Customer Reviews

Echoes in Time (Time Traders)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I fell in love with Ross Murdoch many years ago as he snarled his way through TIME TRADERS. (I was fourteen; he was eighteen, or there about...a romance made in scifi heaven. Don't tell my husband!) I always greeted his reappearance in the sequels in Norton's Time Travel series with joyous daydreams. I thought he was rather sulky in KEY OUT OF TIME but I forgave him. FIREHAND, the book prior to ECHOES IN TIME, was a good read, if a bit poorly paced. Ross had finally grown up, matured and, in the end, married. It wasn't me, and I thought her rather cool but as I was a grandmother by this time, what could I do but bid Ross Godspeed and good luck. I was unaware that some evil power was planning to feature my hero in a BAD BOOK! ECHOES, unfortunately, takes all of FIREHAND'S weaknesses and magnifies them. The pacing is terrible; the plot can't decide whether it's about a marriage or a space adventure; and unlike, FIREHAND, I didn't like alot of the other characters. Which leaves me to wonder: how much of this was written by Norton and how much by Smith? Ms. Norton, if you're going to bequeath my Ross Murdoch to another author, please find one that can WRITE.

I had misgivings about reading this, as most of these dual author things are a disappointment. The previous one, FIREHAND, was terrible! This author was a far better match with Ms. Norton. The world was fascinating, and the characters finally took on some dimension. As for the writing, it was a relief to get away from the embarrassing cliches of FIREHAND. The pacing was slow, because there was so much explaining about past stories, but once that was over, and they got to the planet, it really picked up speed. I will buy any other books by these two authors.

For those who have read and enjoyed the early Time Trader books (The Time Traders, Galactic Derelict, The Defiant Agents, and Key Out of Time), this book will be an enjoyable extension, with just enough difference in emphasis to remind the reader that this is no longer Ms. Norton writing alone.

After some (somewhat slow) preliminaries that help re-establish this series into a somewhat more modern time frame of post-Cold War, the story picks up the loose ends left by Galactic Derelict, with a new expedition to the final destination of that book. Although their ostensible mission is to find the missing members of an earlier Russian exploration team, the book quickly turns to unraveling the mystery of how and why all the current time denizens of the planet appear to be devolved representatives of earlier highly civilized species.

The is the best aspect of this book, as in working out the mystery, there are some fascinating portrayals of multiple different species working within an overall society that may be the ultimate in enforced harmony. There is far more emphasis here on the real sciences of the cultural, anthropological, linguistic and biological variety than was present in the original books, and the basic plot provides for quite a bit of suspense and surprise, invigorating this tale with page-turning expectations. The mind-twisting consequences of time travel are reasonably worked out here, although without really answering the basic paradox inherent in time travel capabilities.

What isn't quite as good is the basic characterizations, usually one of Norton's stronger points. Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe don't quite seem to be the people they were in the earlier books, and most of the Russian contingent seem very sketchily drawn. Murdock's relationship with his new wife Eveleen seems very artificial. However, Saba, a new character for this book, is very competently drawn, and she pretty much carries the book.

Stylistically, this book tends to more complex vocabulary and sentence structure than Ms. Norton normally uses, which I have to attribute to her collaborator. This added complexity seems to help add some muscle and a believable tone to the story.

A competent tale and a worthy new entry to the Time Trader series, a series that helped establish Norton as one of the premier writers in the SF field long before women writers became fashionable.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

It seems necessary to have read a previous book to fully appreciate this novel. The opening chapters make continual references to previous action. The first half of the book develops the characters, and almost entirely deals with interactions between individuals in a group. The book starts out slow-paced and it was difficult to hold my interest. The team of individuals finally arrives on an alien planet in Chapter 11, their mission to travel back in time on the planet to attempt the rescue of another team that has disappeared in the past, discover the origin of artifacts, etc. The pace of the action picks up when they go back in time, and it becomes hard to put the book down as they unravel the mystery of the planet and determine the fate of the missing team. They also encouter the paradox of time travel, i.e., some things exist in the present because time travelers from the present visited the past to create what is found in the present.

Time Agents Ross Murdoch and Eveleen Riorden are enjoying their honeymoon at the home of fellow agent Gordon Ashe in Safe Harbor, Maine when the emergency call came. The next day a helicopter arrives to take them back to the Project Star Center.

When the newlyweds arrive at the home base, they are introduced to Colonel Zinaida Vasilyeva of the rival Russians. Zinaida explains that a scientific team jumped back in time on the planet Yilayil and vanished. A combined American-Russian team will be sent back to land one century past the date the Russian scientists leaped. Ross, Eveleen, Ashe, and the Russian are to learn what happened and whether the malevolent Baldies are involved in radically changing this planet.

