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Whistle Stopper - Time Spike
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List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $14.63
Your Save: $ 9.37 ( 39% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Baen
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416555384
ISBN: 1416555382
Label: Baen
Manufacturer: Baen
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: 2008-05-06
Publisher: Baen
Studio: Baen
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: One of Flint's better works
Comment: Time Spike is collaboration between Eric Flint and Karilyn Kosmatka in the same storytelling universe as Flint's 1632 series (hereafter referred to as 163x) -- though the events of that series features little in this story. The story has twin plot threads: One element deals with the people transported into the past and the other deals with a group of scientists left behind struggling to understand the event (and the earlier "Grantville Event" that created a group of people able to understand a second event). I'll address that latter plot thread in a moment.
In short, a small area of southern Illinois along the Mississippi River is thrown back in time to the Cretaceous Period. It's basically the same idea behind 1632, but it's quite a bit more action-oriented than 1632, despite dealing with the same sort of basic survival and growth story. To make things different from 1632, Flint also throws in the curve that event picks up people and places from time periods between the modern day and the Cretaceous. In effect, it creates a situation where southern Illinois resembles something out of Baxter's novel Time's Eye -- a mosaic world of different times and places.
There seems to be a fair bit of hand-wavery involved in order to create the most interesting setting for a story. Flint seems to have picked and chose what characters, flora and fauna he wanted transported to this period. The area of effect grows the further back in history you go, so while the modern portion of the event is limited to just a maximum-security prison, it encompasses a far larger area in the 1830s, 1500s, 1000s, and 600s AD.
In addition to the maximum-security prison that serves as the linchpin of events, there's also a substantial number of Cherokees who were on the Trail of Tears, multiple native villages, a large number of interesting animals from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, and the most interesting grab -- several hundred Spaniards of Hernando de Soto's American expedition in the 1540s. If you've got an eye for archaeology, you'll really enjoy some of the descriptions of 'native' life, and even if you don't, there's plenty of eye candy along the way.
I won't go into much detail about the plot -- a cast of characters that includes the Mounds Civilization, a modern maximum-security prison, a caravan of Cherokees, and several hundred conquistadors should create all sorts of wonderful images in your mind. I'm pleased to say that most are brought forward and are very well colored in the book, even if we don't get much characterization beyond the "modern" Americans. The rest of the characters are cardboard cutouts -- well-colored cardboard cutouts, to be sure, but underdeveloped.
There are plenty of references to Flint's earlier works; in particular his "Rivers of War" and 163x series. There's also several quick allusions to other alternate history books, including For Want of A Nail. The book doesn't pull any punches with the descriptions of life in a maximum-security prison, nor does it shy away from reams of bloody gore wrought by conquistadors or criminals. In some places, the action becomes extremely gory, but serves to advance the plot, rather than just being imagination candy.
There are, however, some problems. The most glaring of these is the "modern" plot line, which revolves around a 'Project' of scientists who came together after the Grantville Event to discover the mysterious truth behind Grantville's disappearance in the 163x series (the government having clamped down on most knowledge of the Event). This plotline begins as the scientists detect something strange in Illinois and attempt to get to the Illinois site before the event, but arrive just too late. They proceed to gather evidence and make their case that there's a giant coverup.
It's all well and good, but it's just plain boring. The whole plotline reads like nothing more than fanservice to the folks who read the 163x series, and doesn't contribute to the book. It merely distracts from the story of the others trapped in the Time of the Dinosaurs (though admittedly serving as a way to explain what's happened fairly well). I found myself skipping the chapters towards the end that contained this secondary plotline.
Flint also continues his habit of including romances in every story he writes. I don't have a problem with that -- what better way to create rounded characters, after all. But the problem comes from the fact that he created several romances in each plotline. Because there's so many, it's tough to keep the relationships straight and the story moves too quickly for adequate development. I wasn't made to care that so-and-so fell in love with so-and-so by the end of the story.
