Rating: 
Summary: Too long and too gory
Review: This is the third in a series of books about what happens after Nantucket Island is somehow cast back into the Bronze Age. I enjoyed the first two books and so was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, I was severely disappointed.First off, the book is way too long and too leisurely written. I gave up trying to read every word about a hundred pages in and just began skimming, slowing down only on those occasions when something significant seemed to be happening (which was far too seldom). Second, there's little in the way of character development or interactions here, and what there is seems dull. What you have instead are battle scene after battle scene. Now, my attitude when I hit a battle or fight scene in a book is, unless something clever is going on, to skip to the end and see how it turned out, since that's the only thing that really matters. Third, Bronze Age battles are a really ugly business, and Stirling makes sure you realize that, with lots of description of guts and gore and body parts getting chopped off. Not exactly pleasant bedtime reading. The only good thing I can say is that it appears by the end of the book that if there is another book, it won't have need to have too many battle scenes. But perhaps Stirling might be better off moving on to another story--I think he's done about as much as he should do with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Densely packed and satisfying
Review: Really enjoyed this one. Mr. Stirling creates a really rich alternate time line. I do have my doubts about a) how well Nantucket itself would fare if it really experienced the "Event" (I don't think modern folk are quite as resilient as those in the novels); and b) like other reviewers, I think the influence of Nantucket and its foes spreads far faster than would occur in reality. But still, this series is a real achievement. Stirling displays his mastery of sea, air and land battle scenes (hey, a SEAL author!). I've read all Stirling's books, and he definitely has preferences for the same characters in different clothes (e.g. Alston and Swindapa compared to the female warrior couple in previous Stirling works), but I really enjoy his stuff. He avoids the graphic qualities of his Draka series, which is both good and bad. On the one hand, some of the Draka stuff really disturbed me; on the other hand, it was being disturbed in a good way -- believable and logical in context, and you don't get disturbed by a book that hasn't successfully drawn you in. On the gripping hand (heh) I think Stirling really missed an opportunity to make Walker MORE evil -- I mean, Walker takes a main character prisoner and . . . doesn't do a whole lot with or to this person? But all in all, a very good read. Would have been satisfied even had I paid a hardcover price for it.
Rating: 
Summary: Lame Ending for OK Series
Review: At the risk of repeating what others have said here, the ending of this series was a monumental let-down. The reader's impression is that the author suddenly tired of the entire concept and decided to wrap it up as expeditiously as possible. The conclusion is so lame that I would recommend you not even get started with this series.
Rating:
Summary: Third Book in Trilogy Disappoints
Review: I loved the first two books in this trilogy and eagerly read the third. At first I was excited to see this was the longest in the series. I expected a grand culmination to the epic saga. This book plodded along quite a bit more than the previous two, but I kept on reading - excited to find out how it would all turn out. But I was not very excited to find out at the end of the book that the ending was quite a "slap in the face" to the reader. As other reviews have noted here, the ending leaves you feeling cheated. I just want to say something else in case Mr. Stirling reads these reviews. I found it hard to understand why no one on Nantucket *ever* wonders where Martins is. Not one character says "too bad Martins has been held prisoner for 10 years." Not one character proposes rescuing him, even though an elaborate rescue was implemented to save another character. Please do not tell me that the revelation about Martins at the end of the third book addresses this. It was just a strange oversight that I found hard to fathom. The guy is a prisoner for 10 years and not one character ever utters a word about his obviously horrible plight.
Rating: 
Summary: A "Stirling" Effort
Review: As an alternative history obsessive, I had recently read Stirling's Draka series and came away a bit anxious about the Nantucket series. Happy to say I overcame my anxiety, for this series (like another reviewer, I am reviewing all three at once) has as much hope in it as the Draka series does black doom and despair. I liked the second of the novels the best, but really felt the series as a whole was one of the finest I have read in the field (better than the Belisarius novels, on a par with Harry Turtledove's World War I series growing out of The Guns of the South). Some signature Stirling touches: execution by impalement, rather well done heterosexual and lesbian relationships and sex descriptions (nary a gay one to be found so far in any of his books I have read); very good battle scenes (I appreciated his brief homage to Patrick O'Brian in the third novel, since he borrows a fair amount from that author's epic 20-volume saga of the British Navy and the friendship between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, bar none the greatest naval fiction ever written, in my humble opinion). His feminism is overt and doesn't bother me one bit; his historical renderings and linguistic explorations (one gets a taste of archaic Achaean Greek, Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonia, Egyptian, and proto-British in volume 3 alone) are fascinating: here, you get at different points Ramses II, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Telemachus, and a lost-to-history Iberian civilization, among several others including well-depicted Native Americans. All in all very rich; the ending was a bit too neat and deus-ex-machina like for me, but he did leave the door open for more (I will not indicate why for those who like surprises). His technological descriptions here, while long, ring more authentic than in the late Draka novels (which sometimes feel like E.E. "Doc" Smith redux, e.g., if it's 2040, we must have a plasma drive powered by hyper-ionic generators, stuff like that). His descriptions of the environment are detailed, can be lyrical, and can also occasionally be overlong. But do not miss this series. Well worth reading and enjoying. Stirling is an unusual and daring writer, and I am surely a fan. Despite the loathsome Draka (whose saga I will continue to follow, like a bad drug habit).
