Rating: 
Summary: Flawed premise from the start
Review: I will not go into the actual book as others have reviewed that adequately. I shall, however, concur on the fast beginning, slow middle, and abrupt end. What I wish to address is the whole Chronologic Police and the Timeshaft Wormholes.I'm sorry, but whoever founded the Chronologic Police were idiots. In brief, in the middle of a space voyage, which we will say lasts 100 years, the ship passes through a wormhole and travels back in time 100 years. It then finishes the other half of the voyage for 50 more years so that the vessel arrives almost the same time that it left (+50 years -100 years +50 years = 0 years). Now if you understand that, you should see the problem with the next bit. The Chronologic Police travel in pairs and they go to the "exit" of the wormhole -- it is not specifically said, but the "up-side" and "down-sides" are at different locations, otherwise there would be at least two ships at each end at all times, but I digress. When they reach the exit of the wormhole they send one of the ships "forward" in time. They do this with the understanding that they CANNOT communicate with anything and no knowledge from the "up-time" may pass to the "down-time". Got that? Well read on.... Lets say, for example, that the "patrol" leaves in the year 5000 and it travels 50 years to the wormhole (year 5050). It sends its partner 100 years into the future (year 5150) to await ships and send them back in time. Now, these ships will have left in the year 5100 and will travel back in time to the Year 5050 so that they will reach their destination in the year 5100. Now let us say that the a ship is in 5150 and tells the "up-time" patrol everything that happened in the year 5100 then the patrol ships goes back in time and heads for home with this marvelous info. Well, the Patrol ship will arrive home in the year 5100 just like the ship that came through, so whatever news was gained 50 years in the future is already known! Quite frankly, there is never going to be a paradox for the Chronologic Patrol to deal with. It just simply cannot happen. Maybe, it can be argued, that the info could be sent on robot drones that can go far faster than manned ships, in which case there is the possibility for a paradox to occur, granted, but this could happen with any ship, regardless of which "time zone" they started. So, time paradox wise, it makes no difference if the patrols start at the "down" end or the "up" end; but there are reasons why starting at the "down" end are insane. By making this a necessity that means that while the ships that are passing through the timeshift wormhole arrive at their destinations at the same time (or there abouts) as they left, the Chronologic Patrol ships will arrive home after their tour with the full travel time counted. So, using the example above, the patrol started their tour in the year 5000 and would return home in the year 5100 because (being that they started from the downside) they do not gain the benefits of the time shift. Of course if the two ends of the wormhole are relatively nearby they could use it, but that would cause a few more problems and a lot more paradoxes... The real paradoxes would occur with ships that started at Planet A, went through the wormhole and returned to Planet A. When they get there they meet themselves traveling to the wormhole and they pack the cargo from the "future" ship to the "past" ship. Theoretically, if this was possible and the original ship did not meet itself on the first leg of the voyage, the cargo would double in size with each repetition. And that is only one of the many cans of worms out there. Son if, like me, think on these things and cannot get past them, then the book is horrible despite the good writing and characters (I will not go into the story itself, I promise). If you can get past the illogical premise, then if you can stand slow books with inconclusive endings, you'll love it. As an aside, the author acknowledgements at the front seems to indicate that Rodger MacBride Allen's original storyline was broken up into two or three books and he had to padded it to make it contemporary "novel" length. So, when your original story takes 500-600 pages to tell and it is expanded into 1200+ pages (assuming three novels), then there is going to be a lot of padding. But this is only assumption.
Rating:
Summary: Incomplete, Unsatisfying, Poorly-written, Frustrating
Review: I've never felt so compelled to write a review of a book in my life. I usually save books I've read so that I can pass them on. With "The Depths of Time," I was so concerned that my brother might stumble upon it on a shelf somewhere and thus waste a week (measured in eons) of his life wading through it that I tossed it in my kitchen garbage can. Then I pushed it down further, into some coffee grounds. That wasn't enough, however. I had to write a review where people would see it. Since I had somehow managed to get through the book without ever becoming conscious of the author's name, I had to fish the book back out of the garbage can, glance at the name, and rebury it. That said, here's my review... This book was horrible. It was poorly-written, badly-paced, and boring. It leaves the reader hanging at the end, wondering (1) why did the author bother, (2) why did the reader bother, and (3) from this angle, how likely is it that the book will bounce off of the oven and land on the "down-side" of the flip-top kitchen garbage can.