The other things that bugged me were the standard problems of alternate history: the story has bad cases of know-it-alls and "As you know, Bob" syndrome. Flint needed to have characters who knew how to survive and he needed to have characters who knew what was happening in order to explain those facts to the reader. Unfortunately, there's far too few places where someone says "I don't know." Those breaks are always refreshing, to me, and create a wonderful sense of trial-and-error, similar to Martin Padway's experiments in Lest Darkness Fall or those of the Crosstime Engineer in the first three books of that series (before it went completely off the rails).
Even with these problems, the central story is an enjoyable one. There's a lot of wonderful color in the beginning of the book (though I did have to puzzle through some jailhouse slang), and Flint uses a lot of his research for past books in this one. At only one point (in a scene with the Cherokees) does that research seem to be overdone.
The book feels as if Flint wrote about 60% and that Marilyn Kosmatka wrote about 40%, but I imagine that the percentage is probably closer to 80/20 in Kosmatka's favor based on past Flint collaborations. There are places when the writers' styles differ, particularly when you compare the jailhouse scenes with those involving the Cherokees, but I'd say that it was a successful collaboration overall. The book starts out well, does very well in the middle sections, but I found myself disappointed by the ending. It seemed too much of a pat ending, but it seems as if Baen or the authors themselves wanted to leave a big hook for a sequel if this one sells well enough. This could've been a really good one-off novel, but the need to leave a hook really took away something in my eyes.
Even with these little nits, I'd recommend picking it up. If you're a fan of the 163x or Rivers of War series, you'll enjoy it. If you're not a fan of Flint's writing, I'd say that it doesn't quite measure up to 1633 -- that's probably the gold standard in my eyes.
It's worth getting on release for Flint fans. All others should probably wait until paperback.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Time Spike another alt hist brilliance from Eric Flint
Comment: Bascially another space-time surge hits the Earth, directly on a maximum security prison in Illinois. This one is different however. As it hits the prison and all 200 guards and 2000 prisoners are transported back to the Triassic era, the 'Timespike' as it gets labeled gets hammering the timeline as it goes back, thus the prison ends up in the past along with the Cherokee Indians from 1838, a Spanish expedition from 1540, the Moundbuilder Indians and many other Indian tribes from the Middle Ages. It also brings back a bunch of animals and dinosaurs from the pre-human eras.
So you have prison guards, serial killers, Cherokees, US Army soldiers, sadistic Spanish conquistadores, T-Rexs, Utahraptors (the one from Jurassic Park, which many characters in the book comment on-"Those are Spielbergs monsters! Jesus we coulda been killed", saber-toothed tigers, savage Indians and a bunch of cool characters trying to figure out how the hell they're going to survive in this new tropical, massive creature infested world with a priosn full of some of the worst criminals in the country.
In addition to this the action flashes back to the normal time where some scientists have been monitoring for anything like this to happen (as it happened previously in 1632/Ring of Fire) so they are able to monitor it and we get to see a small set up of a long teerm project dedicated to finding the truth behind these space-time anomaly and dissapperences of towns and prisons.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting time killer...but pointless
Comment: I am a big fan of time travel stories and this one showed promise - despite the fact that the publisher was asleep at the switch and got the name of the main character wrong.
Still...
The first few dozen pages were great, and the concept is good. The problem is that the author never seems to DO ANYTHING with it. The character's are mostly cardboard, except for "Our Hero" who is ALWAYS the stoic leading man type, The others are caricatures.
The plotline is choppy, switching from NOW to Then with two completely different groups, only the NOW portion (A groups of scientists, I think) goes nowhere except into a romance that goes nowhere. Though events are talked about they are never brought into focus and the ending just - well, ends.
If this is book one in a Series, well I will withold judgement, but if it is a stand alone... It is like 7-up without the LemonLime aftertaste.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Comment: If you want a fast paced, well-written book with an interesting (if familiar) concept about time travel, you won't be disappointed with this book. The authors do a good job of postulating what would happen if people from four divergent time periods in southern Illinois were moved back in time to the age of the dinosaurs. One group is from the present, and are the guards and inmates of a maximum security prison. Another group are Cherokee Indians and their U.S. Army escorts from the Trail of Tears, in the mid-1800s. The third group are Spanish Conquistadors under Hernando deSoto. The last group are early aboriginal Indians, the Mounds Indians. The book is entertaining, and there are discussions by physicists who are trying to get to the bottom of what happened that provide enough basic science and physics to make a plausible explanation.
