Eternity Road is set 1,000 years from now, when the world as we know it has been dead for eight centuries, destroyed by a plague that killed most of humanity. Technological artifacts remain, but the knowledge of what they are and how to use them has been lost by a society that has degenerated into a series of city-states. Legend has it that the Roadmakers left a store of knowledge in a place called Haven, but when an expedition from Memphis sets out to find it, only one person returns. The lone, dishonored survivor eventually kills himself, but his son is determined to try again ...

From Library Journal
After a cataclysmic viral plague wiped out humanity sometime in the 21st century, the next civilization arose in isolated pockets. In the Mississippi Valley, Illyrians built their town on what had been the Roadmakers' Memphis. Some believed in the mythical Haven on the eastern ocean where books and other technological wonders had been saved. When all but one member of an expedition dies trying to find Haven, the leader's son joins a second party on the long overland trek east. Unfortunately, the book raises more questions than it answers about the knowledge that was lost, leaving the reader unsatisfied. From the author of Ancient Shores (HarperCollins, 1996); a possible candidate to sf collections.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Science Fiction Chronicle, Jun 97
There's humor and suspense and tragedy and adventure, and a clever little mystery to resolve in the closing chapters. This is one where you won't want to wait for the paperback.

Locus, November 1997
Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road is part of an extensive and illustrious SF lineage, the post-apocalypse journey of discovery. Much of the appeal of this subgenre lies in a dual nostalgia, for our own simpler past (recreated in the survivor societies) and for our own present or future, which is the vanished past that the survivors wish to rediscover. Eternity Road works precisely in this manner.

...As usual, McDevitt's characters are appealing, even the ones whose function it is to provide opposition. In fact there are no villains, aside from the od bandit....The real antagonist is the landscape itself, which is enough to cost several of the companions their lives. Other encounters are frightening for the travelers but amusing for us: exploring a supercollider's tunnels; a ride on an automated train and a conversation with the melancholy AI that runs it; a philosophical discussion with a holographic, animatronic Winston Churchill.

In keeping with the conventions of the form, Haven turns out to be both less and more than they had imagined, and the journey itself proves to be the most valuable prize. This payoff isn't as dramatic as it would have been in the post-apocalypse tales I grew up on, but it is more grown-up, and much better written, occupying a space between the ironies of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Wild Shore and the intelligent neobarbarian adventures of Donald E. McQuinn's Warrior trilogy, with perhaps a nod to Edgar Pangborn's Davy. There are no surprises for experienced readers --this book doesn't explode or transform the tradition-- but no disappointments and many pleasures.

From Booklist
In McDevitt's second archaeologizing romance (after Ancient Shores ), it is a thousand years or so after a plague-induced collapse of civilization. A hardy band sets out to recover the lost books of the Roadmakers, the builders of what are now the astonishing ruins of that civilization. On the way, the adventurers encounter various exotic societies and mysterious artifacts the Roadmakers left behind, and ultimately, they return with at least part of what they sought. McDevitt redeems the possible overfamiliarity of his quest plot with a large cast of well-handled, original characters, starting with the principal protagonist, silversmith Chaka Milana; with much dry wit; and with a host of well-chosen details that give his decivilized future a lived-in quality and a high degree of plausibility. Although not quite as good as such 1950s postholocaust classics as Andre Norton's Star Man's Son and George R. Stewart's Earth Abides, Eternity Road is eminently readable and a real credit to McDevitt. Roland Green

From Kirkus Reviews
Post-disaster odyssey from the author of Ancient Shores (1996), etc. Far-future Earth is littered with decaying monumental structures built by the mysterious Roadmakers, who, according to tradition, succumbed to a lethal plague. Now, the Mississippi-based republic of Illyria has developed an early-medieval technology where, none too believably, firearms are crafted but steam engines and printing presses are unknown. Of an expedition sent to locate Haven, the fabled repository of Roadmaker technology and artifacts, only Karik Endine returned--and he had nothing to say of his journey or what he found. After Karik drowns himself, bequeathing to young silversmith Chaka Milana the only known copy of a Mark Twain novel, the question remains: Where did Karik get the book? So Chaka organizes her own quest, including scholar Silas Glote, Karik's son Flojian, woodsman Jon Shannon, soldier Quait Esterhok, and former priestess Avila Kap. On their journey, far to the northeast, they will encounter vast ruined cities, flying trains, bandits, still-functioning computers, slavers, reclusive engineers, and crazy old balloonists; three travelers will die before the survivors reach Haven to discover the fate of the previous expedition and the source of Karik's mystifying book. Solid characters and a consistently intriguing plot (though McDevitt's grasp of the details isn't always secure): an uplifting tale (cf. David Brin's The Postman), well up to previous standards. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

