Customer Reviews

Thunder of Time

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

 

 

I'll be the first to admit that yes, this story relies heavily on formula...but it's a formula that WORKS...so WHO CARES?? I was first introduced to James F. David when I discovered his original 'Footprints of Thunder' quite a few years ago in a Vancouver, Washington mall. It looked JUST interesting enough to get me through my then dry-spell of lame books I had been reading while waiting for something new to read by one of my already established favorite authors. It didn't take long to discover that 'Footprints' was something different. I was hoping for something that would fill the gap until Crichton released his sequel to 'Jurassic Park'...what I GOT was a dinosaur-themed novel that was ANYTHING but a copy of anything written by anyone else.

Jump ahead a few years. I have since read EVERYTHING by this amazingly talented and VERY creative author (my favorite of which is 'Before The Cradle Falls'--you HAVE to read it) and I had heard rumors that a sequel to 'Footprints' was a possibility. I had the opportunity to interview Mr. David a few years ago and I asked him about it, and he said that while originally he never had any plans to write one, after some interesting events, an idea sparked and it just MAY happen...well here we are several years later and I finally got my wish.

Two of my very favorite subjects in ALL of fictional literature is Dinosaurs AND Time Travel. David handled the time travel aspect with absolute style in 'Before the Cradle Falls' and wondered if he could manage to pull it off here with dinorsaurs, and I gotta tell you that, YES, he does. The idea behind how the 'Quilts' from the past intersected with the present as a result of nuclear detonations is unique and creative to say the least--and whether or not the science is even remotely accurate is not even on my radar as far as I'm concerned. I just want a story to entertain me, and that is EXACTLY what this story does. Again, the story really was formula in many parts, but you know what? I discovered that I didn't care. The overall story was so dang original that whatever formula that was used to convey it was just not that important...and while this bothered some readers, I found that to me it simply did not matter. The plot moves and moves F-A-S-T for most of the novel and taking us from Central America to the moon and back so quickly takes a careful hand, and for MY money, I believe Mr. David has written JUST what I wanted to read at just the right moment. For those who are overly critical of storylines, maybe you should skip this one...however if you can sit back and enjoy a novel for what it was intended to do (namely entertain), this is a wonderful discovery. I found that once again, I am anxiously waiting for yet another story from Mr. David. Unlike James Patterson who can produce a novel almost every time he sneezes, David works a tad slower--but the end results are far more enjoyable...which is fine with me.

If you like dino's you will certainly like this book.Its full of action and mystery.I found it deep and I needed to really be focused compared to other books.Great fun,action,mystery and adventure for me.

Thunder of Time is the sequel to the same author's Footprint of Thunder, published a few years ago. Although it features a few characters of the previous book (Ripman and John), most of the other characters are brand new.

The story leads the reader through a heavily transformed Earth, a heritage from the first book's nuclear blasts, both from History (WWII, Cold War blasts) and from the US' decision to get rid of the time quilts. As a result, entire places are inhabited by dinosaurs on today's Earth. But since the events narrated in Footprint of Thunder, humankind has managed to somewhat get used to cohabiting with the mighty lizards. They are parked, nurtured, protected, grown and respected in giant natural reserves. To the extent that an extremist animal-right movement starts plotting on getting back to an Earth in which people would be living with animals on the same, equal basis. Noble thoughts, dire plans. In order to do so, they must take control of a secret research facility in Alaska in which the US government is working on a new energy that has the potential of modifying time and space. Also, their ideals are far from pure, in a typical human way. In their path, they will encounter a fragmented group of scientists, with very different motives, that have understood how evil the "back to the roots, let's happily live with our brothers animals" group's intents are. Where the first book was intently focused on the day to day survival struggle of a few human beings among dinosaurs, this book is far more science-related and embraces a far broader, global, all-encompassing perspective on the events unfolding.

Let's stop narrating the plot here and let's focus on what worked -or not- in the book.

