The writing in this book is hard to get around. Difficult. Unrewarding throughout the entire book until the very end. However, that doesn't mean its a terrible novel. Rather, you get to notice how much work went into this projeckt. This isn't just a book. Its about a historical narrative, science and physics, metaphysics, and spiritual searching and reformation. All great ideas rolled into one book. Something like Star Wars could never compete with something like this. Although the book is 'difficult' (for lack of a better term) you get a sense that you are learning about something, all the things I just mentioned.
The book starts with the aliens crash landing in medieval town Eifelheim and this priest named Dietrich is the first human to meet with them. He eventually comes to befriend these demons from the sky and he realizes that they aren't so bad. They crashed and their ship was wrecked. Now they were stuck and had nowhere to go. They needed to get supplies to fix the ship and fly back to their home planet. Simple enough.
Dietrich learns to converse with these grasshopper-like creatures and he comes to the conclusion that these creatures must be saved in the name of Christ. So he tells them about Jesus and converts them. Can humans convert aliens? Michael Flynn says yes you can. Why not, right? Its a novel idea and something I've never seen before in science fiction. That alone constitutes reading the book. If anything its a great idea. Of course it makes you wonder if that's really possible why is it that sometimes we can't even convert ourselves? But I digress.
The aliens steal some steel wire somewhere and Dietrich gets upset. But in the end the aliens fix their ship and fly home. However, some aliens stayed in Eifelheim. The Black Plague was purging the entire region and it had reached Eifelheim. Those remaining aliens that stayed helped to take care of the sick, as they were immune to the disease. What a wonderful part of the story. You help me and I help you, what a great intergalactic Utopian moment for the book.
At one point Dietrich is accused of being a heretic for converting demons but he gets out of it through politics and knowing the right people, mostly knights in the army. The book ends with Dietrich fleeing the Black Plague-infested Eifelheim. Meanwhile in the future the physicists had worked out the idea of how the aliens used time and space travel to get there and leave. The idea that aliens had been there was ruled out until the very end of their findings. There was talk (earlier in the book) that these demons might have even been Chinese.
They decide to go to Eifelheim and look for themselves. They dig up the town's graveyard and find skeletons of the grasshopper aliens and even their German names written down on plaques. Knowing that they discovered something of lasting importance to the human race and civilization they revel in their discovery, and that ends the book.
Pretty great idea ain't it? I think so. I haven't read science fiction like this before and I'm not sure there's really any other books out there that are like this one. It got me interested in the Dark Ages and I've even got Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror checked out. History can be science fiction too. Its so foreign to me that it might as well be from another planet.
Long live the Devil home!
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