The Carpet Makers (1995)

A man is creating a carpet made out of his wife's hair. This is his life's work. The carpets are the driver of an intertwined series of scenes which make up the plot. The scenery comes from 50s' SF and the 'villain' is a 50-50 mix of the the Emperor and Sauron. There is s Big Speech about evil by an Eternal 'bad guy' who dies. Yet it does all hang together, just.

The main issue for me was that there was just too much here, too many stories, too many planets... Less can be more. Also the 50s SF got grating. ( )

I'd rate this book 3 and 1/2 stars, if that were an option. The Carpet Makers is admirable for several reasons, avoiding some common pitfalls to Science Fiction books but also stumbling a few times near the finish.

In a clear parallel to the stitching of a carpet, the book weaves together a plethora of individual stories focusing on separate characters to form a tableaux of a massive interstellar empire. The book starts with the actual carpet makers, before switching to the merchants who transport the carpets, then a freethinking teacher in a carpet making city, then the off-world observers of this planet, and so forth. So gradually that you barely notice it Eschbach expands the scope of the story , slowly revealing a more expansive vision of the carpet-centric universe through the stories of individual characters. When the book ends you feel you know this universe and its inhabitants, a feat science fiction writers often fail to pull off in books twice this size.

This technique of stitching together the narrative via small scale stories has both strengths and weaknesses: it allows us to see almost every stage of the carpet making process in a way that isn't just info dumping, to witness the different beliefs of vastly different characters (some devout, some rebellious, some just wanting to do their jobs), and to tell an epic that nevertheless feels personal. On the other hand, this technique means that some characters disappear from the narrative and you never discover their fate, like dangling threads. Also, the switching between characters means you get relatively little character development, and a few characters are decidedly one-note. This weakness is tempered by Eschbach's ability to establish characterization quickly and rather brilliantly at times, such as in the first chapter which ends with a great segment showing us how violently a carpet maker will hew to tradition and do away with anything that threatens the carpet making lifestyle. In general the writing of The Carpet Makers is nothing too special, but the way Eschbach establishes the characters is sometimes impressive.

As I mentioned before, The Carpet Makers dodges some common problems in science fiction- it focuses on the mental and emotional aspect of living in this universe and not just the physical aspect, it is set in the period just after a galactic war instead of in the middle of one so that it can explore the complexities of running a universe instead of just fighting over one, and finally the book restrains itself from having a chapter from the perspective of the emperor. The emperor only appears as a stunningly impressive figure in the memories of the featured characters- a wise choice, as any direct depiction would have been unable to match the heights the narrative had built him up to.

In contrast, the eventual reveal of the purpose of the hair carpets fails to live up to its narrative buildup. When I learned the solution to the mystery, I found it to be thematically interesting but not as impressive as I had imagined (and as the book had led me to believe it would be). Also, the reveal was delivered in a way I found rather unsatisfying, as it is the sole reveal through an info dump in a book that is otherwise impressively free of them. That the info dump was foreshadowed does little to help.

I would recommend The Carpet Makers for the world it builds and the themes and ideas it explores, even if the solution to the central mystery was underwhelming. Still, in the long run it is the ideas that stick with me the most, and with that in mind The Carpet Makers was well worth reading. ( )

Grand in scope this story is told at the individual family level. It's one of those stories that takes hold of your imagination in the first few pages and never let's go - even long after you've finished. Excellent read ( )

This book has to get five stars from me because it's the first book in quite a while that I would've stayed up late into the night to finish, even if I was exhausted. From the first chapter, it weaves a compelling mystery and builds a whole new world. The writing itself is beautiful; the translation is excellent, with no sense of a gap between me and the text, which I often do get with translations. I think I'm going to have to parcel it up and send it on a round of my friends to read.

I'm not actually saying it's flawless. The structure, however, keeps it strong: each chapter is a self-contained story, which adds a link in the chain to eventually get to the heart of the mystery. But once I got there, after all that build-up, it felt unsatisfying -- but that didn't take away from the power and mystery of the rest of the book. And the epilogue was another strong link in the chain, a perfect way to finish the story.

Usually, I'm interested in characters, in any given book. That's not the case here, and I didn't even feel a lack because of it. It's a totally bewildering, bewitching book.. ( )

Okay, so there's this planet, see, whose entire economy is based on these carpet makers who each spend their entire life making one carpet out of the hair of their wives and daughters. And they send the carpets to this sort of god-emperor in space...but then it turns out that there isn't an emperor any more, and maybe there are other planets making these carpets, and I won't tell you how it all turns out, but it will BLOW YOUR MIND, MAN.
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