Andre Norton & Sherwood Smith continue to revive Ms. Norton's classic science fiction series. The duo successfully "modernized" the Solar Queen novels and now turns to the Time Traders books. ECHOES OF TIME is an entertaining tale that stays with the essence of the original series, but updates the Cold War rivalry into a more nineties perspective. Though needed, this technique slows the tale down a bit until the time travelers begin their journey into the past as the plot turns into a science fiction mystery. At that point in time, the novel turns into an exciting adventure that will electrify fans of the grandmaster Ms. Norton and have new readers search for some of the original tales.

Harriet Klausner

This is the 6th book in the Time Traders series, and the 2nd to be written by a "guest author". The 5th, Firehand, was an incompetent mess, with another author's poor effort hastily and poorly adapted to this series.

In "Echoes in Time", Sherwood Smith has recaptured a spark in the series not really evident since the 2nd book, as Norton herself failed to really make much of the 3rd and 4th books.

"Echoes" returns to the planet found in book 2, and delves into its history in an attempt to connect some dots to explain what might have happened between the ancient space faring empire and the ruins and degenerate species of the present.

I believe Smith adapted a idea of hers to this story that wasn't originally intended as a Time Traders story, but here she competently worked her idea into Norton's original framework. (In Firehand, the "guest author" adapted an already written, and very poor, book by globally replacing some character names and inserting poorly conceived first and last chapters to 'make' a Time Traders book).

The story and setting are interesting, nothing is ineptly forced into the characterizations, and a healthy sense of mystery is maintained regarding multiple plot elements.

The plotting does break down a bit towards the end. Plotting elements in the portion of the book set in the past are inconsistent with the circumstances in the character's 'home' time period.

Also, Smith goes for the 'big concept' ending and falls quite a bit shy of the mark. Some of these authors have a bit of a hard time understanding potential time travel situations, or at least explaining their concept of those situations to the reader. Smith had that problem, either missing the point on a late time travel episode in the book, or adequately explaining why her plotting made sense in the face of what anyone but the characters involved in the story would have done to act more sensibly.

If you were a fan of the early books in the series, you will likely find this the best of the series, even tho I doubt that Norton did more than contribute her name for the marketing splash. Unfortunately, Smith's follow up in Book Seven ("Atlantis Endgame") really isn't worth reading unless you are just a rabid fan of the series and can obtain it for free.

I usually avoid these collaborations because I've found them so disappointing in the past, but I love Norton's work, and I recently discovered Sherwood Smith's work, so I gave this one a try. So glad I did! The aliens are fascinating, but even better, there are no obvious bad guys. Everyone has a real motivation, even the evil old Baldies! This is one collaboration that makes both writers look good.

After reading "Firehand", I was really looking forward to reading "Echoes in Time". "Firehand" was a continuation of the characters I had grown up reading. When "Echoes" came out I was looking forward to more of the same. Not So. Anyone who had read "Galactic Derelict" would have some pretty serious questions as to how we could have arrived at the story of "Echoes". And where was Andre Norton as her characters were being cut up into minor background players? I could detect no trace of her hand in this. This story did nothing to answer the questions of the much older story and left considerable questions to be answered from its own content. Like, what just happened? Even rereading it with the mindset of letting it stand on its own did'nt help. All in all a very confusing mish-mash of a story that never would have been purchased but for it's connection to Norton and her older stories. Sherwood Smith was quite good in the Solar Queen stories and I expected better this time around. Oh well, I suppose you can't get it right every time. Will I continue to look forward to more of these collaberations? Yes. I'll just look at them with more of a caveat from now on. And who knows, maybe Sherwood Smith will improve as a comfort level with the characters develops.

This is the only truly dull book with Andre Norton's name on it that I have ever read. In so far as I was able to grasp the plot, the time travelers (only one of whom is partially described) have gone to a planet where a Russian team vanished. This is supposed to be an urgent, emergency mission although that makes no sense if they are time travellers. For some reason, not explained, they go to a time a hundred years AFTER the disappearance. They visit a city that is not described at all, a city inhabited by strange races that are not described, they meet people there who are not described, they conveniently get jobs with no questions although they must resemble none of the people there. One of their party is incarcerated in a House of Knowledge or something like that which is not explained though the characters seem to know something about it. In fact the characters and the author, no doubt, seem to know what this whole story is about although they do not communicate their vision to the reader. This is too silly even for science fiction. I fell asleep on page 173 so I cannot say how it ended, nor do I care. It is that bad. I gave it one star because the program wouldn't let me give it anything less.

I have been enjoying Andre Norton since 1964.I love her story telling.This book trashed the Time Traders stories.The story does not deal with the people that I've come to know in Andre Norton's stories but Sherwood Smith's own little people who have taken over. After PM Griffin I had great hope for these adventures. But if Sherwood Smith(three times I've tried) name is on anymore of Andre Norton's books I will not buy them.