I was never really a fan of Science Fiction and this book didn't really change my opinion, but one thing I must say: there are some really interesting things in it. The characters are... okay, I guess. They can handle the story, but honestly, there are characters that you don't really notice until the end of the book. Some of them go through the story unnoticed even after the end of the book (sorry, Tamika. I tried to like you. I really did. But you were as significant as a fork in a drawer). While the author did a pretty good job with the two main characters, the others seemed to have their presences shadowed.
The good thing about this book are the ideas and the concepts rather than the story itself. I dare say that the story is actually poor given the vast universe where it occurs and there are several details that are really hard for me to accept (like... how come a living being can reboot, but they still haven't come up with a solution for energy limit after so much time and technological advance?), but there are a couple of points that really give you something to think about in the story, like "do we really want to reach an equality between the genders?" or "is it really an advantage to live forever?" or even "how would it feel like if we could always reboot, but knowing that there are people that for some reason can't do that?".
I believe that if the author had focused on the characters relations (because Mohandas' interaction with the other crew members was starting to get pretty cool, but he barely talked with Tamika, for an instance) and turned the book into an epic adventure rather than a trip to two or three planets and LOTS and LOTS of research, this book would have been a lot more enjoyable. The world as he described looked pretty nice and the story of Draco and The Pleiads was so awesome, but at a certain point of the story I got lost with so many names that ended up showing up only once or twice.
If you like SciFi, go ahead, this book is worth your time. Otherwise, you might as well look for something else to read. ( )

John Patrick Lowrie, probably best known for his voice acting roles in various modern video games, is, as it turns out, also an author. Lowrie, in his debut novel, Dancing With Eternity, proves that not only can he act, but he also has the literary skills to write, the knowledge of scientific principles to make it seem realistic, and the understanding of the genre to make it work.

The story takes place in a distant future, where people “re-boot” when they get too old, getting a second (or third, or fourth, or fifth, or …) chance at youth. The narrator, Mohandas, meets with a mysterious ship’s captain named Steel, who offers him a crew position on her ship. Down on his luck Mohandas, one of the oldest people in the known universe, is happy to accept, but soon realizes that Steel has more secrets than she lets on, and is forced to tag along on her quest that threatens the lives of the otherwise immortal humans at her side.

I must admit that Lowrie writes readable fiction that is well plotted and evenly paced. The story flows from the words, and the words take you on an intergalactic journey through the cosmos. Not once does it feel rushed, nor does it feel like he couldn’t figure out what to do next. The story naturally unfolds from the beginning, and ties up nicely at the end.

My only issue with the story was that it seemed somewhat influenced, on some level, by Heinlein, whose writings I don’t particularly like. Other than that, it’s a solid story bound to be enjoyed by the fans of many types of science fiction. ( )

Disclosure: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

In the future no one dies. Well, hardly anyone dies. And no one is born. Except on one planet. Instead, people are hatched to work as indentured servants for massive interstellar corporations for their first lifetime, after which they can be "rebooted" for a second life. And then a third. And a fourth. And theoretically as many times after that as they want to. Marriage and parenthood are are almost forgotten concepts. Everyone is connected to the 'net, and if their body dies unexpectedly, they can upload their consciousness to its ether and be rebooted as good as new. Because everyone is interconnected, it is possible to know intimately the perspective of anyone you meet who is willing to share their viewpoint with you, and as a result, violence is almost unheard of. And interstellar travel via a weird "perspective parallax" process akin to magic is possible.

Science fiction is a hard genre to write. It is probably harder than most people who read science fiction realize. Not only does the author have to assemble some semblance of characters and plot, but he has to define a setting for the reader. But the element that is the most difficult is for an author to convey the point of view of a character from a society alien to the reader. Granted, many science fiction authors don't even try, creating futures in which there are faster than light starships, galaxy-spanning civilizations, and other technological and political differences, that are populated by people who seem to have stepped out of the 1950s (or the 1970s, or the 1930s, or whatever decade the book was written in). Sometimes this works well in the hands of a skillful author, such as Delany's Triton or Varley's Ophiuchi Hotline. In the hands of a less skillful author, it is far less effective. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, Lowrie is simply unable to make the alien viewpoint of his nigh-immortal 40th century characters seem real to the reader, and as a result, the story of Dancing with Eternity just never seems to gel.

The protagonist of the story is Mohandas, referred to as "Mo" by the other characters. He starts the story down on his luck, unable to pay the taxes assessed for getting scales as part of his most recent body sculpting job - in the future people can choose to reshape their bodies almost any way, but most seem to choose to have cat fur, or look like historical celebrities, or something similarly dull and mundane (in contrast to the radical body sculpting people indulge in in much older science fiction works like The Ophiuchi Hotline, or The Golden Globe) - and he's stuck on a backwater planet, cut off from the 'net, working a crappy job and drinking in a crappy bar every night. While drinking away his sorrows he's approached by "Steel", a beautiful woman with cat eyes and fur who asks him to join her starship crew to join in on a mission the particulars of which she cannot divulge. Because she's really beautiful, Mo agrees.

