The Quantum Curators (SF) - Eva St. John ***

Having been captivated by Eva St. John's excellent fantasy Flint in the Bones and its sequel, I looked for anything else by St. John and came across her Quantum Curators series. I initially assumed these were five separate books, starting with The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg, but it would be more accurate to describe it as a single five-volume novel.

For me, this turned out to be St. John on training wheels before she hit full capability with Flint in the Bones. Unlike that book, this is science fiction - specifically a many worlds multiverse story, though (initially) there are only two worlds, known by the occupants of one as Alpha and Beta Earths. Ours is Beta, while the other has more advanced technology and has developed a 'quantum stepper' that allows curators to cross into Beta Earth and rescue artefacts that would otherwise be destroyed or lost.

The main characters are Neith, an Alpha Earth curator from Egypt (it was a failure to destroy the Library at Alexandria and the loss of Julius Caesar that resulted in the split in their timeline) and Julius, an academic from Beta Earth who accidentally gets dragged into a mission that goes wrong. There are also (rather too many) secondary characters who feature regularly. 

There is a lot to like about the books. When the writing is on form there is plenty of action and some clever ideas arising from the nature of the technology and what is and isn't possible. This is why I got as far as book 3. But, for me, that writing is too inconsistent. The first book takes way too long to get going, and all of the books I read had significant chunks that added nothing and held things back. Also, compared with Flint in the Bones there is less development of the characters who, with the exception of Julius are distinctly two dimensional.

Assuming we allow the usual science fiction permit to have something impossible in the quantum stepper, I was also a little doubtful of a couple of key points in the distinction between Alpha and Beta Earths. Although the Library at Alexandria was certainly damaged by fire thanks to Caesar, it continued to exist and it seems unlikely that other empires would not have an impact if the Roman Empire never properly took off. Also the books attribute a huge amount of scientific genius to Leonardo da Vinci - there is no evidence that Leonardo had any great scientific ability and certainly would have been unable to develop quantum theory in the fifteenth century (though to be fair this is partially explained in book 3).

When the books are working well, they are great - but they just don't have the consistency of the later novel. They certainly are enjoyable, but I'm not a fan of very long books, and as soon as it was clear that the Fabergé Egg volume ended with what is effectively a 'to be continued' it turned me off.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here