Killing Time

Rating:
Summary: Just had to say it
Review: I thought I would send my thoughts on this book but 122 other people beat me to it. After looking through two pages of 1 star reviews, I doubt there is anyone, except the paid Amazon reviewer, who liked it. I will not buy another Carr book without reading the consumer reviews.

Rating:
Summary: A great book when seen for what it is
Review: Killing Time was the first Caleb Carr book I was exposed to (although I've since read The Alienist as well), and I loved it. I saw it as a Neo-Verne adventure, with a group of intellectual idealists travelling the world in a high-tech airship, trying to change society. Sounds like Verne, doesn't it? Only Carr updates the genre for the 21st century, brilliantly extrapolating from the present a near future that seems all too familiar. Yes, the characters are occasionally wooden, but the story is compelling and the premise, that our reliance on information technology can plunge us into a new Dark Age where no one thinks for themselves, is an idea people need to hear.

Most of the negative reviews I've seen complain that this book isn't like Carr's earlier novels. Too bad. Maybe the author is tired of New York in the 1890s. This is not another Alienist book, but it is a good book, and worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: A Caleb Carr disaster
Review: Having read The Alienst and Angel of Darkness and being mesmerized by Mr. Carr's detail and richness of plotting, I was so utterly disappointed with this mess. I thought I was reading one of my student's creative writing outlines, let alone a finished product. What a mess! The dialogue was trite and so cliche ridden, I thought I was listening to the awful, but fun, science fiction movies of the 50's that are so aptly satirized on Mystery Science Theater. Every crucial conflict was solved in one chapter and each chapter is no more than 5 pages. Mr. Carr also had the annoying habit of telling that what happens next was so horrifying and traumatic and beyond human belief, that the ultimate event was always a letdown. And, this horrific event, as stated above, was resolved by the close of a very short chapter. The big ending was so ho-hum and unbelievable, even for sccience ficion. The jacket also states that the characters are so well-developed. What a joke! This was a comic strip of a novel that makes you long for the genius of The Alienist. I am amzed that a writer of Mr. Carr's abilities (demonstrated, obviously, in his previous works) could give his admiring public such a trivial piece of work. Please, Mr. Carr, I am not askng for a repeat of The Alienist, but I am hoping for a repeat of the skill, style, detail, and imagination that made me look forward so eagerly to Killing Time.

Rating:
Summary: Impossible
Review: This is the "Battlefield Earth" of books. It simply is impossible that it was written by the author of The Alienest, one of the most engrossing pieces of historical fiction ever written. In this "book", the writing, the "message" and the premise are just absurd. Miss this book at all costs.

Rating:
Summary: Killing Time...Waste of Time
Review: "Killing Time" lacks all of the things that one has come to expect of Caleb Carr...a good story with incredible attention to detail, characterization and motivation. What a disappointment! Where was the background information of the main character? If he was a profiler, why wasn't his skill employed by the group? Was he included in the program simply because he was attractive to the genetically altered and physically perfect female on the team? The list of questions could go on, but that would indicate that the reader actually cared. Let me just say that instead of provoking the reader to ask questions about the future of our species, it merely prompts the question: Was Caleb's VISA bill due?

Rating:
Summary: Oh, Please
Review: Oh please, Mr. Carr- bring back your charcters from The Alienest and and The Angel of Darkness. This book was a quick read, but not much fun. Your other stories were much more exciting and. This new book leaves me unsatisfied.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting premise...but...
Review: Caleb Carr, author of such incredible time-travelling murder mysteries as "The Alienist" and "Angel of Darkness", tries travelling again, only this time forward, into a world that is ripe for war and gullibility, it seems. "Killing Time" is based on the premise that the world depends solely on the internet for its information and news, and that every individual believes all that they find in their apparently endless search for knowledge, using only the easily manipulatable world wide web. That there is a band of renegades zipping through space, messing with the information available, turning it into disinformation, propaganda and nasty rumour is the plot device Carr uses to lure us in. Unfortunately for the reader, because this literary trick allows the author to create numerous situations in a relatively small number of pages, it never allows the reader to fully grasp the emotional depth of the characters themselves, nor care about them in the manner one wants to. The story poses a lot of interesting "what if's", but those are shallow points to be able to grasp onto...and it makes the story itself seem shallow and pointless. To serve as a warning to the souls who reside in this era, it's an apt message to give...otherwise, one would be better served finding a different book to read.

Rating:
Summary: Who really wrote this book?
Review: Caleb Carr could not has written this terrible book. Unless, his previous books were written by someone else. Killing Time has my vote for "The Worst Book Ever Read. "

Rating:
Summary: Awful!
Review: First, I can't beleive I made it through this inane thing. Second, I wish I could return it. Third, it is undoubtably the worst book I've read in many years. Especially considering the author's previous works.

Rating:
Summary: Is This Really The Same Caleb Carr?
Review: How could the author of this boring, uninspired book be the same author who wrote the page-turning, deft pshycological thrillers "The Alienist" and "The Angel of Darkness?" Could the same author who created the complex, very real and memorable characters in those two books be the same author who created the superficial, uninteresting and hackneyed characters in Killing Time? I have my doubts. If you liked the Alienist or the follow up, The Angel of Darkenss for the same reasons I did, i.e., because the story was riveting, because the characters were dimensional, because the setting was so vividly described, because its subjects were detailed and well-research, you will hate Killing Time. Everything those books are, Killing Time is not. The story is shoddy, boring and lacks focus. The characters, as described above, invite neither interest nor admiration and never come off the pages. The settings, although some are aptly described, do not provide a backbone to the story as in his earlier two works. I finished it mostly because I simply couldn't believe that it could actually be that bad -- I kept hoping it would get better; it didn't.