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| Time's
Eye (A Time Odyssey book 1) by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
Bisesa Dutt is a British Army officer. The date is 2037. Flying on patrol over the Afghanistan border with Pakistan, she and her comrades encounter a little turbulence. Moments later, they are shot down by a ground-to-air missile but when rescuers turn up they are wearing the red coats of the British Army circa 1885. It soon becomes clear that no one is in their own time. In fact, they are in no time.
The
Earth has become a patchwork of pieces of the planet from different stages in
history. The Russian space station crew caught up in the changes are able to observe
all this before they are forced to make their unaided re-entry. Also
observing, silently and inscrutably, are silver spheres that appear at places
where the time refugees meet up. It seems that someone else is interested in the
fate of the Earth but whatever is going on they are not telling. With
the armies of Alexander and Genghis Khan heading towards each other and with the
eyes still watching, there looks to be a power struggle of epic proportions. This is a good story which is somewhat held up by the inclusion of necessary
historical data and the amount of author explanation this entails. There is also
a lot of dialogue where people are explaining to each other what they think has
happened. Some of the characters brought in simply don't have enough to do and
the inclusion of a young Rudolph Kipling had no resonance with me and the necessity
of his presence escapes me. The ending implies more stories but also that characters introduced in this book will not be returning and the central mystery of the spheres does not have enough detail to make me want to read the next in the series. As this book was a collaborative effort, this may account for the disjointed nature of the plot with the dryness of history taking over from real human interest. I confess I was disappointed with the story as a whole although the idea and some of the novel worked very well and I think the missing element for me was the development of a network of realistic characters. Sue
Davies
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OTHER REVIEWS - September 2004
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It's
a slip of significant proportions when what seems like a localised anomaly at
first is revealed to affect the whole world Parts of the world have slipped out
of time and the patchwork that is left has chunks of history incorporated into
it. What may have been an accident is soon revealed to be part of an unknown plan.
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