The Infinite Sea (Chaos Chronicles) [Paperback]

Jeffrey A. Carver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1997 | Series: Chaos Chronicles (Book 3)

Since John Bandicut saved Earth from collision with a comet in Neptune Crossing and saved Shipworld from the boojum of Strange Attractors, his life has become one confrontation with chaos after another.

No sooner has he survived a harrowing escape from Shipworld than he and his eclectic band of aliens find themselves struggling to survive beneath the waves of a distant ocean world. They quickly discover they are not alone. A race of deep-sea humanoid amphibians, the Neri, are in trouble of their own. Long under attack by beings from the surface, they now face an even greater peril from the seafloor depths, a powerful force known as the Maw of the Abyss.

If Bandicut cannot solve the riddle of the Maw, the Neri's beleaguered world will die. And Bandicut and his friends will die with it.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Interstellar troubleshooter John Bandicut returns for an amiably routine third installment (after Strange Attractors) in Carvel's Chaos Chronicles, journeying to a world where the dominant civilization, the Neri, live under the sea. There, Bandicut and his motley crew (comprised of three aliens, two robots and an artificial intelligence in Bandicut's brain), aided by "translator-stones" that let him communicate with other species, deal with two menaces: the Astari, land-dwelling survivors of a crashed starship, and the Maw of the Abyss, a sapient interstellar portal that has accidentally endangered the planet while trying to repair itself. The witty tale moves briskly, as Bandicut and company solve one puzzle after another, but the multiplicity of technological marvels leaves many of them underdeveloped or implausible. Flavorless dialogue, moreover, undermines not only the wit but the characterization, particularly of the aliens. Loyal fans of the series should enjoy this competent, but by no means exceptional, work.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This hard-science adventure follows, John Bandicut, interstellar troubleshooter; his three alien partners; and two sentient robots to a world made mostly of water. A deadly turbulent force, the Maw of the Abyss, threatens a race of intelligent amphibians who live in an undersea city. Great interaction among the partners and the amphibians recommends this for sf collections, especially those collecting the series.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction (September 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812535170
• ISBN-13: 978-0812535174
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,807 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kindle readers: Would you like a glimpse behind the scenes of my writing of The Chaos Chronicles? The ebook versions of Neptune Crossing, Strange Attractors, and The Infinite Sea now include all-new Afterwords--my reflections on the evolution of the series and my experience in writing each book. I've kept the prices low on these editions to encourage you to give them a try if you're new to my work. I hope you enjoy them!

Here's a little about me:

A Midwesterner by birth and upbringing (I grew up in Huron, Ohio), I've lived in New England ever since attending college at Brown University, in Rhode Island. Now I live outside Boston with my wife and daughters, and also with a boxer named Hermione and a cat named Moonlight.

I've loved science fiction since I first began to read, and from the time I began writing, I always knew my first love was going to be SF. I'm not sure where you'd place me as a writer: I love astronomy and cosmology and hard SF concepts, and yet the characters are the most important thing to me in any story, whether it's a story I'm reading or a story I'm writing. It's the people, and the sense of wonder, that have always made science fiction--and science!--so awe-inspiring to me. Basically, I have always tried to write stories that I would want to read myself.

Some years ago, I developed and hosted on the air an educational TV series fo r middle-school classrooms, called Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy--teaching kids the basics of how to turn ideas into stories. That later turned into a computer-based course called, oddly enough, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. In 2005, I decided it was about time to put the information online as a public service, available for free to any aspiring writer. It's online now, and you can use it anytime you like, just by going to http://www.writesf.com.

I also invite you to stop by and read my regular blog, at http://starrigger.blogspot.com, or my web site at http://www.starrigger.net.

Thanks for visiting! And please take a look at the video trailer for my novel Sunborn. If you'd like to view it in full-screen for full effect, you can do that at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K03RMcSeiY4.

--Jeffrey A. Carver

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A story without an ending, June 30, 2002

By 

Dancerman "dob1939" (Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Infinite Sea (Chaos Chronicles) (Paperback)

I like to read a series like The Chaos Chronicles in a reasonably short time span order to keep closely in mind the character development and the story line(s). I usually aggregate all the books in a series before I start the first book. Over a 3 week period, I first read Neptune Crossing (4 stars), then Strange Attractors (3 stars), and finally The Infinite Sea (4 stars, but could have been 5 stars). Unfortunately, I discovered at the very end of The Infinite Sea more Chronicles were planned, however, they were never written/published. As a result readers are left (now six years after the last Chronicle was written) with a cliff hanger with several story lines developed but not concluded. I can not reward the author for leaving the readers without tying up loose ends, nor would I be impressed with new Chronicles to appear in the future when most readers will be hard pressed to remember charater development and story lines several years forgotten. Unlike another reveiwer, I feel the sexual uncertainity/tension between Antares and John was a valuable story line to the last two books in the series.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars still good, September 2, 2003

By 

IHiJump "ihijump" (Arkansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Infinite Sea (Chaos Chronicles) (Paperback)

The Infinite Sea is not my favorite of the three to date but it is still a good book.

Carver changes scenery a bit and builds a lovely underwater civilization. The concept of an engineered species used to exploit the ocean's resources is interesting and gave a good twist to the story.

The one thing that nagged at me as I read this book was why the aliens who had crash-landed on this world and were living amongst the above-water cities (ruins) never found any evidence or information about the engineered civilization in the ruins of their creators. BUT... I ignored that and kept reading.

So, while waiting on the next three books to come I'll go back and familarize myself with the Star Rigger universe.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great reading..., February 22, 2002

By 

Kevin (Akron, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Infinite Sea (Chaos Chronicles) (Paperback)

not really much to say here...just great reading, i read this before i read the first 2, i loved it, you really get attached to the characters, and it has a brilliant plot, this is easily the best book i have ever read.