Julie Czerneda has built a reputation over the past 20+ years in the Science Fiction landscape as a writer who creates fascinating alien species and manages to build great characters within those species. Her aliens are truly alien, but those characters possess enough empathy that we as readers can sympathize and empathize with these aliens. One of the books that helped to build Czernada’s strong reputation is Beholder’s Eye, the first installment of the Web Shifters trilogy, published in 1998.
United in their natural form they are one, sharing all their memories, experiences, and lives. Apart they are six, the only existing members of their ancient race, a species with the ability to assume any form once they understand its essence.
Their continued survival in a universe filled with races ready to destroy anyone perceived as different is based on the Rules. And first among those Rules is: Never reveal your true nature to another being. But when the youngest among them, Esen-alit-Quar, receives her first independent assignment to a world considered safe to explore, she stumbles into a trap no one could have anticipated.
Her only means of escape lies in violating the First Rule. She reveals herself to a fellow captive―a human being/ While this mistake might not ordinarily prove fatal, the timing of the event could not be worse. For something new has finally made its way into the Universe, the Enemy of the Web, bringer of death to all forms of life. And the hunt it about to begin.
Esen-Alit-Quar, our first person narrator, is from a very secretive race of shape-shifters known as the Web. Although she’s a few hundred years old, she’s the youngest and at the start of Beholder’s Eye, embarking on her first solo mission as directed by her mentor and elder Ersh. These shapeshifters study other races, their culture, their world, and their community. Her shape-shifting abilities allow her and her race to easily hide amongst those they are studying, allowing for a bypass of the observation effect as her race practices the equivalent to Star Trek’s Prime Directive, which prevents Esen from not only interfering with the race she is observing but revealing her true nature and that of her race. Of course things don’t go so smoothly or according to that directive.
When she arrives at the planet Kraos, Esen is sucked into a revolution that eventually pairs her up with a human named Paul Ragem, whom she befriends despite her misgivings. She saves his life, he eventually returns the favor and follows her through some of the various alien forms into which she shapeshifts. In addition to the interspecies squabbling and conflict, there’s a darker threat to the universe that is seen in smaller chapters which provide a glimpse. This “Enemy” in these “Out There” sequences or passages, has an air of familiarity to it. When Esen learns of this “Enemy” she delves into her own shared memories, many of which were learned through Ersh’s memories, of the Web and comes to fear this pending doom.
In some ways, Esen is not just one alien, but many aliens throughout Beholder’s Eye. As part of her race, when she shape-shifts to another species, she acquires all characteristics, including point of view, knowledge, and ability (or inability) to communicate. Some of the finest conflict in the novel is Esen attempting to keep her secrets while her friendship and trust with Ragem begin to blossom. Through these various alien shapes Esen assumes, Czerneda provides a tantalizing glimpse into a vast universe. Secrets are one of the key themes of the novel, whether it be the secrets Esen keeps from Ragem, or the secretive history of her own race she barely knows.
Czerneda has started off an ambitious trilogy with Beholder’s Eye. While the pacing of the novel was uneven – at times a super page-turner, at times a little too inward looking – I found myself really concerned for Esen’s plight and invested in the larger cosmology of the novels. There’s a charming atmosphere about Esen and a vast sense of wonder for the universe we are viewing through the microcosm of these characters. In SF and even comic books, I am fascinated by Elder Races. With the first novel in The Web Shifters, I’m very intrigued.
© 2018 Rob H. Bedford
Mass Market Paperback | 413 Pages
DAW Books, 1998
https://www.czerneda.com/sf/beholders.html
Review copy courtesy of the author/publisher
Yes, wonderful writer, I enjoyed this series immensely. One characteristic though that the shapechanger retains is she appears at the same relative age to herself. In human terms, she’s about 8?