Rating: 
Summary: some serious storytelling here
Review: This book was reccommended to me by Amazon and I bought it as Stirling is one of my favorite authors. I've read it 5 or 6 times now and everytime is like the first. It's a story you don't want to put down, and that you wish would never end. I've been watching diligently for the sequel and can't wait. the only complaint I have, is that I wasn't on Nantuket for the Event. Ah well. Maybe next time. Hurry it up with the sequel Stirling, some of us are getting impatient.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly detailed alternate history/sci-fi
Review: I can't wait for a sequel! The book supposes that Nantucket Island is transported back into the 13th century, all alone except for a Coast Guard windjammer out on a training mission.The island characters and Coast Guard are very detailed. Stirling has caught the laconic "Down-Easter" personality very well, reflecting his annual vacations to the Island. He also created a memorable female character in the CoastGuard Captain, Marian Alston, a "black, female, ex-ranker, Southern, lesbian" with a highly developed sense of duty and a wry (mostly internal) sense of humor. Luckily, stranded on the Island are some other very useful characters including a Professor of History who's also a science fiction fan and an astronomer who uses her computer and star charts to figure "when" they are. Adjusting to the "Event" as they call it, isn't easy but the town sheriff starts getting them motivated to grow their own food and make plans for survival. The Islanders accidentally wipe out most of the proto-Indians in the Boston area with the common cold, journey to England to trade for grain and foil the invasion plans of some war-like immigrants from the mainland of Europe. Stirling's bio lists his love of history, martial arts and other hobbies and he uses them extensively as background detail. I hated to get to the end of this book. In fact, I turned back to the first page and started in again. Please, please tell me S. M. Stirling is going to continue the story!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Premise.
Review: Very good book. If you like time travel or alternate history books, you'll like this one. My only complaint. Too many loose ends. How long until the sequel?
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read in a long time.
Review: The island of Nantucket is transported from 1998 AD to 1250 BC. As the characters deal with "The Event" and try to survive in an unforgiving world theylearn about themselves and what it takes to make the society we call so easily refer to as "American". I was entertained and the story made me think. I was reminded of both Robert A Heinlein and Spider Robinson at their best. I hope for a sequel.
Rating:
Summary: thoughtful, action-packed, stranded-in-the-past fiction
Review: outstanding, fast-paced novel for readers of hard-science fiction. sailing/blacksmithing/primitive warfare/whaling/bronze age cultures. how do modern people survive in the bronze age without a large technologic civilization to back them up? thought provoking at many levels. warning: fairly explicit sex and violence may offend.
Rating:
Summary: The best time-travel/alternate history story I've read
Review: Steve Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time is perhaps the best story of its type that I have been fortunate enough to read. I have long admired his work, especially his co-authorship of the General series with David Drake, this latest work of his only confirms my favorable opinion. I only hope that a sequel ( or several sequels) will be out soon.
Rating:
Summary: A tasty mix of interpretive history, mayhem and fun!
Review: A brave undertaking thematically that leaps over time worn pitfalls with compassionately tenable characters, logical exemplification of society and locale and a course plotted that keeps the sails full till the last page. Incomplete success only in the jacket.