Rating:
Summary: Incomplete, Unsatisfying, Poorly-written, Frustrating
Review: I've never felt so compelled to write a review of a book in my life. I usually save books I've read so that I can pass them on. With "The Depths of Time," I was so concerned that my brother might stumble upon it on a shelf somewhere and thus waste a week (measured in eons) of his life wading through it that I tossed it in my kitchen garbage can. Then I pushed it down further, into some coffee grounds. That wasn't enough, however. I had to write a review where people would see it. Since I had somehow managed to get through the book without ever becoming conscious of the author's name, I had to fish the book back out of the garbage can, glance at the name, and rebury it. That said, here's my review... This book was horrible. It was poorly-written, badly-paced, and boring. It leaves the reader hanging at the end, wondering (1) why did the author bother, (2) why did the reader bother, and (3) from this angle, how likely is it that the book will bounce off of the oven and land on the "down-side" of the flip-top kitchen garbage can.
Rating: 
Summary: Action-packed mindbending entertainment
Review: Roger MacBride Allen's intriguing, fast-paced novel posits a far future in which the colonized galazy, filled with terraformed worlds, is linked by timeshafts. With their crew in cold sleep, interstellar ships travel for decades to enter temporal wormholes which put them at their destinations days after leaving. These timeshaft are vigilantly guarded against time paradoxes by the Chronologic Patrol and the first 80-page action-packed segment pits the Patrol against mysterious "Intruders" invading the wormhole, attacking the patrol and threatening the inviolate chronology of time. Battered and stranded 80 years in the future, the ship's captain, Anton Koffield, though decorated by his service for necessary action in destroying the wormhole rather than allow the violation of the past, is reviled as having doomed a newly terraformed world unable to receive their relief supplies. His career at an end, Koffield accepts a research offer and the next time we meet him he's a passenger waking from cold sleep (an unpleasant experience) on a merchant ship inexplicably marooned 127 more years into the future. Mysteries pile upon mysteries and Allen feeds us just enough answers to keep it all suspenseful rather than hopelessly confusing. His exploration of the rigid rules necessary to allow the use of time as a travel convenience and the elaborate strategems required to terraform worlds in a galaxy sadly devoid of life-supporting planets are intriguing. He has invested his imagined universe with detailed technology and ecological problems, which naturally find parallels in our own world. Koffield, a lonely, burdened, man, is a tough, principled old veteran with an appealingly vulnerable side and his young female pilot assistant is resourceful if inexperienced. While this is clearly the first of a series (Allen wrote the Star Wars Corellian Trilogy), the author does not infuriate the reader by leaving the whole story hanging - just a few sizable chunks. An entertaining and lively tale with lots of mind-bending ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Allen moves beyond Star Wars
Review: The Corellian trilogy is one of Allen's best known works, but as it turns out, it's not Allen's best. With a Star Wars universe, Allen can ride on a ready made fan base and characters. "Depths of Time" is an example of Allen creating a non-Star Wars universe that is complex, believable, and open-ended. The blending of social science, mystery, and hard science fiction is a good mix. The central device is time travel, but the book effectively moves us along at a real time pace to unfold a centuries old canvas. Not an easy thing to pull off, but Allen keeps the reader balanced between the backdrop of an entire universe in crisis and the fate of just one man. I believe the mark of good science fiction is when the "sci-fi" serves to support great characters, and Allen doesn't disappoint. Fans used to Allen's action writing may be surprised when the opening ship battles evolve into the personal struggles of Anton Koffield, but the shift is still compelling. Allen coaxes you into Koffield's life with the familiarity of a good space opera, but carries you with real human crises and the mysteries that grow from them. As a character, Koffield still bears some of the two-dimensional aspects plaguing most of Allen's Star Wars influenced writing, but Koffield's no stereotype. It also looks like Allen is wisely holding back more on Koffield's psyche for the sequel. No matter; what's left unexplained is just as rewarding as what the reader is allowed to uncover. No ready made marketable endings and plot twists either. It's always a pleasure to read a story not disguised as a promo for a movie script. Thank Allen's stars it looks like the beginning of a thoughtful and original space trilogy. Wormhole or no wormhole, it will be worth taking the time to see how it all turns out.
