Rating: 
Summary: Hard to Read
Review: Killing Time starts out slow and then fizzles out all together.I thought I was missing something until a fellow train rider pointed out that he too had a hard time getting through this one.I am a Caleb Carr fan but this is not his best effort.
Rating:
Summary: Bad Science + Bad Characters = Dreadful Science Fiction
Review: Caleb Carr is a master at writing great historical novels set in late 19th/early 20th Century New York City, but he falls far short of his high literary standards in his latest novel "Killing Time". "Killing Time" opens promisingly, sounding a bit like an early William Gibson novel. Yet he gets mired soon in philosophical musings that look back to the Victorian Era for their inspiration (Indeed some may find quite offensive his racist and sexist commentary, which are rooted in the Victorian Era of his historical novels.), and descriptions of fantastic technology that sound more like the pulp magazine science fiction of the 1920's and 1930's than the high literary art of William Gibson and his fellow cyberpunk authors. And speaking of science, his knowledge of physics and engineering is quite minimal, judging from his descriptions of the technology used by the protagonists in "Killing Time". For example, is a rail-gun pistol truly a plausible invention, when you consider the amount of energy required to hurl its "bullets"? Carr doesn't offer a credible source of energy for his rail-gun pistol.If Caleb Carr delves into science fiction again, I hope he consults with a physicist or an engineer before he resumes writing. Otherwise his science and technology will be as implausible as it is in "Killing Time". This is Caleb Carr's second effort at writing science fiction; the other was the screenplay for "The Warlord of The Galaxy", the pilot episode for a television series, "The Osiris Chronicles", which he tried unsuccessfully to sell to American television (Judging from what I saw, "The Osiris Chronicles" would have been a vastly inferior imitation of "Star Trek" or "Babylon Five", comparable in quality to the worst of televised 1950's American science fiction.). In both instances Carr hasn't created memorable characters or credible settings for his fantastic tales. Creating a richly textured, believable world in science fiction requires a lot of time, but when it is done well, as in the critically acclaimed work of Orson Scott Card, William Gibson and Ursula K. Le Guin, to name but a few, it is worth repeat visits by readers. Yet Caleb Carr hasn't accomplished this in his latest novel. Instead, he has written a poor adaptation of Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea", with a character who bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Captain Nemo. This is the worst recently published novel of science fiction by a noted mainstream fiction author. Unless you're a very devout fan of Caleb Carr's writing, I can't recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Caleb Carr Fails at Space Opera
Review: My first reaction to "Killing Time" was that this terminally silly book must be a put-on. More forgiving reviewers call it an homage to Jules Verne and HG Wells. If it is an homage to anything it is the old Republic Pictures serials like Buck Rogers and the Purple Monster from Mars that once-upon-a-time ran before the horse operas at Saturday matinees. Carr, himself, says he started the project as a serial for Time Magazine.It is demeaning to Verne's and Wells' imaginative books about the future they foresaw to be compared to this creaking collection of "space opera" cliches. The characters are comic book figures, the dialogue is trite, and the plot is preposterous. I will concede that blaming everything from third-world poverty, to environmental degradation, to the corporate take-over of the US Government on the Internet is a novel idea, but Carr has failed to build a credible novel upon it. The story has a band of scientific merry pranksters roaming the globe in an invisible, invulnerable "airship" trying to right the wrongs done by corrupt governments through the use of elaborate disinformation hoaxes. I believe the idea is that this will teach people not to believe anything they hear or read. They are led by genetically-altered siblings named Tressalian, who coincidentally have silvery alien tresses. The narrator is a New York psychiatrist-profiler they enlist to help them predict whether their little stunts ... will have the desired effect. ...
Rating: 
Summary: He should have written this a hundred years ago!
