Rating: 
Summary: A light look at exploitation of history
Review: The premise: Multinational, multitemporal Saltimbanque Corp. has commercialized time travel, and they've worked around the pesky lots-of-people-showing-up-at-the-same-time problem and the interference-with-the-future problem. Or have they? Some of the "historicals" (the natives of the eras which the time-hopping thrill-seekers have set up bases) are getting restless. In particular, Simon the Zealot, an apostle of Jesus left without a cause when promoters kidnap Jesus at age 23 from his particular time line, is tired of his 30 C.E. Jerusalem being held in thrall to these tourists from the future. He and a few others of the Zealot cause are using automatic weaponry to try to eject the time travelers and the Romans (the now-puppet rulers, bought off with antibiotics, air-conditioning, and Air Jordans, it seems) in one fell swoop. Oh yes, a rich-boy paleontologist trying to carry a rare dinosaur back to 2062, and a father-daughter team of grifters are accidently caught in the middle of this (while the father of the pair attempts to abscond with Wilma, the dinosaur). Oh, and the rich boy has a bodyguard implanted in his brain which can make his body kung fu fight, when need be. Had enough yet? The whole thing is ridiculous, but it's ridiculously fun. Though there seems to be some weighty pondering on exploitation of natives, more or less, it's never taken too totally seriously. Those who are annoyed by sci-fi authors who use time travel as an excuse to write about their favorite historical figures - will be only minorly annoyed, perhaps. Those who are tickled by a little Christian blasphemy will be amused, and those not overly adoring of Abraham Lincoln will snort at a particular moment in the novel. There are no =big ideas= in here, as one might get from Heinlein, there are no =new ideas= for that matter, but there's plenty of good humor in here. Nobody and nothing can be taken totally seriously in this book, except for Simon the Zealot. He's the only seemingly real person, with real worries, regrets, and passions, and I found his part of the story more interesting than anything else (from a serious point of view). For those who complain that there are logical holes in Kessel's particular time travel premise: get over it. You simply cannot have time travel to the past and not have logical contradictions. You can travel to the future and not have problems (sure, you'll never get to go back where you came from, but just think -- personal jet packs! castles in the air! free computers for all!), you can even posit something that will let you =see= what happened in the past, but you can't travel to the past and not have absurdities popping up every place. Kessel himself knows this, and so has funny things like a 20-something pre-Christian St. Augustine running into a middle-aged, very devout St. Augustine at a 20th century academic conference, ending with them duking it out. Time travel is such a silly idea in sci-fi plots, and absurdity is Kessel's forte. In any case, I think it's a great book for the beach (I read it while doing the laundry) - very light, no depressing thoughts, and smirks on every page.
Rating: 
Summary: a good time-travel story
Review: The story surrounds the scientific realization of time travel in the 21st century. Humans can travel to the past in any number of "unburned" parallel universes during historical periods where the "historicals" have not yet been exposed to the "futurians." Alternatively, travelers can go back to a well-established moment universe where the historicals have gotten used to the futurians coming and going. A revolt occurs during a well-established universe, 40 C.E. A good story follows and mostly takes place back in the future. The main plot is a common thread with a new twist. A grifter and her father travel to various times and scam clueless tourists from the futre. Soon, she falls for one of the men she intends to scam, a naive, almost perfect paleontologist who has taken a young dinosaur from the past for study. This part of the story is somewhat obvious. It reminds me of a movie. I can see this going to the big screen easily. The bigger story in the background surrounds the ethics of time-travel. There is a parallel between the unethical behavior of the scam-artists, the paleontologist's removing the dinosaur from the past, and the corporation who owns the time-travel machines. I kept wondering how this story would end. Any book that makes me guess what's going to happen in the last few pages gets 4 stars from me.
Rating:
Summary: a good time-travel story
Review: The story surrounds the scientific realization of time travel in the 21st century. Humans can travel to the past in any number of "unburned" parallel universes during historical periods where the "historicals" have not yet been exposed to the "futurians." Alternatively, travelers can go back to a well-established moment universe where the historicals have gotten used to the futurians coming and going. A revolt occurs during a well-established universe, 40 C.E. A good story follows and mostly takes place back in the future. The main plot is a common thread with a new twist. A grifter and her father travel to various times and scam clueless tourists from the futre. Soon, she falls for one of the men she intends to scam, a naive, almost perfect paleontologist who has taken a young dinosaur from the past for study. This part of the story is somewhat obvious. It reminds me of a movie. I can see this going to the big screen easily. The bigger story in the background surrounds the ethics of time-travel. There is a parallel between the unethical behavior of the scam-artists, the paleontologist's removing the dinosaur from the past, and the corporation who owns the time-travel machines. I kept wondering how this story would end. Any book that makes me guess what's going to happen in the last few pages gets 4 stars from me.