Rating:
Summary: Two Parts Brilliant - One Part Silly
Review: I had just finished reading V. Gordon Child's book The Aryans. Imagine my surprise to find such a well thought out novelization of this pre-history. I very much admire the author's scholarship and his plausible extrapolations. It is perhaps the finest example of a rip-roaring sci fi alternate history adventure ever written. But... The verisimilitude of the prehistory is compromised by all the martial art hokum. The author would have us believe that a mid-sized and mid-aged woman beats the tar out of a young and athletic 185 pound male adversary who has also had martial art training. This man (the chief villain)later beats to death a huge bronze age warrior bare handed in a fair fight without having so much as a hair being misplaced. The author in a one of his many tributes to Political Correctness shows that the Bronze Age Englanders have advanced and modern views on sexual relations, the role of women in society, and mathematics and astronomy. He in effect, cautions us not to patronize the social and mental status of these early people. However, he would have us believe that these warrior societies who have mental abilities we can now scarcely appreciate are helpless before the power of karate. How much more wonderful it would have been if the author assumed that these ancient warriors were able to handle themselves physically. Instead of the plot device of having history forget the imagined astronomical sophistication of Bronze Age, why not rather have written that history forgot some super effective hand to hand combat skill of the Indo-Europeans? Herodotus tells us that the Greek hoplites were no match for Persians man-to-man. Caesar makes much the same point about Romans versus Gauls. Modern societies beat less modern societies because they fight in groups. Man to man combat historically has favored the less advanced peoples. I expect that any large, strong, healthy male Bronze Age warrior would do just fine in hand to hand combat with any 20th Century martial artist. The author is overly credulous of Oriental martial arts. Oriental fighting skills are not particularly modern. They are basically mideval and as such are infused with mysticicism and nonsense. Western boxers routinely whip those who practice Kung Fu and Karate. Similarly the two handed slicing Samurai swordsmanship is hardly as effective as the more modern one handed Western swordsmanship with its greater reach and speed. Remember, the semi-legendary Musashi only fought 80 opponents, Cyrano fought 100. Finally compare the spiritual Japanese archery with the more modern and practical Western archery. I remind you that Samurai archers pinched the arrow they did not pull the bowstring. Hence no power and little accuracy. There are fewer outlandish claims made about Japanese archery because unlike fists and swords, archery effectiveness is so easy to verify. Consider how in Western boxing which emphasizes empirical results (actual bouts), no one questions that a heavyweight will whip a welterweight, nor that a man will beat a woman. Only in Oriental myths and movie making can a relatively small weak woman beat a large strong man in a fair fight. Mr. Sterling adds another category to that list: myths, movies, his otherwise plausible novels.
Rating: 
Summary: Ambitious and largely successful
Review: Having published three time-travel novels myself, I picked up Stirling's novel with some professional interest.It sustained that interest through two punishing flights from Vancouver to Saginaw and back.His research is excellent (I liked the Proto-Indo-European languages) and doesn't clog the narrative. The combat descriptions do clog it, however, and his villains are strikingly lacking in plausible motivation.I find it hard to believe his Coast Guard cadets because they're faceless little robots who adapt too easily to swords, spears, and mass slaughters. The lesbian love interest is painfully self-conscious and the Fiernan "locals" are much too conveniently up-to-date in their social mores.Like most "Connecticut Yankee" stories,this one assumes a few resourceful techies can impose their views on less technically advanced cultures; Mark Twain himself, the founder of this genre, was less optimistic. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story for its narrative energy and the sheer scale of the story, and I look forward to the sequels. If only Stirling can quit smacking his lips at the copper-iron scent of spilled blood, he may create a really memorable series here.
Rating:
Summary: True characterizations, fantastic voyage
Review: I am a long-standing fan of S.M Stirling's work, especially the Draka novels, but I was incredibly impressed with his new novel, Island in the sea of time. Being a native of Cape Cod (Falmouth to be exact), I found the characterizations of the Nantucketeers very believeable. The islanders (both Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket) are a self-reliant, clannish lot, considering even Cape Codders as strangers (just as most Cape Codders consider people from "over the bridge" strangers!). The old streak of Yankee puritanism and practicality still runs through the veins of the people in the area, and Stirling does an excellent job of portraying this in his novel. I thought the action scenes were gripping, and most of the plot devices worked well, though people might have a problem with the Event. The Event is the original time-travel force left unexplained in the novel. It is a plot device used by Stirling to get his characters into the past. Without it, there would be no story, and the islanders would face nothing worse than the spring influx of obnoxious New York tourists! I have no problems with a mysterous force, sometimes the universe acts in mysterious ways. Perhaps Stirling will explain it in his upcoming sequels, perhaps not. To conclude, I think this is one of the best novels to come down the pipe in many years. I accidently stumbled across it at my post's PX, and later went on to buy the hard cover from a science fiction book club since my original paperback copy had disintegrated from loaning it to my friends. I cant wait to read about their further adventures! P.S: for rabid fans, check out the anthology Armageddon. It has a short story titled "riding shotgun to Armageddon", featuring a clash between the Nantucketeers and the Egyptian Army (where else?) on the plain of Meggido, biblical Armageddon.
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