Rating: 
Summary: Action! Historical Detail! Characters! Plot!
Review: I've read the other reviews and I agree with most of what they've written. But I've got to say that this is one of the best books I've ever read. Okay, the-oh-so fortunate presence of the Coast Guard ship might be a bit contrived, but what would the story be without it? Kirk and Picard ain't got a patch on Captain Marion Alston. Not only is it a powerful rich story about time displacement and history, but it's also about humans doing what they do best: Surviving in the face of terrible odds. I can't wait to read the rest of Mister Stirling's work. It was the kind of book where you didn't want it to end because you don't want to leave the characters behind.
Rating:
Summary: A worthy successor to "Lest Darkness Fall"
Review: S.M. Stirling has created an intriguing and thoroughly enjoyable time travel scenario, in which the island of Nantucket's residents and visitors are whisked back to 1250 BC by a time storm. With their 20th Century technology either useless or running down, they must figure out how to survive in the Bronze Age. Not just survive, but FLOURISH, thanks to Yankee ingenuity - and a handful of fortuitous off-island visitors on hand at the moment of translation.
Rating:
Summary: Action! Action! Action!
Review: This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Unique characters. Unpredicatable plot twists. Lots and lots of fighting action done with careful researching and imagination. It's fat with detail and historical nuances. You will not be able to put it down once you start reading.
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Summary: Sterling for President!
Review: The only practical excuse for time travel would be to avoid the mistakes of the past without making new ones. Sterling's Bronze Age Yankees make a good start at doing just that in this book.If you like adventure, this book is for you. But as they said on Fat Albert, 'If you aren't careful, you might learn something too...' My only complaint is the lack of explanation for the cause of the event itself. I suppose the characters aren't really in a position to figure it out on their own, so this makes sense storywise. Still, it would be nice to know that Planetary Archon Ingolfson is not in in Egypt, waiting... :)
Rating: 
Summary: No one gets impaled in the first chapter
Review: I tend to approach S.M. Sterling's books with some caution. There are levels of brutality, and Sterling hits me with an intellectual brutality that is actively painful. But this one! I had a great deal of fun, and enjoyed the sense of "Ok, folks, we're stuck. Now pull up your socks and get on with it." I must respond to one other review - sometimes, stupidity is deadly, and ought to be. Many of the characters cope with the reality of their situations, others retreat into fantasy, just as people do, when faced with trouble. There were coincidences, yes, but I know that sometimes, things just happen to go your way. A few coincidences are excusable, if they keep the book moving. I liked the removal of guns, and the recognition of living on top of a technological pyramid. The ingenuity of the people of Nantucket in working out stop-gaps and substitutes was great. The bad guys are bad guys with depth. Some have great motives, but cause disaster; others are people who might be good people in harsher circumstances, but their insolence and unwillingness to bear authority make them villains. I liked it.
Rating: 
Summary: good idea, poorly done
Review: I was intrigued by the premise of this book--the island of Nantucket going back into the Bronze Age. However, I was very disappointed when I read it. I found myself just "skimming" to get through it, hoping it would get better! The characters were too stereotyped and one-dimensional. The battle descriptions are way too detailed, long, and uninteresting. And I don't know what the point of throwing in some sado-masochism into the story was. This is obviously set up for a sequel, even though it does stand on its own. I, for one, will not buy it!
Rating:
Summary: wow!
Review: The author's grasp of history, politics, geography, martial arts, and technology generally is outstanding. As I said above, WOW! I'm adding to previous commentary (most of which is very accurate, including the criticism) because I think _Island in the Sea of Time_ will stand the test of time and be a classic sci-fi work. I'm voting it a Hugo. For those of us who can't wait for the author to write more -- Stirling wrote a short story in the same universe in _Armageddon_ (ed. David Drake). "Riding Shotgun to Armageddon." Only 20-odd pages more, but a treat! More, please. More! But I'll wait patiently if the quality remains this high.
Rating:
Summary: Good time travel concept, strong characters
Review: Very good time travel story, with an interesting device - an island community displaced in time, rather than a single person or small group. This allows for a complex plot, a number of well-developed characters, and interactions more profound than "civilized man amazes the savages with magic from the future." Stirling is a talented writer, and I expected strong work from him, but this exceeded my expectations. I have enjoyed rereading it and look forward to others in the series. The battle scenes are written well and logically integrated into the plot rather than disconnected demonstrations of military "genius" based on elementary understanding of military history(no offense to the authors whose books of that sort I have enjoyed as well). I strongly recommend this book to anyone who likes the Niven-Pournelle collaborations, or Pournelle's Sparta series.
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Summary: A well thought-out story of interge, love and controle.
Review: I always enjoy a good time travel story and this is one of the top five I would recomend to anyone. This employs seveal realistic situations I can amangen if a group of people where taken from modern surrondings and left with only what is in thier emiate surrondes. No factors, farms, to name a few. It's not all everyone following happly one person, but idealist, romatists, and protagenists trying to co-exsist with each other. I really enjoyed the simple explonations in how recreating a pice of equipment involeds a lot of labor. And the assuptions on some historical subject or another is easily possible. I recomend this book strongly to my friend and he finished it in less time then I did. I look forward to the next book.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good.
Review: The first thing I'd like to say is that I enjoyed this book very much. The characters were very well done and the ideas were well thought out. However there are several points I'm going to be picky about. Firstly, whenever characters see something technical or discuss it (whether History, Martial Arts, Technology or Politics), it goes into a lot of detail, but not quite enough to be totally clear what is going on. I am English and not familiar with American political details and the design of guns. The second quibble I'd like to make is that the storyline is a little too neat. When the plot demands it there are quite a lot of convenient coincidences (the author went to a lot of effort to deprive the characters of guns) and people being just too accepting of something new and different. However this does mean that the book is well paced, rather than being unbearably tedious and messy, which would be more realistic and not very fun. However the central characters are just too perfectly suited to being thrown back into the bronze age. One final point. I cannot help but think the author was a little too gleeful in condemning groups of people he disagreed with to horrible fates brought about by their own stupidity or other abuse. However these minor points aside, I really enjoyed this book (to the extent that I lost sleep due to staying up late reading it).
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