Words&Dirt

Tom Toner contacted me in search of an honest review of this book, and when I agreed to give it a shot, his publisher sent me two hard copies (one for me and another for a friend). Given Toner’s enthusiasm and generosity, I truly wish I had enjoyed his book more than I did. Despite some truly impressive qualities, The Promise of the Child was intellectually enervating more than anything else.

Before explaining why I wasn’t able to enjoy it very much, it’s important to point out that this is not an objectively bad book. For the right kind of reader, I think The Promise of the Child would prove an amazing journey through a dense, highly-imaginative futurescape where anything and everything seem possible. Set in the 147th century, Toner drops the reader into a variety of locations within the ancient and precarious Amaranthine Empire, whose withering grip on civilization derives from the purported superiority of “Immortals”––individuals who have lived for many thousands of years. Humans have split into a host of related but distinct races, each with its own perceived “rightful” place in traditional power hierarchies. With his first novel, Toner has created a sprawling world with the kind of scope readers typically associate with seasoned scifi authors who have been honing their craft for several decades. And all this from someone who was born one year before I was. No small feat.

The other thing that is obvious right off the bat is that Toner is a more talented writer than 99 percent of scifi authors. His command of sentence structure and descriptive imagery is superior for someone in this genre. The Promise of the Child is peppered with gorgeous passages such as this description of Gliese, the Amaranthine capital planet:

Its surface was a muddy, oxidized silver, the mineral-plated outer crust reflecting the light of its sun into the cockpit and dazzling their eyes. When the silver continents––studded with twinkling black and blue dots like sapphires––broke apart, a great green and orange swirl, red where the silt formed beaches and strands of blown land, merged to blue and a sea that must have stretched over to the far side. Dappling the deep, hot blues of the ocean were speckled archipelagos of lighter, whirled currents and islands, spreading in their thousands towards each hemisphere like pale green algae. Not a single cloud marred the view of the stunning globe. (288)

Unfortunately, Toner’s abilities as a storyteller and character-builder do not match his way with words. For me, the downfall of this book was twofold: the plot felt inscrutable until the final act, and I was unable to connect emotionally with any of the characters. The brilliance of the language was therefore wasted on me because I simply didn’t care about any of the people or events. I wasn’t rooting for anyone and didn’t feel like I had any investment in the outcomes of conflicts, so instead wondered constantly about where the hell I was and what the hell was going on. Most of the time, I was unable to answer those questions, which resulted in inanition and boredom.

I am no stranger to opaque narratives that make the reader work hard to get something out of the text, but this book felt extremely unbalanced when it came to the amount of energy required to understand it and the payout when understanding was achieved. The final few chapters were genuinely interesting and even somewhat rewarding, but I was also frustrated that I had to wade through so much detritus to get to that point. In my view, the developments described in the final act should have been front and center in the book’s opening third, and then Toner should have moved on to events that are probably contained in this book’s sequel, condensing the narrative into something equally impressive but far more accessible. As it is, The Promise of the Child is a minefield of purple patches with only the occasional fulfilling moment.

Another reason I am not the right kind of audience for this book is that I like hard science fiction (i.e. nerdy, science-based science fiction); this is more like space opera science-fantasy. Toner seems comfortable with fundamentally unscientific ideas such as an immortal, immaterial soul, as well as telekinesis and teleportation that result from “natural” changes rather than technological augmentation of biological bodies, explaining them in ways that are outright laughable (e.g. living a very long time will allow iron particles to align in one’s bloodstream, resulting in supernatural abilities). I am used to giving scifi authors a pass or two on believability if I think they are trying to stay scientific while still telling a good story, but it didn’t feel like Toner put in the intellectual elbow grease to run his world-building through a scientific bullshit detector.

Those weren’t the only features of Toner’s intersolar society that I found impossible to swallow. There was also a conspicuous absence of digital communications (characters send physical letters to each other), no artificial intelligence (although Toner hints at this toward the end), and a relative dearth of high-tech transportation (most of the spaceships seem antiquated, dysfunctional, and not designed in any way for human comfort). I was baffled by the inexplicable presence of medical problems such as tuberculosis and arthritis, even in populations of wealthy people with (presumed) access to the best health care available. So people can live for many thousands of years and “naturally” develop godlike powers, but we haven’t exterminated these little ailments? It is possible that Toner could come up with clever responses to these criticisms, but I wasn’t able to root those out from just interacting with the text.

I had a split reaction the political structure of Toner’s future empire. On one hand, it contains a topical and genuinely interesting commentary on the myopia and injustice of racial and socioeconomic discrimination, including some truly witty insights about the dastardly nature of aristocratic hierarchies and oppressive regimes. On the other hand, Toner asks us to believe that humans have managed to survive, expand into the galaxy, and even evolve our bodies and environments in radical ways, but are still bickering over territorial disputes, racial/genetic differences, and other scarcity- and zero-sum-based conflicts. This renders Toner’s worldview a fundamentally anti-progressive one. That’s not to say his depiction is unrealistic (humans are exceedingly petty, after all, and history does repeat itself), but it does mean that Toner shies away from the highest calling of great science fiction writing, which is to envision genuinely new problems that require genuinely new solutions. Perhaps the biggest weakness of The Promise of the Child is that all its problems are familiar ones, and that, predictably, all its solutions (if it can be said to present any) are equally familiar.

This book wasn’t for me, but I think Tom Toner is undeniably talented and will watch his career with keen interest.

Rating: 5/10