Rating:
Summary: Allen moves beyond Star Wars
Review: The Corellian trilogy is one of Allen's best known works, but as it turns out, it's not Allen's best. With a Star Wars universe, Allen can ride on a ready made fan base and characters. "Depths of Time" is an example of Allen creating a non-Star Wars universe that is complex, believable, and open-ended. The blending of social science, mystery, and hard science fiction is a good mix. The central device is time travel, but the book effectively moves us along at a real time pace to unfold a centuries old canvas. Not an easy thing to pull off, but Allen keeps the reader balanced between the backdrop of an entire universe in crisis and the fate of just one man. I believe the mark of good science fiction is when the "sci-fi" serves to support great characters, and Allen doesn't disappoint. Fans used to Allen's action writing may be surprised when the opening ship battles evolve into the personal struggles of Anton Koffield, but the shift is still compelling. Allen coaxes you into Koffield's life with the familiarity of a good space opera, but carries you with real human crises and the mysteries that grow from them. As a character, Koffield still bears some of the two-dimensional aspects plaguing most of Allen's Star Wars influenced writing, but Koffield's no stereotype. It also looks like Allen is wisely holding back more on Koffield's psyche for the sequel. No matter; what's left unexplained is just as rewarding as what the reader is allowed to uncover. No ready made marketable endings and plot twists either. It's always a pleasure to read a story not disguised as a promo for a movie script. Thank Allen's stars it looks like the beginning of a thoughtful and original space trilogy. Wormhole or no wormhole, it will be worth taking the time to see how it all turns out.
Rating: 
Summary: starts fast, runs out of gas, coasts, then... no resolution!
Review: The most important thing I can tell you about this novel is that it doesn't end with any sort of resolution. After the initial confrontation that maroons the Koffield character, the author piles mystery upon mystery and main characters unravel almost none of it. They were _handed_ some answers at the end of the story in a most unsatisfactory fashion. I nearly hurled the book across the room in frustration. After reading the pitiful attempt at resolution, I was forced to conclude that the whole purpose of this book, all 400+ pages, was to set the reader up for the next book in the series. I don't mind a book being part of a series if each book in the series is worth reading on its own. After 200 pages I realized that the author had run out of story. This leaves the next 200 pages to bore you to tears. The story started briskly, with a conflict at one of the wormholes. There was darned good action and suspense, and characters with believable motivations. The description of the wormhole transport system, particularly the confusing use of the terms "uptime" and "downtime" was the main flaw in this part of the story. Once I learned to ignore the terms and guess what was going on by context, I had no problem getting into the story. But once Koffield is marooned in the future, the story just dies. Koffield is converted from a military captain to an academian, and academians other than Indiana Jones just don't make for exciting reading. Despite the misleading title and back cover, time travel plays almost no part in the story after the first (and most exciting) part of the novel. There is an interesting puzzle to be solved with regard to the attack on the wormhole but Koffield doesn't solve it and worse, makes no visible attempt in the novel to solve it. No one solves it. The main questions about the attack are largely left unanswered at story's end. For some reason, the story turns to the problems of terraforming, of all things. This combined with Koffield's boring inactivity and the drawn out revelation of what little Koffield has discovered made the rest of the novel tiresome to read. I felt sorry for Koffield, but I never really liked him or cared what happened to him. What I really wanted from this story and what Allen failed to deliver was a resolution to the puzzle presented in the first part of the novel. The characters failed to make any progress toward solving that mystery and that made them all irrelevant to me. What Allen did do well in this novel is develop an interesting space-faring society with its Chronological Police and its wormhole transport system and its attempts at terraforming barren worlds to make them habitable. The hard-sf elements of this novel are what save it from being a complete waste of time. My advice to potential buyers: wait until Allen publishes all the books of this series, read the reviews of all of them and buy the books as a set if you're still interested. Allen has a long way to go to prove that this series is worth your time and money. If you want to read a hard-sf novel where time travel is front and center, and where things get resolved at the end, try Timemaster by Robert L. Forward.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive
Review: The only problem with this book is that it ends before the story does, i.e., this is just part 1. The good thing is that I liked it so much that I'll pre-order part 2 as soon as it's announced. I really appreciated Mr Allen's concept that terraforming a planet can't be simple and that we humans will probably mess it up. I also liked the concept that some people will intentionally withold information to control how fast civilization advances. But the most interesting concept is Mr Allen's solution to travelling great distances without the use of light speed, the timeshaft. Very nice. I also really enjoyed the character development of Mr Allen's protagonist, Anton Koffield. Koffield is a character that I really liked.
Rating:
Summary: Space flight with no family
Review: The premise of the story is unique but the actual plat of the story has you waiting on the sequel.
Rating: 
Summary: Good story, but overly long.
Review: This book would've rated higher if it hadn't been so overly verbose and repetitive. I don't agree with other reviewers of this book that the cliff-hanger ending was frustrating; I like to be left wanting more. But this story could have been about half its current length and still told exactly the same thing, but would've been more exciting and much tighter. I'm hoping the second and third volumes will either be a bit faster paced, or at least have less repetition.
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