Primarily, any book that features, like this one, an encounter between the two most powerful species that have ever inhabited the Earth deserves attention. Humankind Vs Dinosaurs. Intelligence Vs sheer Power. Thunder of Time delivers truckloads of confrontations. It becomes quickly clear that, in spite of their weapons, human beings are almost powerless against the mighty lizards. Their only skill is their brain and their capability to adapt. One of the opening chapters of the book features a very interesting action, set in Alaska. A dog-pulled sled is inadvertently confronted to a group of fierce Raptors in the cold of winter. This encounter is brilliantly written and, to some extent, is believable. In short, most of the gruesome encounters are appealing. It is so refreshing to see human beings struggling for their own survival in a place where they are no longer the ruling predator! A real lesson in humility.

Bits and pieces of genuine data on dinosaurs litter the book too. For one, I discovered -but is it true?- that some of the powerful giants' central nervous system could not get the input to a bite or touch of its tail to its tiny brain before an amazing 8 seconds... True or not, this characterizes the giants and could have been used to a greater potential by the author.

Also, with a few exceptions, the characters are well rendered. They have distinct personalities, mostly Ripman, Emmerett, John and Nick -all male characters. Female characters get a lower lever of "scrutiny" and lack personality depth.

But what bothered me most was the extent of the time travel complexity. After a while, it becomes difficult to follow the action in terms of causes and effects, with so many groups traveling in time -and space-, with distinct linear times. It is just too much. From a logical standpoint, I am not sure that the actions undertaken by each of the group, in each of the time eras, in each of the places -pardon the complexity of this sentence!- are truly compatible with each other. Plus, the electronic devices used by the characters as "maps" don't make any sense to me, nor is it clear how the computers used by Kenny could have survived so long in such a harsh environment. Beyond the complexity of time travel, the headline preceding each chapter are not welcome additions. They rarely add anything to the story, even slowing down the pace. It would have been interesting for the author to limit these statements to real citations, to put some further credence to his views.

It's not sure that this book is the actual end of the "saga". There might be a third one. I would buy it of course, but let's hope that the author puts less unwelcome complexity in his story and focuses more on the man-to-animal relationship -read Human Vs Dinosaurs instead...

Thunder of Time is the sequel to Footprints of Thunder, a story in which the nuclear weapons tested in the fifties come back to haunt modern society. The early nuclear testing caused microscopic black holes to form which propagate "time waves" which, when they intersect, cause geographic areas to shift in time. In the first novel, these times waves create a "time quilt" as patches of modern earth are replaced with land from the Cretaceous period creating a checkerboard Earth, mostly as we know it, but now with the occassional big chunk of dinosaur infested areas. Portland and Atlanta disappear into the past, and dinosaurs start roaming freely through our modern time.

Thunder of Time takes up ten years after the initial time quilt. The time waves, initially thought to be stabilized, are again creating more temporal dislocations, although this time the patches of dislocated Earth are nearer and nearer to our own modern period. Most of the survivors of the first novel reappear here as they try to discover why the time quilting has started again, what the mysterious structure on the moon has to do with the new problem, and why there is a previously undiscovered Mayan temple in the Yucatan also affecting the time waves.

The novel has all the predictable tyrannosaur and velociraptor confrontations ala Jurassic Park that you would expect, but throws in time travel, space travel, and nuclear warfare too. This adventure novel kept me reading through the beginning and midparts to the point where it was difficult to put down, but I found myself losing interest near the end as the plot lines became more fantastic and unrealistic and my suspended disbelief began to fail. The time-quilting more or less follows the Hollywood version of time; first there were dinosaurs, then big scary mammals, then primitive society circa 1300 AD, not realizing how long these periods really lasted and how brief, chronologically, the period of man is. From a story-telling perspective it may be attractive to jumble all this together but from a math perspective time simply doesn't line up that nicely. I would have bought it except for the author failed to provide any rationale for the huge skips in time.

There were also some substantial characterization problems of the "show don't tell" variety. Every character, when introduced, is immediately followed by a paragraph long physical description, which is just lazy, annoying writing. Moreover the characters were ultimately not believable. There were many irritating passages wherein individuals were more interested in flirting with each other than in reacting to life and death situations. Moments before they were in perilous situations with man-eating dinosaurs, the bodies of their friends are still lying around, the wounded are dying, they have just discovered the improbable means of walking from the moon to the Earth, so now is the perfect time to put the move on the cute blonde? Yes, humans have strong sex drives, but in life and death situations and when facing paradigm shifting new science and technology we tend to give it a break for a few minutes and pay more attention to the velociraptor waiting to chew our face off or the stunning new technology that no one could imagine. But no, together with these situations we are treated to fashion descriptions of red tank tops, underwear, and overall cut-offs.

