Conrad's Time Machine

Rating:
Summary: Unfortunate purchase
Review: Unfortunately, the Publishers' Weekly editorial review is spot on - to call this novel "juvenile" is an understatement. I can say that Frankowski does explore some interesting implications of a society built on time travel. But for every interesting idea that does strike you as fun, you will quickly be brought up short by a chapter's worth of his stereotyped characters giving painfully bad speeches on life or religion, or some haphazard and ill-conceived pseudo-scientific exposition thrown in for no apparent reason - in these passages, Frankowski's usual down-home, engineer charm is mostly absent or undeveloped. And when his characters start talking about women, words fail... this alone would be bad enough to sour the reading experience, even if the book were much better than it is. As it stands, even if you are a fan of the Cross-Time Engineer series, you are probably better off pretending this book doesn't exist; as others have noted, it doesn't really add much even as background to the other books.

Rating:
Summary: Required reading for engineers--Conrad Stargard prequel
Review: What would an engineer do if sent back in time? Create the perfect world. These books should be required reading for all engineers while waiting for the next Harry Potter book to come out. :-) Be sure to read the first 6 Adventures of Conrad Stargard first. While the book is a complete story itself, the first 6 books build the suspense as Conrad's world evolves.