Which brings up some of the problems in the book: first. the characters keep doing wildly impulsive and dangerous things with little motivation, and second, most of the information about the plot is hidden from Mo (and thus the reader) for large chunks of the book. It turns out that the mission Mo signed on for is to visit the most dangerous place then known. This is revealed pretty early. But big chunks of information is held back from the reader for most of the book, presumably to create a feeling of suspense. But when critical chunks of the plot are held back from the reader for more than half of the book more or less "just because", it doesn't build suspense, just annoyance. And when a plot point is held back that long (or longer in some cases), it builds in the reader the expectation that when the secret is revealed it will be that much more stunning in importance.

Which brings me to another problem with the book: no matter how important are strange a concept or an event seems to the characters, unless you effectively convey the strangeness or importance to the reader, the reader just won't care. And despite his best efforts, Lowrie just wasn't able to get me to marvel in wonder at the fact that people once had "mothers" or that Mo was once "married". The main problem is one that plagues science fiction: if you make the characters in your imagined world too alien, then the reader can't really relate to them. And Lowrie hurts his cause by frequently not following up on the implications of his changed world: in a sequence that is supposed to be pivotal, a drunk character recounts his experiences in the last war a thousand years ago - an event that seems mostly to have been included to allow for some didactic commentary on gender relations - in which female commandos working for a feminist regime attacked his unit and singled out the female unit commander as a "gender traitor". But Lowrie had already established that technology was developed enough at the time to allow for people to change genders if they wanted, making the whole issue of gender disputes seem kind of pointless in the first place, and rendering the idea of a "gender traitor" kind of silly.

This isn't to say that Dancing With Eternity a bad book. There are some interesting ideas here, but they never seem to add up to anything more than an adequate story. We learn early that Mo is extremely old, even by the standards of the 40th century, but this never really amounts to much more than a curiosity. Steel's plan involves going to the most dangerous place known in the galaxy to try to solve the problem of why people need to reboot every so often, but the "plan" is more or less wishful thinking. And once they reach their destination, Steel, who is supposed to be smart turns out to be a complete idiot about research. And the rest of her crack crew, supposedly with hundreds of years of experience behind them, seem to be little more than dilettantes when it comes to scientific inquiry. And when the big secrets of the book are revealed, they turn out to be pretty uninteresting. And in large part, mostly irrelevant to the story.

I suppose the most common emotion the characters themselves have in the book is one of boredom. Because they live so long, they can take decades to perfect and implement their personal plans, a world element that is supposed to make Steel's rush to get her project done seem remarkable. But once again, while it may seem remarkable to the other characters that Steel would be in such a "rush" (with a project that takes months to execute), for the reader it just isn't that stunning, despite the author repeatedly telling us it is so. Dancing With Eternity is a book that wants to be about big ideas and big decisions, but because the characters are at the same time so alien and so pedestrian, it never rises above adequacy.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds ( )

It's the future, almost nobody dies, and people have an unhealthy obsession with changes that happened since the 20th/21th century. Nothing new for a SF book. Indeed the book starts out as a seemingly normal space opera, except that the both the FTL drive and the galactic internet seem to be powered by concentrated hippie
('human brains are so special they require special physics that allows for everything we need to magically happen'). When the characters end up on Eden, the planet where people still choose to die, the characters and events seem to become little more than a way for the author to give his opinion on what things immortality would do to society. There is also a subplot about a gender war, which again seems to be little more than an excuse to give his theories about feminism and gender roles.
The Brainard mission is definitely the better subplot, with some very interesting discoveries, but in the end it cuts off rather abruptly to go back to Eden and talk some more.

meh/5 stars. ( )

If you read this book as a strictly futuristic adventure novel, you will probably be slightly disappointed. There are elements of the plot that are built up throughout the story, only to be anticlimactically abandoned. The characters in the story, rather than being idealized exemplars of perfection, are very human -- but in a way that readers may find difficulty connecting with, since they are humans living in a vastly different culture brought on by certain very important aspects of technology.

If, however, you read it as a study of the mores and ethics of the society that would be formed from advanced, periodic, and above all EXPENSIVE geriatric treatment that provides virtual immortality, you will, like me, probably be amazed. The true theme, and the true strength, of this book, is expressed right in the title. It isn't about the quest, or the danger, or the adventure -- it is about how humanity would change given the ability to reverse aging, overcome death, and travel to the stars with ease. ( )