Benny could never really
stay friends with Jason as she’s way too stubborn to forgive him and admit her
own faults in this relationship. She’s
partially responsible for rushing into the marriage and part of the reason why
it failed. Sure Jason by all accounts is
just an idiot who always seems to screw things up in some way or another which
is a big theme when the real threat starts to rear its head. This story does a world attacked by disease
with Agent Yellow, an alien infection of the Earth that is from a root of
sulfuric acid. Because of the sulfuric
acid component it burns people alive from the inside out done in many horrific
ways especially considering the first victim that the novel shows under Agent
Yellow, is Liz Shaw. The novel kills off
Liz Shaw making us realize just how high these stakes for the novel actually
are. Liz at this point has helped the
Earth completely through working with the Earth Reptiles, finding cures for
diseases and to see her shot down by this disease in an instant gives you a
really good look at everything. It’s
really what keeps the novel up and the novel’s pace increases, but the slow
start is the novel’s real downfall. It
turns out Agent Yellow is from a species from Venus who are using it in a play
which breaks the tension of the novel, but allows Jason to have a moment of
glory which allows the novel to sort of save itself from going the way of a
really bad ending.
To summarize, Eternity Weeps is a story that shows
just how dangerous aliens can really be to people on the Earth. Agent Yellow and the human villains of the
story is really what allows the tension to build through the very slow build up
to a dramatic conclusion. Mortimore does
a great job with the body horror as people are shot, burned, and killed in
increasingly brutal way as well as the characters whom he finds an extreme joy
writing for. The Doctor and Chris being
largely absent from the novel is not a problem at all for the story as it
really doesn’t need them while Benny is having too much fun in the
protagonist’s role and the hero of the story.
85/100.
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