Washington's Dirigible (Timeline Wars/John Barnes, No 2)

Rating:
Summary: Not my favorite but...
Review: Here Matt and a co-agent travle to an alternate america where King George III offered consessions to the American Founding Fathers and so the american revolution never took place. Matt also comes to another realization that is both chilling and brilliant at the same time. While this book is not as action packed as the others it is still a worthy edition to the serise.

Rating:
Summary: Not my favorite but...
Review: Here Matt and a co-agent travle to an alternate america where King George III offered consessions to the American Founding Fathers and so the american revolution never took place. Matt also comes to another realization that is both chilling and brilliant at the same time. While this book is not as action packed as the others it is still a worthy edition to the serise.

Rating:
Summary: Wow + Wow = Wow.
Review: Just as interesting and compelling as the first entry in the Timeline Wars. The scenes were Mark confronts his evil self, captured and tortured into becoming a monster by the watchamacallits in a paralell dimension, are absolutely climactic and memorable. There's a line the good Mark says to the bad that is just positively intense. Bad Mark talks to good Mark about how wonderful it is to torture his wife and force her to serve his every impulse, the same wife who was killed by the watchamacallits in good Mark's world, and good Mark's reply was positively defiant, though I don't remember it exactly word for word, and I can't find the exact page with it, so I'll do my best to paraphrase. Something like, "That's wonderful, have her serve you with a smile and a thousand-yard stare."

Rating:
Summary: Wow + Wow = Wow.
Review: Just as interesting and compelling as the first entry in the Timeline Wars. The scenes were Mark confronts his evil self, captured and tortured into becoming a monster by the watchamacallits in a paralell dimension, are absolutely climactic and memorable. There's a line the good Mark says to the bad that is just positively intense. Bad Mark talks to good Mark about how wonderful it is to torture his wife and force her to serve his every impulse, the same wife who was killed by the watchamacallits in good Mark's world, and good Mark's reply was positively defiant, though I don't remember it exactly word for word, and I can't find the exact page with it, so I'll do my best to paraphrase. Something like, "That's wonderful, have her serve you with a smile and a thousand-yard stare."

Rating:
Summary: "An OK Story That Could Have Been Better."
Review: Mark Strang was a pretty decent character, but I felt there was a lot of untapped potential that Barnes did not bring to the surface. He did do a good job with the scenes where Strang questioned his lust for killing anything associated with the enemy Closers. I also did not get a sense of any great crisis as Strang fights to keep this alternate 1775 on its intended track. The changes to this timeline were pretty cool. I am a sucker for time travel/alternate Earth stories. I liked the introduction of steam engines and dirigibles to 1775. And George Washington, Duke of Kentucky? Neat twist. The action scenes were OK, but tended to get a little too wordy at times.

Rating:
Summary: "An OK Story That Could Have Been Better."
Review: Mark Strang was a pretty decent character, but I felt there was a lot of untapped potential that Barnes did not bring to the surface. He did do a good job with the scenes where Strang questioned his lust for killing anything associated with the enemy Closers. I also did not get a sense of any great crisis as Strang fights to keep this alternate 1775 on its intended track. The changes to this timeline were pretty cool. I am a sucker for time travel/alternate Earth stories. I liked the introduction of steam engines and dirigibles to 1775. And George Washington, Duke of Kentucky? Neat twist. The action scenes were OK, but tended to get a little too wordy at times.

Rating:
Summary: Not great, but a good read...
Review: Most of the time this felt like an action adventure movie rather than a SF book. I found it rather annoying too how the author continuously went back and explained things which are clearly laid out in the first book. I don't see a problem with dropping clues and background info from the previous story, but you shouldn't continually launch into paragraphs worth of "the exact same stuff." The beginning of this story was good with the fight scene, however, the ending left a little to be desired. Though it may sound like I'm complaining, I still think the book is a good read and hopefully the 3rd in the series finishes strong.

Rating:
Summary: Solid old fashioned fun
Review: Solid old fashioned fun and games written by an author who is rapidly developing into my favorite 90's writer. Everytime I go into a bookstore, I seek the B's to see if something new is out.Here with his third installment of his Timeline Wars, comes John Barnes, meticulous researcher,yet developing writer. I find the plot in this the weakest element but not as bad as say anything by Steven King. This is well worth both the time and money.

Rating:
Summary: Good adventure and reasonable heros
Review: This is the weakest of the three books in the series but only because it lacks the excitting beginning and the strong ending of the adventure. The plot and the heros hang together well even if you haven't read the previous book. Barnes does a good job of exploring what might have happened if many scientific advances had come along centuries early. His science is reasonable, and the story flows very well.