The villains in the book were also a bit hard to swallow, a bunch of greenpeace types who had little compunction about murdering people but foibles about shooting a velociraptor that is attacking them. Yes, there are people like that, but where this becomes a problem was that the book gave most of them Ph.D.'s and concentrated them in one scientific outpost. In a random sampling of twenty people you will find a nutcase, but having 15 out of twenty be nutjobs, with the same psychoses, and with advanced educations which ordinarily teaches one to question assumptions and to not ignore inconvenient facts, snapped my credulity. I could live with one or two, but not the majority of a random sampling. The most noble people in the whole book were a group of Spetsnaz commandos, which, while fun, was also fairly improbable. Nothing against the Spetsnaz, they're tough guys, but they were a little too warm and fuzzy and not nearly as ruthless as they are actually trained to be.

Overall, I found myself reading through this and enjoying the beginning of the book but I actually put it down about 40 pages from the end and can't really be bothered to finish it. Whatever it had to start with fails near the end with the improbability of the story and the characters by that point. I've never not finished a book when I have gone that far but with this one I really just didn't care. I think if you like this author's earliler works you'll like this book too though, just be prepared to push a little bit at the end to get through it. If you haven't read him before, or if you like dinosaurs and adventure stories, especially the ones where the monsters are smarter than the people, you'll like this. It's a bit like Matthew Reilly, but without the frenetic pace, not as much action, and much less intelligent characters. It's also a bit like James Rollins but without the superhuman protagonists and less research into the science. The book was decent at the beginning, if you can forgive a few problems, and I did enjoy it for the first half, especially for a scene in Alaska with an Iditarod dog crew.

Unlike "Footprints of Thunder," this book is more about time travel than it is about dinosaurs running amok. It was like reading "Back to the Future" gone haywire, without the characters managing to tie up all the loose ends and make everything right again. Personally, I think the book got a bit weird at some points. It didn't grab me as well as the first book did, which kept me up until 7 a.m. finishing it. I read this one sporadically over a few days. About three quarters in, I was having a hard time keeping a grasp on what exactly was going on with all of the different time periods and alternate realities that were happening all at the same time.

However, those of you who loved the first book may be glad to know that most of the characters from "Footprints of Thunder" show up in this one, as well. The insight to how the familiar characters had coped and gone on with their lives a decade later was interesting. Of course, there were plenty of new characters, so don't expect this to be a simple continuation of book one. Furthermore, James F. David has such a grasp on the human psyche. All of the characters, both old and new, were so believable and were such individuals. They get you taking sides, or rolling your eyes, or really hoping someone will hit them and knock some sense into them. They're really quite real. This book is worth the read just for the sake of the quality characterization.

There isn't such a large volume of plot points in this book as there were in the previous one, so it's a bit easier to follow, at least at first until the time traveling chaos occurs. Also, the author doesn't jump plots as often from chapter to chapter, so he really lets you get sucked into whatever action is going on with one set of characters. Unlike the previous book, there are no "extra" or "unnecessary" plots, and they are also all connected to one another.

I guess there really isn't much else to say, except that this book was really really good! It clears up the questions you may have been wondering about from "Footprints of Thunder," though I found the ending a little abrupt and thought there could have been a little more detail. But overall, I still loved it!