Review: With his previous books 'The Alienist' and 'Angel of Darkness', Caleb Carr has established himself as the new Conan Doyle, turning a masterful hand to the historical psychological thriller. With 'Killing Time' he becomes the new Jules Verne. Which is a problem. Verne's style of writing went out of fashion a hundred years ago, and in today's literary world there's just no place for long, wordy sentences and naive ponderings of the merits of a brave new world. As a science fiction novel (which this essentially is) it falls flat. Good SF needs big concepts, vivid realistic futurescapes, large chunks of science, elements of the bizarre and perhaps a 'future shock' punch. Killing Time has none of these. The book might have been saved by exceptional character interplay, but sadly Carr's previous flare for such things seems to have deserted him here. The central characters are hackneyed and cliched. There's a romantic interest which completely fails to convince (in fact Carr fails entirely to explain why the two characters were attracted to one another at all, then proceeds from the false assumption that we, the readers, give a damn about them.) The narrative style begins as quaint and old fashioned (in a nice way) but soon becomes tedious and irritating. Carr has a habit of dropping hints about future plot twists too often, overplaying our expectations, so that disappointment becomes inevitable. You'll either guess what's coming or imagine something much beter than you actually get. What audience was Carr targeting this book at, I wonder? Readers of his previous books were never likely to be turned on by a futuristic tale about the virtues of the information age. Whereas science fiction fans are accustomed to something much more imaginitive and 'hardcore' than this. To go back to my original point, the technology that Carr has envisaged is rather fanciful and naive, reminiscent of the victorian 'future-gazing' of Jules Verne and his ilk, while the airship central to the storyline smacks very much of the Nautilus from '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'. Even the airship's captain is portryed as a social outcast who's trying to save the world from itself. Captain Nemo, anyone? One gets the impression that Killing Time was just a vehicle for Caleb Carr to air his views on the dangers of mis-information and over-dependence on the internet. Point taken, Mr. Carr. However, anyone seeking a good 'old fashioned science fiction' novel would be better advised to read one of Jules Verne's great works instead.
Rating:
Summary: Tom Swift Returns
Review: Let me tell you about a book I've just finished reading. Maybe "warning you" is a better way of putting it. The book is Killing Time by Caleb Carr. It is DREADFUL. Fortunately, I didn't pay Amazon anything for it - I got it from the public library. The book is a science fiction novel and it is pompous, stuffy and dumb. I think it may have taken me a bit longer to read (about a week) than it took the author to write. At least that is the impression I have from the dismal quality of the writing. The reason why I checked it out was because I enjoyed The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness. I think Carr had better get back to writing historical novels about NYC because this is going nowhere. I looked up a couple of reviews on Amazon after I finished and they had the nerve to compare this to something written by Jules Verne or H.G. Welles. Actually, it was more like Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout, but not as good. Or like Buck Rogers or Flash Gorden, but not as good. Or like a very third rate comic book, but not as good. I rated it with one star on Amazon but only because you couldn't give it no stars. CALEB: Come to your senses. You are living in a neighborhood replete with fantastic history. Get back to what you do best - making history live through your writing and leave science fiction to the many others who do an infinitely better job of it than you do.
Rating:
Summary: Write What You Know
Review: One of the basic tenets of writing is to, "write what you know". Mr. Carr's previous books may have been excellent, however I have not read them. But this book is clearly a book this Author should never have written, and even after reading what could be called an, "apologia", at the end, this is still nothing more than a waste of reader's money and time. Perhaps some allowance should be made for the fact that this book appears to have been created by committee and was not a project Mr. Carr initiated on his own. With the success he has had the question of why he would place his name on this pointless novel is beyond my understanding. The future with a destroyed/badly-damaged world is about as tired an idea for a book as there is. Nothing in this book is examined in detail because there was absolutely no effort expended on making the endless contraptions he names believable. I am not suggesting one should have left this book and gone looking for a dealer that sells what is a lousy derivative of a Jules Verne Vessel. However, "suspension of disbelief", is as critical as it is basic to any fiction especially Science Fiction. The military character (I wish I was making this up) is "Colonel Justus". I know, it made me nauseous too. The craft they travel in is absurd, and only gets more so when you spend more time imagining what this joke would look like. This transport breaks known laws of physics, or has overcome what were thought to be impossible scientific barriers. How, who knows? We are only told what it does, and when the writing is at it's laziest we get one word explanations, "resin". The female character should be offensive to almost any woman who reads this, as this part super-hero part tart dashes through the plot either placing her cat suit on or taking it off. The book's references to actual people of History are so bad it's hard to describe. Perhaps to say it is almost as bad as the references the Author makes to True Historical Events puts this nonsense into perspective. There are also the most blatant racist comments made regarding various groups and cultures. If only for this final fact alone, this book has deservedly earned the scorn written about it. Books are too expensive, and time is too valuable to waste on trash that is written for reasons known only to the Author. If his previous books are as good as his fans say, by foisting this arrested adolescent stupidity on them he has shown the same disdain for them as for new readers, and the targets of abuse in his book.
