Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful journey
Review: I feel a little sorry for a few of the reviewers who have gone before me. I think they may be missing the point. The book does not attempt to provide in-depth military facts, nor is it an attempt at writing a 'suspense thriller', nor is it fiction. Rather, it is portrayal of the experiences of one man [and his friends'] during times of conflict [largely] in Indochina. It is a book of truth and emotion, of beauty and futility, of love and war. Ultimately, it is a book about humanity. Jon Swain has done well, and this book would be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of anyone who is interested in human conflict, Indochina or personal accounts of life in times of extremely adverse and uncertain conditions.
Rating: 
Summary: Old News With No New Insight
Review: I groped my way through this "memoir" as if reading a never-ending newspaper article--Swain is indeed a journalist by trade. If anything, the book gives a decent summary of the horrors in Southeast Asia (especially the Khmer Rouge) in the mid to late 1970s, complete with gory details but with no new insight. It's as if he dug up all the articles he wrote while covering the war at the time, strung them together, threw in some insincere personal musings and presto! Another product for the latest fad in book publishing: the memoir. Swain is shamelessly nostalgic for Cambodia as he first encountered it--as a very young Briton just out of the French Foreign Legion. It was a place where he could frequent prostitutes, wilt away the afternoons in opium dens, and belong to an elite group of white foreign men living in Phonm Penh's best hotel. He pays scant attention to the fact that the French Colonial legacy in Southeast Asia is what made it possible for him to frolick with abandon in another people's land and call it "paradise." It's this reputation that still drives countless western male tourists to this poverty-stricken, post-colonial, war-torn country in search of "affordable" pleasures. Swain romanticizes those issues by saying the scene was less "brash" (i.e. tourist-oriented) in the early 70s. His utter lack of CAMBODIAN perspective on the legacies of French Colonialism is disturbing. But Swain is a journalist, not a scholar. As is typical with journalists who write historical accounts, such important historical background and perspective is missing and any insight the reader gets is personal. At one point in the book, Swain gives us an insincere justification for why he went back to Cambodia for its darkest hour, and tells us no, it was not for adventure thrill-seeking nor visions of journalistic heroism, but "I don't know." Somehow I don't believe that.
Rating: 
Summary: Riveting Account of the Fall of Phnom Penh
Review: The book opens with some less-than-successful recollections of the time Swain spent in SE Asia during the wars: it's familiar territory, and his writing is not strong enought to handle the complicated emotions and memories that Michael Herr so successfully managed in Dispatches. But then the book turns to a fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge. Here Swain shines: his narrative is straightforward -- with little of the mawkishness that mars the opening ruminations -- riveting and horrifying. Swain opted to stay on in Phnom Penh as the Khmer approached and entered the city, and the story he got by staying is . . . well, it's pretty overwhelming.
Rating:
Summary: Cambodia mon amour
Review: The River of Time is a very compelling read for a number of reasons. It gives the reader a glimpse of a place that no longer exists - Cambodia after Pol Pot would never be the same again. Swain introduces the reader to the sleepy colonial town that was Phnom Penh. Swain's love affair with the country could easily be described as exploitative - opium smoking and whoring his way through his first years there. But you cannot doubt his deep affection for the place. The other interesting aspect of the book is Swain's admitted addiction to adrenaline. He breaks up a perfectly good marriage to go and spend a year kidnapped in Africa. He cannot help himself and must go where "the action is.' He paints himself as a somewhat immoral thrill seeker who uses journalism as an cover for his addiction. But he is honest about it.
Rating: 
Summary: in the mist of opium
Review: This book should be title "in the mist of opium", Swain admitted that alot of his writting was done during the drug induced moments, including his report of American bombing of Kampuchea. What is not cover here is how Swain convinietly ignore the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and his portrait of them as "valiant" fighter against a corrupt Western-backed regime. Swain like many of his fellow "journalists" at that time, was siken of the war and tries to actively end the war by painting a bleak picture about the non-communist and glorified the Marxist forces. Unfortunately the death of over 600,000 Vietnamese Boat People (as estimated by the UNHCR, 250,000 Vietnamese "Corrective Labor Reeducation" slaves and several millions Khmers prove that sometimes "Peace at Any Price" is worst than war, if the evil side wins.
