While Eschbach's vignettes do form a fragile whole, the structure lacks urgency or focus. Why? Eventually, the reader finds out the answer, though the revelation comes almost as an afterthought. The new interstellar government learns the emperor secretly maintained thousands of carpet-making planets. And so life goes, generation after generation, even after rumors and, finally, ships from the new government arrive with word of the emperor's removal. Intended for the emperor on a distant planet, the carpets are so finely made that each carpet maker can only finish one in his lifetime, working with hairs from the bodies of his wives, who are chosen for the quality and color of their tresses. "Andreas Eschbach is incontestably the shooting star of the German SF scene.Set on a low-tech world where the main industry is the manufacture of carpets of human hair, German SF author Eschbach's first novel forms a grim mosaic of stories of myriad people and cultures trapped in stagnation by one powerful man's petty anger.
"Eschbach: take it and read it." - Frank Schirrmacher, FAZ on The Carpet Makers "Andreas Eschbach is a phenomenon." - Lesen & Leute on The Carpet Makers "Andreas Eschbach is one of the most acclaimed sf writers to emerge in Germany in the past decade." - The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy on The Carpet Makers "With his first work Eschbach shows that the German SF is not dead." - Olive Faulhaber on The Carpet Makers Eschbach is likely to become an international phenomenon." - Booklist Despite being broken into short episodes, the novel is one fluidly integrated story.
"Enthusiastically introduced by no less than Orson Scott Card, this far-future novel does credit to everyone concerned, starting with its German author. "A considerable achievement, and one that suggests the presence of a world-class SF voice that we ought to know about." - Locus "Eschbach's first novel will blow you away.
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