Rating:
Summary: A naive polemic at best- tripe, at worst
Review: I really don't mind when formulaic writers try to break out into new directions, so I was not dismayed that "Killing Time" was different from Carr's earlier books. And I happen to like sci-fi, and have been known to relish a good conspiracy tale from time to time, so I don't dislike "Killing Time" on those grounds. It is simply a very badly written book. Did you know that in 2006 there will be a pandemic of staphylococcus because the Internet will make nurses forget to wash their hands? While the book is not without some interesting characters and hardware, I strongly suspect Carr wrote this when he was 16 and was able to get it published with little or no editing on the strength of his two successes. I bought the book because his name was on it- I guess you really can't judge a book by its cover- or its author, sadly. Unless you enjoy laughing out loud at moments the author did not intend to be funny, or squirming at the adolescent preachiness, don't spend your money on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A courageous prophecy
Review: I am delighted to see that the articulate neurosurgeon of the human psyche has taken his scapel to our quite possible future. Perhaps the sappy ending was necessary to keep us all from reaching for too much prozac, but his dystopic vision is dead eye. We reject his insight as "just politics" at our own peril. Just who do we think we are? As Carr notes so well, "We want to be deceived." Carr refuses to deceive us and some are petulant - unless we recognize prophecy when we see it - not as prediction but as warning - then we are just willing to be led off the cliff into the postmodern chaos of industrial feudalism.
Rating:
Summary: So disappointing
Review: I read Caleb Carr's two previous novels in a half-day each. they were wonderful and captivating, and I was eagerly anticipating a story of similar caliber in his new novel. Although the subject matter is different, the hype the book received made it seem promising. Instead, the book is a badly contrived piece of futuristic science fiction. H. G. Wells and Jules Verne are rolling in their graves. Any author should know the old adage: "Show, don't tell." Caleb Carr, who so masterfully accomplished this in his first novel, seems to have completely forgotten this rule. His characters interrupt their speech and their thought processes to randomly spout off the world's history between 2001 and 2024. (Of course, it would sound silly if he did the same thing with anything before 2001, but it would have made his strained relation of history a little more uniform had he done it for ALL historical events instead of just his made-up ones.) It is awkward, grating, and very noticeable. Imagine if you were talking to an acquaintance and he suddenly said, "In 1998, Bill Clinton was indicted on charges of lying under oath. This caused a great decline in the trust of the American people in the Presidency," and then returned to speaking normally. If Caleb Carr could only have worked these "historical" revelations into natural speech or natural background information, it would have made the book much easier to read. I am very sorry that I spent ten bucks on the book and two hours reading it. If you still want to read the book after reading all of these dismal reviews, let me know and I'll send you mine.
Rating:
Summary: Ridiculous Book What a Waste from a Great Author
Review: I was a huge Caleb Carr fan before this book. His last 2 books were awesome and I could not put them down. This book was a complete struggle to get through. Supposedly a science fiction book but it seemed to be to be his political statement about our society. When I reach for a Caleb Carr book I want to be entertained, not have politics thrown in my face. What a waste of a great author's talents.
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