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The Depths Of Time (2001)

The Depths of Time (2001)

Book Info

Genre
Rating
3.76 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0553574973 (ISBN13: 9780553574975)
Language
English
Publisher
bantam

About book The Depths Of Time (2001)

I don't remember much about this trilogy as I read it when it was a fresh release, but it's deserving of a review and there's so few on Goodreads that I thought I might jot my thoughts down before I forget too much of it. Please note this is in regards to the entire trilogy ("The Depths of Time", "The Ocean of Years" and "The Shores of Tomorrow")I doubt I'm going to read this trilogy again, as there was many problems with it, but I do still remember it with a certain fondness. This is hard sci-fi. Hardcore hard sci-fi. It takes place 3000 years in the future, and involves an elaborate and entirely plausible method of traversing long distances through space by a process of cryogenics and time travel. The Chronologic Patrol protects causality from paradoxes and are more or less the CIA or Secret Service of military police. Admiral Anton Koffield is set up by strange, faster than light ships threatening causal disturbance, and he acts the only way he can, by destroying the wormhole and dooming a damned world in need of relief supplies. An official hero but a cursed public figure, he takes a private job working for world architect Oskar DeSilvo on his new terraforming project, Solace. Along the line, he discovers Solace is doomed to a failure in the terraforming process and, furthermore, all terraformed planets are doomed. His attempts to alert DeSilvo are met with further sabotage reminiscient of the faster than light ships, and it sparks a galaxy-wide manhunt for a missing DeSilvo. Only he may hold the key to saving every terraformed world....Sounds pretty good, and elements of it were. The time travel, the manhunt, elements of the world building, the terraforming was all great. Howeverm there were problems with the book. The characters were fairly flat. The only one to have a somewhat unique voice was Jerand Bolt. The structure was just a little too loose considering this is one massive story, not a novel with two sequels. There was a lot of formulaic stuff in there. There were too many colloquial references back to "the near ancient period" - our own - without any referencing the time between now and the events of the novel. There is a lot of political intrigue that comes out towards the end of the trilogy, but theres too little explanation of the politics of that world. Allen gets sidetracked on tangents from time to time. And I think I may have noticed a plothole towards the end that would completely unravel the central conflict of the novel, thus eliminating the foundational pillar of any written piece - the problem.But all that is minor in comparison to what struck me hardest. The trilogy in totality is about 1450 pages. The first novel could be trimmed down a little but is paced relatively well. The second novel becomes a bridge and tests the limits of patience (he spends 60-some-odd pages just getting off Mars at one point). But the third novel... this is where he struggled to find new characters and story tangents to prattle on about. In total, the entire trilogy could have been done in a tight 250 pages, maybe 400, 500 on the outside edge if he wanted to rework the pacing a little and tighten up the prose, perhaps add in a little more elaboration on the political intrigue. That would have made it a great novel. Instead, it became so tedious that I don't remember it with a great deal of fondness.

I just reread this on a long plane trip, and had forgotten how much I enjoyed it (or I enjoyed it more this time). The scientific basis for the space/time travel system is somewhat contrived, but Allen has thought it through, and provides a good story to go along with the complicated background. My only complaint is that the writing is sometimes repetitive - for example, one character is refered to (by the narrative voice) by his full name (first, middle and last) and title several times in one chapter. I look forward to reading the rest of this series.