Rating:
Summary: a good time-travel story
Review: The story surrounds the scientific realization of time travel in the 21st century. Humans can travel to the past in any number of "unburned" parallel universes during historical periods where the "historicals" have not yet been exposed to the "futurians." Alternatively, travelers can go back to a well-established moment universe where the historicals have gotten used to the futurians coming and going. A revolt occurs during a well-established universe, 40 C.E. A good story follows and mostly takes place back in the future. The main plot is a common thread with a new twist. A grifter and her father travel to various times and scam clueless tourists from the futre. Soon, she falls for one of the men she intends to scam, a naive, almost perfect paleontologist who has taken a young dinosaur from the past for study. This part of the story is somewhat obvious. It reminds me of a movie. I can see this going to the big screen easily. The bigger story in the background surrounds the ethics of time-travel. There is a parallel between the unethical behavior of the scam-artists, the paleontologist's removing the dinosaur from the past, and the corporation who owns the time-travel machines. I kept wondering how this story would end. Any book that makes me guess what's going to happen in the last few pages gets 4 stars from me.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent premise - but the book is really bad.
Review: This book has an awesome premise! In the book's setting, people can travel through time easily and with very few problems. More than that, they can travel to MUs - Moment Universes, which are like instances of our universe at a given point in time. That means they can travel through a certain point in time and behave in some way, and afterwards go to the *same* moment, only on a different universe, and act differently. (Imagine, killing Brutus when he tries to murder Ceasar on one universe, and helping Brutus on another).
The book's protagonist is Dr. Owen Vannice, a paleontologist who gets entangled with 2 con artists who trick people in different time periods.
This too sounds good, no?
So what is bad?
Well, The story is utterly *filled* with logic inconsistencies. The author contradicts himself left and right.. and the most annoying thing, is that the author simply avoids certain "problems" with his theories.. he doesn't even bother finding silly solutions for them... simply ignores them altogher. You must agree that a book about time travel which doesn't raise the issue of travelling to the future is kind of silly. And what about meeting with yourself? Or maybe even having time travellers from the future coming to visit YOU? All these are ignored.
In addition, the story doesn't focus on these ideas.. it concentrates on a silly love affair of the main characters... That, and the fact that I couldn't stand any of the characters made it a BAD book. Another wasted idea in the book: the kidnapping of historical figures and bringing them to the present. This can lead to to interesting ideas - but what does the author do with it? Mozart becomes a pop star, Jesus starts a talk show, Abraham Lincoln becomes a PR representative.. It's as if these historical figures just *wanted* to drop everything, leave their families, and come to the future to do silly tasks. Utterly ridiculous.
If you really like the premise, read Joshua Dann's Timeshare trilogy... wasn't a masterpiece, but certainly much better than this. Otherwise, avoid this book.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent premise - but the book is really bad.
Review: This book has an awesome premise! In the book's setting, people can travel through time easily and with very few problems. More than that, they can travel to MUs - Moment Universes, which are like instances of our universe at a given point in time. That means they can travel through a certain point in time and behave in some way, and afterwards go to the *same* moment, only on a different universe, and act differently. (Imagine, killing Brutus when he tries to murder Ceasar on one universe, and helping Brutus on another).
The book's protagonist is Dr. Owen Vannice, a paleontologist who gets entangled with 2 con artists who trick people in different time periods.
This too sounds good, no?
So what is bad?
Well, The story is utterly *filled* with logic inconsistencies. The author contradicts himself left and right.. and the most annoying thing, is that the author simply avoids certain "problems" with his theories.. he doesn't even bother finding silly solutions for them... simply ignores them altogher. You must agree that a book about time travel which doesn't raise the issue of travelling to the future is kind of silly. And what about meeting with yourself? Or maybe even having time travellers from the future coming to visit YOU? All these are ignored.
In addition, the story doesn't focus on these ideas.. it concentrates on a silly love affair of the main characters... That, and the fact that I couldn't stand any of the characters made it a BAD book. Another wasted idea in the book: the kidnapping of historical figures and bringing them to the present. This can lead to to interesting ideas - but what does the author do with it? Mozart becomes a pop star, Jesus starts a talk show, Abraham Lincoln becomes a PR representative.. It's as if these historical figures just *wanted* to drop everything, leave their families, and come to the future to do silly tasks. Utterly ridiculous.
If you really like the premise, read Joshua Dann's Timeshare trilogy... wasn't a masterpiece, but certainly much better than this. Otherwise, avoid this book.
Rating:
Summary: Well edited, whole family may read it.
Review: Very well written and edited. The whole family might enjoy this little sci-fi book, imaginative but at the end lacks a little something to give it a higher rating.
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