Rating: 
Summary: Marine training prevails against bronze age barbarians
Review: The twentieth century residents of Nantucket, cast back into the bronze age, have the advantage of their technology and command structures, but those advantages are no longer unique. Walker, a renegade, has set himself up as King over Greece and has besieged Troy. His ally, Isketerol, controls Spain and the straits of Gibralter restricting Nantucket's ability to send aid to their allies--Babylon. And Walker's schemes take in Egypt too, hoping to catch Babylon from two sides. Fortunately, thanks to a modern U.S. marine training regime, and to incredible luck, the Nantucketers are impossible to defeat in a battle. Friendly bullets fly true and smash great holes in enemy lines. Enemy gunshot is pathetic, killing a few to give our heros a chance to grieve, but not doing significant military damage. Even Walker's few victories are empty as the Nantucketers sucker him deeper into empty territory. ON THE OCEANS OF ETERNITY is the third in S. M. Stirling's alternate history series about the republic of Nantucket. By now, ten years after the 'event,' Nantucket has pretty well melded its 20th century technology with the industrial capabilities of the bronze age world. The scenes set in Nantucket, therefore, lose some of the immediacy and interest that post-event survival tactics held. In ON THE OCEANS OF ETERNITY, it is the non-Nantucket kingdoms that are most interesting. Isketerol's attempts to balance his people's traditions with the new technology, and Walker's effort to overcome the entire Island's technological advantage with speed and hard work are the highlights of the novel. Stirling follows alternate history convention by running multiple sub-plots simultaneously--Chief Cofflin in Nantucket, Commodore Marion Alston-Kurlelo and her lover, Swindapa with the Nantucket fleet, Walker, Isketerol, and Ranger Peter Giernas in California. Some of these stories are interesting. Others do little to advance the plot or demonstrate the clash of civilizations that make alternate history so interesting. I loved ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME--the first book in this series but I think that Stirling would have served himself and his readers better if he'd shortened the sequel to one book instead of two, created more suspense, and really gotten into what technologies made the difference.
Rating:
Summary: Best Mini series since the lost regement
Review: Enjoyed this book very much and its two companions. Wish that the author wouldn't leave you in suspence at the end with the knowlege that one of the wolf lords children has escaped to reak revenge on the republic. The author needs to write another book to kill the suspence. Make it take place 10-20 years after the end of the Great War with some old and new characters. I know i would buy in an instant.
Rating:
Summary: Tim Robertson Review
Review: An okay book, but after a while I just wish the writer would move the story a little bit faster.
Rating:
Summary: series end
Review: I like alterative histories; the what ifs and the what coulda shoulda happened ...They all make you think ...This one made me run back to the history books to find out what really happened and finding that out was just as facinating as the well written fast read that this is. One caveat the dates on the title headings are a little confusing at first,but that a very minor complaint
Rating:
Summary: Sterling is an evil, biased, narrow-minded ninny!
Review: I love alternative history, but not when it's done this way! Sterling's ultra-left preachiness got in the way of what had the potential to be a decent story. My complaints about the books are the usual ones most reviewers who disliked tham have: too much feminazim, erroneously-assumed superiority of the thrice-damned east-Asian marital arts, the lucky coincidence that Nantucket just happened to contain anything they wanted, etc... The feminazim is particularly repellant. Nearly all the male characters are evil and nearly all the female ones are good. Sterling is a man, right? So what gives? Why would he write trash like this? Why would he demean and denigrate his own gender so? The story obviously was not written for women only, so we can only speculate as to what is rattling around in the head of this wacko author. That his tripe gets published is proof positive of the stupidy and apparent desparation of modern American publishing companies. Physical punishment for "sexual harrassment" in the Bronze Age? Puh-Leeze! Finally, where in the heck does this geek get off believing that modern Americans, armed with weapons to which they are only barely accustomed, could even hope to stand up to warriors from warrior-cultures whose whole lives were based around the use of their weapons? What utter, unbelievable, insufferable nonsense! I conclude with this: I charge that Mr. S.M. Sterling is nothing more than an "educated idiot" who happened to read a couple of books on a period and now accounts himself an authority on the subject, and who managed to convince a thick-skulled, lethargic publishing company to make his drivel public. Maybe it's just the social Darwinist in me speaking, but I wish him and anyone who likes his writing all the misery an misfortune the world can muster.
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