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Having purchased this book in a bulk lot of 30 from a local auction website I wasn't expecting much. I was very pleasantly surprized.This novel feels like an Asimov book. Not surprising really considering both authors worked together on some three laws robots books. There is a real hard science feel - the book opens quickly demonstrating how humanity has created artificial worm holes that use time travel combined with years of sub light travel in cryogenic suspension to travel interstellar distances and arrive at the destination at almost exactly the same time that they left. i.e.: Travel 35 light years in cryo to a wormhole hole half way to your destination, drop through the wormhole 70 years into the past and then travel another 35 years in cryo to your destination. The net result being that you come out of cryo only a few days or weeks after the date you left Earth. The author does a great job of quickly building an interesting base for how the technology works, the problems with it and the associated dangers - for example people trying to use the wormholes to travel backward in time with knowledge of the future which could catastrophically adjust history. As a result I found myself drawn into the story and the Allen's universe with many "WOW!! I never considered that!" realizations about the problems and implications of space / time travel, the difficulity of terraforming and the use of cryogenics to live hundreds of years beyond what would have been your natural life span. The book ends with a fantastic cliffhanger climax that left me wanting more. I immediately consulted the internets, discovered it was the first in a trilogy and started a search for the the second and third books in local libraries and auction sites.I expect that many people won't like this book because there is quite a bit of dialogue and soul searching by the key characters and apart from the open chapter or two, very little intense action.Some people will hate the cliffhanger ending - it comes as a surprize and there is no warning on my copy of the book that it is the first in a trilogy. So now I'm stuck trying to track down a copy of books two and three while the details are still fresh in my mind.Most importantly it was the hard science feel and the implications & issues of that hard science really captured my interest and imagination. I'm very much looking forward to reading the other books. My apologies for the very brief review - I'm in a rush and really don't have a clue how to write an interesting review yet :)
—Phill Coxon

Much like I said in my review of Bright of the Sky, I wanted to give this book a 4-star rating. In this case though, it wasn't Roger Allen MacBride's writing style that disappointed, it was his rushed ending. The book started out brilliantly, I read the first 100+ pages almost without stopping. In fact, because I was on vacation and didn't have access to a bookstore, I had to force myself not to finish the book as quickly as I might have!First though, a minor complaint. FictionConnection, a resource my library system (and perhaps yours) provides access to, has been pretty good about showing me books similar to the title I've searched for. Typically, I search for Pandora's Star or The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton, click the Find Similar button, and start browsing. In this case, I was trying to limit myself to recent books, as I was leaving soon for a 2-week vacation and had planned on sharing books with my father. The Depths of Time showed up on the list, and the description (or maybe the Publisher's Weekly review) painted the book as having a great handle on time-travel. This certainly interested me, as the concept is always interesting but the execution often leaves my head spinning. Causality can be a huge monkey wrench in the works it becomes distracting (Star Trek is a prime example, except "Cause and Effect" oddly enough). In the case of The Depths of Time, its preventing causality that gets to be a distracting issue. But worse still, time-travel actually has little to do with the story beyond those first tense, exciting 100 or so pages.Eventually, I suspect I will read the next book in this apparent series. I'm not really sure what I expect to get out of it, though. The end of The Depths of Time obviously points the way to book 2, but doesn't really hint at an interesting plot. The great opening to book 1 gets explained, vaguely, at the end. Sadly though, its explanation curtails the potential for another such scene in the next book. While I haven't looked yet, I suspect reviews on Amazon.com for the next book won't be quite as good as they were for this book.
—Kyle Johnson

Really more than 3* but definitely less than 4*.Firstly, this book has sticking power. I started it, and plodded through the first couple of chapters, which are full of explanation as to time travel, paradox and the to-and-fro nature of space travel in this universe. I like hard science fiction. This just dragged. I did not want all that information delivered in a dry and, to me, hard to understand format.Then POW a battle! Oh, shit, this is bad. Oh, death. Oh, dear.Then, even though I had decided to give up, every time I picked up my kindle, and it was still in the book, I just read a bit more and a bit more and suddenly I was half-way through and enjoying it more than a little bit. It was when it stopped trying to dazzle me with science and started being more of a mystery that I really got into the mind-set this book requires. However, I hated the ending, with a passion. And such a clever, clever arch-villain? I sort of found him hard to believe. Not rushing to read books 2 and 3. I will, but am reading The Girl with All The Gifts right now, and enjoying that book immensely right from page 1.
—Bookmole

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