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On the Oceans of Eternity

On the Oceans of Eternity

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A RIPPING YARN
Review: GREAT BOOK FINISHED OFF THE SERIES NICELY (I FEEL THERE COULD BE MORE)I THINK THE AUTHOR OWES A GREAT DEAL TO THE FILM "ZULU" AS THE BATTLE OF O'ROUKES FORD IS STRANGLEY REMINSCENT OF THAT FILM ABOUT THE DEFENCE OF RORKES DRIFT IN 1879. STILL A HIGHLY ENJOYABLE BOOK AND ONE THAT I WILL READ AGAIN.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Stirling For President!
Review: I've been waiting for this book for two years. Let me tell you, brother... It was worth the wait!

"On the Oceans of Eternity" is for anyone who likes action, adventure, women in chainmail, or boys with guns or vice versa. :) Unlike most action books, this one has plenty of food for thought and literally tons of research behind it. You will come away from this read having learned something as well as having had lots of fun.

If you are new to the series, start with "Island in the Sea of Time" then read "Against the Tide of Years". This volume brings that series to a close, in a most satisfying manner.

Unlike the middle book, this title was edited quite well, the pacing was almost perfect and the execution flawless. The ending comes all too sudden and swift for the reader's taste.

Odikweos' meeting with Arnstein was everything it should have been, the ends (and beginnings) that well-loved/hated characters met were plausible and intriguing. To be less vague would spoil the surprises in store, so read and enjoy!

//Fritz!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: After a good first two in the series, this was a Skimmer
Review: I thought the first two books in this series were much more livelier and interesting. But then I did make the mistake of reading all three in as many weeks which, in hindsight, is probably not the best way to appreciate a work such as this. At times it seemed like an endless updating of previous plot lines interjected with new lines and the continual jumping back and forth grew more than a bit tedious. Overall I enjoyed the series but this seemed the weakest of the bunch and I found myself skimming through several parts.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not as good as the first two in the series
Review: This is the third in the series and I beleive the last. You almost need to read the first two "Island In The Sea of Time" and "Against The Tide of Years" to realy enjoy this one as the premise and most of the real character developement was done in the previous two, which is why I rated this only 3 stars while the other two deserve 4 stars.

The story is the continuation of the Island of Nantucket being sent into the far past and this book resolves the majority of the islanders taking care of the rogue element that is taking advantage of the natives.

I read the book 1632 by Eric Flint (which I liked immensely) and Stirling was recommended as an author who would also be liked, so I read his series. I felt Stirling's story (3 books) to be much meatier and more realistic then Flint's story, but if you enjoyed this series and time travel , DO read 1632 for a light enjoyable dessert.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A Very European Ending
Review: It's amazing how a phenomenally good series can crash so magnificently in the end of one book. This book ends in the opposite way from which it started. It is dismal, disappointing, and makes me want to put the book down. Actually, that's not fair. It makes me wish I'd never picked the first book in the series up.

Stirling continues to write well, when he writes. But it's like he got really, really tired at the end of the book. He needs to collaborate more with Robert Jordan, whose Wheel of Time series is now at an agonizing 12 books and counting. Jordan can't seem to summarize well. Stirling does it too well. It's odd too- there was no reason to wrap everything up as quickly as he did. Much is left unexplained. We are suddenly shuttling back and forth between people and places, and you barely know what is going on. Everything finishes up far too quickly- and unsatisfyingly. After reading for about 1500 pages, you want a dramatic ending, where justice is met, where questions are answered face to face. This is not the ending. I must admit, I thought it was a dream sequence as I was first reading it, it was so bad. It's like the ending of European movies, where nothing is fully resolved.

Additionally, the problem that has regularly plagued this series continues in this book- Stirling can't seem to resist depicting aberrant sexual activity in exquisite detail.

Lastly, Christian groups are portrayed in a very sad way- Christianity continues 1000 years before Christ, but it is a violent expression, knowing nothing of the life of Jesus as a man of peace (Quakers are mentioned in passing only once in the trilogy, as not participating with other Christians), and focused inexplicably on the holy trinity of father, son, and his mother. But perhaps this is an expression of what Christianity might become, if only the death of Christ was known, and not his life.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: After a good first two in the series, this was a Skimmer
Review: I thought the first two books in this series were much more livelier and interesting. But then I did make the mistake of reading all three in as many weeks which, in hindsight, is probably not the best way to appreciate a work such as this. At times it seemed like an endless updating of previous plot lines interjected with new lines and the continual jumping back and forth grew more than a bit tedious. Overall I enjoyed the series but this seemed the weakest of the bunch and I found myself skimming through several parts.

Rating: 5 stars
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: 2 stars
Summary: Third Book in Trilogy Disappoints
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).


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