
The author has given countless lives to both Mika and Ari and managed to make them all interesting—whether it's a small ordinary animal life or an enormously important human life. At the same time, he gives the reader a glimpse into the fantastic pre-historic period and a snapshot of an unknown future—what it will be like when it’s time for the earth to approach its end.
Tobin’s narration is steady and ever alert to different voices—to love and destruction, to horrors of war, to beginnings and ends, and to changing times. The story is highly unpredictable, and Tobin manages a fairly satisfying momentum throughout the book. The book, through Mika and Ari’s journey, offers a kaleidoscopic perspective of evolution spanning the human history, and also makes various points about life—how the lives hang by a mere thread, how we want the world to make more sense than it actually does, how the destiny is uncertain, how the little things in a person’s life make a life worth living and a death worth dying, and how to figure it all out as they live. There is an intrigue to Mika’s love story that make the book a haunting read.
The book is mostly about death, but the tone of the book keeps it from being oppressive. The recurring incarnations makes the story a bit repetitive, but the compulsions and enslavements of various forms that dominate lives of both Mika and Ari throughout centuries make for an engrossing read. Heartbreaking and consuming, the novel will take the reader on a fascinating journey of human evolution, incarnation, love, and destruction.
The author has given countless lives to both Mika and Ari and managed to make them all interesting—whether it's a small ordinary animal life or an enormously important human life. At the same time, he gives the reader a glimpse into the fantastic pre-historic period and a snapshot of an unknown future—what it will be like when it’s time for the earth to approach its end.
Tobin’s narration is steady and ever alert to different voices—to love and destruction, to horrors of war, to beginnings and ends, and to changing times. The story is highly unpredictable, and Tobin manages a fairly satisfying momentum throughout the book. The book, through Mika and Ari’s journey, offers a kaleidoscopic perspective of evolution spanning the human history, and also makes various points about life—how the lives hang by a mere thread, how we want the world to make more sense than it actually does, how the destiny is uncertain, how the little things in a person’s life make a life worth living and a death worth dying, and how to figure it all out as they live. There is an intrigue to Mika’s love story that make the book a haunting read.
The book is mostly about death, but the tone of the book keeps it from being oppressive. The recurring incarnations makes the story a bit repetitive, but the compulsions and enslavements of various forms that dominate lives of both Mika and Ari throughout centuries make for an engrossing read. Heartbreaking and consuming, the novel will take the reader on a fascinating journey of human evolution, incarnation, love, and destruction.
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January 30, 2020h'
January 20, 2023
Very interesting premise, which is what drew me to the book in the first place. At times I felt the writing was a bit short and choppy, especially since the MC is supposed to be a wise, worldly being. Overall, I enjoyed the story and the parallel of the end to the beginning. I love it when stories seem to come full circle and this one did that with a touch of melancholy. I would recommend this book to those who appreciate life in it's big moments and small, to those who like sci-fi, or to those who enjoy a unique storyline.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews