Customer Reviews

The Ocean of Years (The Chronicles of Solace, Book 2)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you can get past the fact that Allen has a habit of being repetitive, especially considering no one is reading the second book if they have not read the first, then you can enjoy this as the best and most interesting of the three in the series.

Of all three books, here we get to really see Allen's vision of the future, how humanity has stagnated and the populace has ignored the clues to the impending crisis. The most enjoyable section of the book was the image and description of The Permanent Physical Collection, the housing of all the books in a giant space habitat orbiting Neptune. As has been discussed in tech circles and other sci-fi books, the weakest link in our push towards a total digital age is being able to store the original source material in accessible form, ie paper.

The failed terraforming experiment of Mars was also an enjoyable read, as Koffield and Norla go searching through the suppressed technology hidden by the time patrol. Finally, after playing Wile E Coyote to DeSilvo's roadrunner, Koffield finally catches up with DeSilvo, but of course, we are left to a resolution in the third book.

The book/series certainly have some weak points. Many of the themes are common in other sci-fi stories, Allen really could have told the story in two books, and whatever issues you want to throw into a book with some form of time travel. However, despite those weaknesses, the story is compelling, and I found myself extremely interested in two of the three main characters, Koffield and Norla.

As an aside, Greg Bridges did the artwork on the cover of the book, which I enjoyed so much I found his website and ordered a print. He does many sci-fi covers and in my opinion is one of the best along with Jim Burns.

Picking up where "The Depths of Time" left off, "The Ocean of Years" forms the second part of Allen's "Chronicles of Solace" and sends Admiral Koffield and the crew of the Dom Pedro IV hurrying back to the Solar System to find word of Oskar deSilvo's whereabouts.

Allen's universe here revolves around an Earth and its colonies linked together by a series of timeshaft wormholes: that is, a series of fixed-distance wormholes through time that allow ships (none of which are capable of faster-than-light travel) to objectively experience a hundred-plus year trip through time in a subjective period of days or weeks. The concept is a bit complex (requiring a chart and full-page explanation at the start of each book), but comes off as oddly plausible once you think through the myriad implications of the system - which Allen seems to do well.

In this trilogy, outer terraformed colonies are beginning to die and the only answers as to why are linked with their terraformer - Oskar deSilvo. A man thought dead halfway through the first book, he is hiding in an undisclosed location having provided, essentially, a maze for the crew of the Dom Pedro IV to run to find him. Taking them the libraries orbiting Neptune to Earth to the long-ruined, fungally-overgrown Mars, the book is essentially a series of mysteries laid out and solved by the crew in their attempt to not only find out where deSilvo is, but what implications his pre-hibernation discoveries have for the worlds colonized by Earth.

While this book makes an excellent middle chapter in the trilogy - building on the first one and naturally extrapolating much higher stakes for the third, it does suffer from a few small problems. One is that it's virtually impossible to understand if you haven't read "The Depths of Time". While he tries to being new readers up to speed, he does so over the first hundred or so pages of the book, creating a bit of a jumble in terms of the action occurring. I found even having read the first book six or nine months ago, I was getting lost having forgotten many of the main details. Likewise, his pacing occasionally suffers from unpredictable stutters. Stylistically, it lags or surges forward at odd times. There were parts in the middle - and near the end that dragged by as you waited for characters to move on to the next key. In the same way, occasional pieces of the puzzle were laid out only to be immediately solved by the characters - not giving the reader a chance to try to stay one jump ahead of the mystery.

Nonetheless, though, this is still an outstanding book. His universe is based on a novel idea and is well extrapolated from that point. The shadowy, background villains stay suitably shadowy and a good sense of paranoia slowly infuses the book. If you read - and enjoyed - "The Depths of Time", definitely give this one ago (after having, perhaps, flipped through the first again). If not, go back and pick up "The Depths of Time"; it's worth the read.

Number 2 in the Chronicles of Solace, this continues in the world of the 54th century, where humans have terraformed over 50 worlds, but the total human population is only one billion, with half that on Earth. Space travel is via the novel method of covering half the distance to a destination at 0.1C, ducking into a wormhole to a distance in the past equal to the entire trip length, then finishing the second half at 0.1C again, so that you arrive about the time you left.

So far, so good. But the entire story is spent chasing the villain, who supposedly destroyed the terraforming on one world, botched another, destroyed a wormhole, and left clues all over space to lead our heroes on a interstellar scavenger hunt. The clues are lame. One based on a Shakespeare quote would be opaque to 99% of people today (its usually misquoted), let alone to people in another 3,300 years. All the activity happens at the author's whim, not to any serious plan.

The author tells us that terraforming cannot succeed, and all the colonies are going to die. An extremely unlikely scenario given millenia of research. We are shown an uber-library in orbit of Neptune, but with few exceptions the design of the library seems more 19th century than modern. We are shown a terraforming failure on Mars, where mutant mold eats everything, yet the quarantine of the planet is so lame our villein and the heroes both sneak in and out with little trouble.

The technology just isn't convincing. The players actions aren't convincing. For example, would you go land on a hostile planet without so much as a pocket knife for tools? The villain isn't convincing, No matter how big his ego.

I predict that the third book will introduce the miraculously discovered FTL drive, heal all the planets, vindicate the villain and the hero, and all will live happily ever after.

Anton Koffield and the crew of the merchant vessel Dom Pedro IV have been stranded uptime due to the machinations of the terraformist Oskar DeSilvo. DeSilvo led the effort to terraform the planet Solace more than two hundred years prior. Now Solace is in the midst of an ecological and climactic collapse. Koffield, and those working with him, discover that the collapse of the planet Solace is but one piece to a puzzle that has ramifications throughout all of settled space. But DeSilvo, believed to be dead for a century is very much alive, and has left clues to his whereabouts so that Koffield and those working with him can find him. And what DeSilvo intends to show Koffield could not only save the planet Solace from further collapse, but could change the course of human history.

The Ocean of Years is a much better novel than its predecessor, The Depths of Time. The plot is developed in a much more precise and focused way (the author makes it clear that the story is not about whether DeSilvo is alive or not, he obviously is, but about determining what he knows and why he has done what he has done) and even moves along at a pace that permits easy-reading. But the really important difference between this novel and its predecessor is that The Ocean of Years actually has characters that are worth reading about. The characterization in The Depths of Time was poor...to put it mildly. But in this novel, Koffield and much of the crew of the Dom Pedro IV actually feel real enough to keep turning the pages...a pleasant change from The Depths of Time's cardboard, two-dimensional, boring, just-there-to-move-what-felt-like-a-subpar plot along characterizations.

In all honesty, after The Depths of Time, I am surprised I picked up its sequel...but I did, and the reward was a novel whose plot moves along at a clip that promotes the idea of turning pages, and characterizations that serve a story that is interesting enough for a trilogy, but not at all presented well in the first novel. The Ocean of Years is recommended to anyone who has the gumption to get through The Depths of Time.

I feel strongly that Mr. Allen's work in this series, and in both of these volumes is some of the best writing I have seen in a long long time. It excells not only as masterly work in the genre but also as truly visionary and extremely thoughtful work concerning possible ecological and social challenges facing human society not in the future, but Today! The careful, and sensitve development of all the major characters are also of a high quality. Each and every main character and even the secondary ones are fully realized, the author has thoughtfully considered each of them, and woven them into a tapestry of realism which evokes the time and situation that the story is based on. Actions, dialog, descriptions of settings, passage of time, and the complexity and paradoxes of ordinary lived life are all realized throughout this work with a masterful touch.

The descriptive prose moved easily, and with poise and grace from location to location, and the scope of a universe which we in our modern world can only glimpse is a reality of real challenges, limits, dangers, and disapointments. Beneath the plot runs a deep concern with the limits and dangers of excessive technology. I would ask that this be declared mandatory reading for all high governmental officials, science leaders and especially students and faculty of ecological study and research institutions.