Rating:
Summary: in the mist of opium
Review: This book should be title "in the mist of opium", Swain admitted that alot of his writting was done during the drug induced moments, including his report of American bombing of Kampuchea. What is not cover here is how Swain convinietly ignore the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and his portrait of them as "valiant" fighter against a corrupt Western-backed regime. Swain like many of his fellow "journalists" at that time, was siken of the war and tries to actively end the war by painting a bleak picture about the non-communist and glorified the Marxist forces. Unfortunately the death of over 600,000 Vietnamese Boat People (as estimated by the UNHCR, 250,000 Vietnamese "Corrective Labor Reeducation" slaves and several millions Khmers prove that sometimes "Peace at Any Price" is worst than war, if the evil side wins.
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic, heart wrenching book.
Review: This brilliant memoir is most defintely a one-session book. Chronicling Swains early career as journalist in love with his precious Cambodia, through to the nightmare of Pol Pots year Zero, this book's impressions and visions will stay with you forever. It is utterly compelling and moving in the extreme.
Rating:
Summary: May whet your appetite for more
Review: Two decades after his experiences, British journalist Jon Swain reached for his pen -- or keyboard -- to pour his memories into a book. In today's over-saturation of commercial memoirs, surely yet another remembering is superfluous, especially one about the Vietnam War, a subject gnawed to the bone by thousands of other writers. But wait: his interest, Swain assures us, is less in war than in love. The book is about his enduring passion for the Mekong region and its long-suffering peoples who have kept their dignity in the pits of hell. It's around the Mekong that Swain witnessed humanity at its kindest and its most brutal all at the same time. Such is war. Swain writes evocatively and his book should serve as a handy introduction to Indochina and its travails for foreigners little in the know. But there's this, too, to say about "River of Time": rather than a panorama of scenes and events, Swain provides several vignettes of them (from Saigon at war to Phnom Penh at its fall to the Khmer Rouge and to Bangkok at peace from it all). And that's my gripe about "River of Time." Without clear guiding narrative strings and conclusions, it reads like several touched-up newspaper articles blended together and joined by only one unifying theme: Swain himself. Too bad, because the book is chock-full of revealing anecdotes, thanks to Swain's well-honed eye and prodigious memory (as well as contemporary diary notes). The stories about Vietnamese boat people's suffering at the hands of Thai fishermen-turned-pirates are perhaps the best in the whole book. But don't let me put you off an interesting, if somewhat lacking read. For all its flaws, "River of Time" is worth your money and time -- if only in whetting your appetite for other books about this hauntingly beautiful but deeply troubled land.
Rating:
Summary: A welcome addition to the field
Review: When I first became aware of Swain's book, my initial thought was, "Another war correspondent's attempt to cash in on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Indo-China." I bought the book, but more because of my current mania for the subject, not because I expected much out of it. Swain began to win me over right away. He begins the book with much the same sentiment as I expressed above. The author himself wonders what he can add to what's been written before. The answer is: A lot. Swain's style fits the subject: factual, but with humanity; horrified without being overwhelmed. The author's self-professed love for Indo-China is evident. The depth of his feelings enabled me to see and feel the end of Indo-China as it had been. The highlight of the book is the description of the fall of Phnom Penh and the immediate aftermath. I have read several accounts of these events, written by Cambodians and Westerners, and I have seen "The Killing Fields". None of those tellings hold a candle to Swain's description. The misery, chaos, horror, insanity, and inhumanity comes to life in his words. Swain's work takes it's place among the best of the field.
Rating:
Summary: A welcome addition to the field
Review: When I first became aware of Swain's book, my initial thought was, "Another war correspondent's attempt to cash in on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Indo-China." I bought the book, but more because of my current mania for the subject, not because I expected much out of it. Swain began to win me over right away. He begins the book with much the same sentiment as I expressed above. The author himself wonders what he can add to what's been written before. The answer is: A lot. Swain's style fits the subject: factual, but with humanity; horrified without being overwhelmed. The author's self-professed love for Indo-China is evident. The depth of his feelings enabled me to see and feel the end of Indo-China as it had been. The highlight of the book is the description of the fall of Phnom Penh and the immediate aftermath. I have read several accounts of these events, written by Cambodians and Westerners, and I have seen "The Killing Fields". None of those tellings hold a candle to Swain's description. The misery, chaos, horror, insanity, and inhumanity comes to life in his words. Swain's work takes it's place among the best of the field.
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