San Francisco Examiner, July 21, 1997
(McDevitt's) mastery...is impeccable. Reading Eternity Road is like hearing a favorite piece of music played by a skilled artist.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Roadmakers left only ruins behind - but what magnificent ruins! Their concrete highways still cross the continent. Their shattered towers still gleam on the banks of the Mississippi. Their cups and combs and jewelry are found in every Illyrian home. The lost race left behind a legend, as well - a hidden sanctuary called Haven, where a few Roadmakers hid from the mysterious Plague that destroyed their world, and where even now the secrets of their civilization might still be found. Chaka's brother was one of those who sought to find Haven and never returned. But now Chaka has inherited a rare Roadmaker artifact - a book called A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - which has inspired her to follow in his footsteps. A red-haired young woman with a hunter's eyes, Chaka gathers an unlikely band including an aging scholar, an amateur soldier, and a mystic healer. With a reluctant leather-clad frontiersman as a guide, they set out to follow the collapsed roadways north toward the dragon-haunted ruins of Chicago and the thundering cataract Nyagra. On their journey they will encounter blood-thirsty river pirates, electronic ghosts still mourning their lost civilization, and machines that skim over the ground and even into the air. And they will learn the truth about their own mysterious past.

FROM THE CRITICS

VOYA - Sarah Flowers

McDevitt's post-apocalypse novel is in the tradition of Andre Norton's Star Man's Son (Ballantine, 1952) and Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker (Summit, 1980). A thousand years in the future and hundreds of years after a global plague, remnants of the old world remain-roads, ruined cities, occasional bits of self-sustaining technology. A small band of explorers, led by a determined young woman named Chaka, leave their Republic of Illyria in the Mississippi River Valley and journey north and east to find the legendary Haven, where, according to tradition, the Roadmakers left a storehouse of knowledge. Along the way, they encounter ancient cities and technologies, pirates, a crazy balloonist, friends, love, and death. At times McDevitt's dichotomies between past and present are disconcerting: why should the Illyrians have kept the technology to make guns, for example, but lost the technology of the printing press? But the characters are appealing, the story moves along nicely, and the ending is not totally predictable. Mostly, teens will have fun knowing things the Illyrians do not-like where they are (Chicago, the Erie Canal) and what they are seeing (computers, cars, railways). VOYA Codes: 3Q 3P S (Readable without serious defects, Will appeal with pushing, Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).

Kirkus Reviews

Post-disaster odyssey from the author of Ancient Shores (1996), etc. Far-future Earth is littered with decaying monumental structures built by the mysterious Roadmakers, who, according to tradition, succumbed to a lethal plague. Now, the Mississippi-based republic of Illyria has developed an early-medieval technology where, none too believably, firearms are crafted but steam engines and printing presses are unknown. Of an expedition sent to locate Haven, the fabled repository of Roadmaker technology and artifacts, only Karik Endine returned—and he had nothing to say of his journey or what he found. After Karik drowns himself, bequeathing to young silversmith Chaka Milana the only known copy of a Mark Twain novel, the question remains: Where did Karik get the book? So Chaka organizes her own quest, including scholar Silas Glote, Karik's son Flojian, woodsman Jon Shannon, soldier Quait Esterhok, and former priestess Avila Kap. On their journey, far to the northeast, they will encounter vast ruined cities, flying trains, bandits, still-functioning computers, slavers, reclusive engineers, and crazy old balloonists; three travelers will die before the survivors reach Haven to discover the fate of the previous expedition and the source of Karik's mystifying book.

Solid characters and a consistently intriguing plot (though McDevitt's grasp of the details isn't always secure): an uplifting tale (cf. David Brin's The Postman), well up to previous standards.