The book rated only thee stars for a variety of reasons. The editing was surprisingly bad. Misspellings were rampant, as were wrong words, omitted words, etc. Love at first sight was also rampant. This got rather tedious, and is more than a bit of a stretch. The cold-blooded murderer/arsonist/armed robber with the heart of gold was also overdone.
These were annoyances more than anything. There were two things that really intruded on the story, and hurt it significantly. The first was the ease and speed with which everyone accepted what happened to them and took it in stride. I found it literally incredible that a group of soldiers and Indians from the 1800s would not be bothered by being thrust back in time 150 million years. Their main concern seemed to be finding a replacement for beef fat in their pemmican. I might have had a few bigger concerns than that.
Finally, the authors should really stop preaching about the evils of "the current administration." Flint is a labor organizer and clearly a staunch Democrat. The authors hate Bush. We get it. Say it once and move on; don't rub our faces in it. What the evils of "the current administration" (the single most used phrase in the book) have to do with people sent back in time 150 million years is a bigger mystery than how they got there. The authors couldn't decide if they wanted to write a science fiction story or a political diatribe. They opted to do mostly the former, with a hefty dose of the latter. It didn't work. I sincerely hope they knock that off in the inevitable sequels. I'll read them, but they will be much better without the political preaching.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Weakest entry in a great series
Comment: I've enjoyed the "Ring of Fire" series from the very first. I've given copies of _1632_ as gifts many, many times. Eric Flint is a creative person, and a great writer. Unfortunately, Marilyn Kosmatka is not in Eric's league. It takes a really seriously anti-talent to screw up an Eric Flint story. To do this amount of damage to an Eric Flint story beggars the imagination.
_Time Spike_ has done something I would have thought was impossible. For the first time in a long and varied reading lifetime, I could not find one single character I actually cared about.
There are so many amaturish mistakes, I can only presume _Time Spike_ was rushed into print to meet a hard deadline. Perhaps its true title should be "The Contractual Obligation Book"?
At the very least, _Time Spike_ could have been improved with even rudimentary proof-reading/editing. *Two* major characters named Geoffrey? Two *other* major and semi-major characters named Leffers and Luff? A baby born and not given the planned on name because "it's too important" and then is *never* named? Black characters whose 'homeboy' speech can't be sustained for three sentences in a row? These are mistakes high school students make in remedial writing classes.
Then there is the painfully bad subplot taking place "uptime" (in the present day). The few bits of "scientific" information presented in them could have been handled in a two-page or less prologue, as was done earlier in the series. As it stands, the uptime scenes detract from the action, and serve no purpose whatsoever other than allowing Kosmatka (presumably) to vent childishly petty remarks about the government. She even invents a ludicrous accusation of the government blaming Grantsville (_1632_)on "terrorists." If that's what floats your boat, go ahead and giggle along. But take it some place other than a book about the Ring of Fire. It serves no purpose and diminishes a really fine body of other people's works.
If I were Eric Flint, I'd ask to have my name removed from this book or sue Kosmatka. Preferably both.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Captain Mark Stephens was overseeing the change of shifts at the state of Illinois' maximum-security prison when the world outside was suddenly ripped. They thought it was an earthquake until they found that the Mississippi river had disappeared, along with all signs of civilization. Then the sun came up -- in the wrong direction. And a dinosaur came by and scratched its hide against the wall of the prison... Something had thrown the prison back in time millions of years. And they were not alone. Other humans from periods centuries, even millennia apart had also been dropped into the same time. Including a band of murderous conquistadores. But the prison had its own large population of murderers. They couldn't be turned loose, but what else could be done with them? Death walked outside the walls, human savagery was planning to break loose inside, and Stephens and the other men and women of the prison's staff were trapped in the middle.
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