The plot thoroughly entertains, and moves and beckons to the reader, and the frustrations, fears and hopes of the characters are drawn with a careful eye to detail and to humanity. I find in this book a maturity and a sensitivity that is lacking in most other leading names of the genre, where too often cheap and shallow militarism, violence and incongruous simplistic good versus bad space soap opera limit the literature and the authors' vision. I cannot truly say that there are any better authors writing today, some are Allen's equal, but he has no superiors in a critical and essential topic: the role of human society in the natural environment, and the limits imposed by the inexonerable laws of nature. These laws, complex, subtle and fundamental, require that we as a species rise to the challenges set by our desires, and needs with worthwhile contributions of our own. Allen offers the encouraging figures of Koffield, Norla, and others who show their determination and hope not in grandiose gestures, but in steady, constant, very human effort. In this fine book, and series, events change and are changed by the people involved in them, and results are never certain, yet always to be strived for. I look forward to a long and fruitful career for Mr. Allen, and believe that his critics, like Koffield's will be silenced in the end by the fundamental and undeniable quality of insight applied with veracity, vision and compassion.

Finally, in work of this genre, and in fiction, the author must first and foremost evoke and create an environment in which the characters and their story is real, and for which there are realistic paths that they can follow. In the very best fiction, the story constantly creates echos and resonance with the real reality that the reader inhabits. It is the interchange that occurs both on the conscious level and sub consiously that can bring not only entertainment but also insight bringing awareness that the reader develops in his or her own mind and thoughts. This book and this series that Allen is masterfully creating is a classic and a resource for us and our culture in our own time. I reccomend this work and this author and congratulate him on his achievement.

In the far distant future, mankind has been able to terraform whole planets so that humans could colonize them. Oskar DeSilvo is credited as the genius who brought this process about but Anton Koffield declares that the terraforming project is breaking down and if they don't evacuate the planet millions will die.

Although the authorities have proof that DeSilvo is still alive and has technologies that will save mankind, the authorities want proof that the terraforming project is imperfect. Koffield and his associates travel through a time wormhole one hundred years in the past to locate DeSilvo, get the technology, including the FTL drive and save the future. Koffield also wants vengeance on the man who destroyed his career.

THE OCEAN OF YEARS is high tech science fiction at its very best. The time travel operation, intricate to the story line, is both easy to understand and makes sense even if one is not a quantum physicist. The hero is a driven man, whom seems to place honor above all else, making him the implacable enemy of the antagonist. Yet it is his thirst for vengeance that ultimately leaves readers to wonder whether humanity will survive (at least this novel). Fans of Arthur C. Clarke will love this book.

Harriet Klausner

Unfortunately the other 200+ pages make it a long and boring read.

I first encountered Roger MacBride Allen when I read 'Allies and Aliens' some years back. It was a great read and since that time I've often looked for other titles by him when browsing for books. When I spotted 'The Depths of Time' (henceforth TDOT) several months back, I picked it up immediately. It was very disappointing -- if you haven't read the reviews on that book, I recommend doing so before you buy this one (or buying TDOT if it's not too late). That novel had all of the same problems that this one does -- way too many pages for the storyline and the interest level is all or nothing. Both are largely filled with highly detailed and very uninteresting fluff, alleviated every once in a while by a few pages where something actually happens. Both spend time detailing information about politics and conspirators -- which never end up connecting back with the storyline.

The obvious question then becomes -- if I was so disappointed with volume one -- why get volume two? I bought this book for two reasons. First -- TDOT had such an incomplete and unsatisfying ending that I really wanted to find out what the final resolution was going to be -- I *hate* not knowing the ending to a story. Second -- I had enjoyed my first MacBride experience with 'Allies and Aliens' so much that I was hoping that TDOT was simply a fluke and that with the storyline now set up, the follow-on book would be considerably more interesting and loose ends from the first book would be neatly connected. I was very wrong. 'The Ocean of Years' is, if anything, even more long-winded and boring than TDOT. The ending is, if anything, even more unsatisfying and loose ends have expanded geometrically. However -- as much as I hate not finishing all the books in a trilogy -- I won't be purchasing the third book: 'The Shores of Tomorrow'.

Both books (and probably the third as well) should have been massively trimmed and either released all as a single volume or at the most as a duology. The basic concepts are interesting, the universe believable, but there's simply not enough story for the amount of pages being used to tell it.