As truly mediocre writers go, James David is at the top of his field. He's never met a modifier he couldn't dangle; conjunctions and punctuation have no truck with one another in his world; and the difference between adverbs and adjectives is the kind of nit-picking he just doesn't have time for. That pairs of characters stop for a moment--as their colleagues and friends are being devoured by velociraptors all around them--to "kiss deeply and promise never again to part" doesn't strike David as a plotting problem. Nor does he shy away from giving his non-white characters "ethnic" speech and embarrassingly stereotyped behaviors, and his ability to write convincing dialogue is right up there with ... well, no, actually, he doesn't have the ability to write convincing dialogue. What's more, he knows just enough science to be dangerous (if you happen to know any more than him, this book will be a torture and it'd be better if you left it alone). In short, he's a typical Tor writer. For all its apparent success as a supplier of genre fiction, Tor apparently doesn't waste its money on editors. On the positive side, at least you always know what you're getting with Tor's thriller/sci-fi offerings--mega-action; abundant, gratuitous splatter; and prose in which the universe is often multidimensional but the characters never are. All of that said, I must grudgingly admit that most of Thunder of Time is a very fun ride (though David pretty much pulls the ending out of his butt)--good beach or before-bed reading, in particular, or at other periods in which your attention level is low enough that a lot of the foolishness just rolls off. I like books like that and--given the amount of stress we live with every day--at times I even need them. So good for David and good for Tor. I remain unclear why being a genre writer requires an author to treat the English language as though he were a T. rex and it was a medium-sized herbivore, but that's a mystery I'm apparently going to have to take to the grave.

Radical environmentalist Vince Walters has gained quite a following with his belief that science can rewrite the past and create Gardens of Eden. He and his loyal minion begin the process of changing time to achieve heaven on earth. Director of the Office of Security Science Nick Paulson and his staff must prevent Walters from causing anymore chaos as fooling with the past changes the present and future never in the manner that the time modifier expects. Nick must battle fundamentally true believers who ignore anything that impedes on their truth.

Though experienced with time warps and other paradoxes from his dinosaur days of a decade ago (see FOOTPRINTS OF THUNDER) Nick assumes that by studying the causes and effects of three recently developed anomalies, he will learn how to repair the world damaged by what Walters has wrought. However, he also knows that time is running out on him at an increasingly geometric pace. Thus Nick must learn what he can at a crater on the moon, in Alaska and in the Yucatan Peninsula because at these three sites lie the answers to return the time continuum to some sort of norm, whatever that is.

THUNDER OF TIME is a faster than the speed of light science fiction thriller starring a hero who knows what he must do to save the world but not how to achieve this. The action keeps coming at a hyperactive pace, but that also takes away from some of the paradoxical fears that the support cast worry will happen to them and their loved ones. Walters is a terrific villain who believes he is right and will stubbornly go the course to complete his mission regardless of the results. Fans of action, action, and more action will want to read James F. David's wild speed burner.

Harriet Klausner

Man, have I been waiting a long time for this sequel.

And boy, was it worth it!!

James F. David's long anticipated sequel is fantastic in a myriad of ways. Even if you have never read Footprints of Thunder, this novel stands alone. It is better to read the first, but not necessary. This awesome epic adventure stands on its own fantastical merits.

Each and every chapter is chock-full of action, adventure, time-hopping, and character driven prose, sure to please audiences of books and movies such as Jurassic Park. But this is so much bigger and better! Lordy, if only Hollywood would produce dinosaur movies like this.

There is so much packed in this novel, I don't even know where to start. Needless to say, there's everything from major dinosaur battles to romance and mystery to time jumping - everything a bestseller should possess...and then some.

Never a dull moment, this sequel in some ways far surpasses its original novel - Footprints of Thunder. Even though its been years since i read the 1st novel, James David's awesome writing ability makes you almost feel as if it was just yesterday since you read it. Filling in just enough background of the past events and characters, that the reader doesn't feel lost.

The cast of characters is large, but James David writes with aplomb, deftly weaving all the myriad and interesting characters, both good and evil, with a flourishing touch that easily captivates and keeps the reader at the edge of their seat, eagerly awaiting to see what the next chapter will unfold.

And that is the greatness of this novel. You just don't know what will happen next. James David is a master at balancing huge amounts of interesting characters and creatures, along with building mystery and creating wondrous worlds of the distant past, inserting enough action and adventure and romance to keep the reader riveted to each page.

This is one of those novels that was so good, i actually hated for it to end. James F. David should only write thse types of genre books. He is in his element here. Bloody terrific read, this is!

With all the cool characters, my personal favorite became Ripman. It changed a couple of times throughout this fantastically written novel, changing from Carrollee Chen Pulisi, a bontonist adventurer, whose mother was more dangerous than a T-rex. (LOL!) Then my character favorite changed to Anatole (Andy) Baranov, a captain of a small Russian special forces Spetsnaz group, all lost in the mists of time. A colorful character, indeed. Then it changed to Nick Paulson, a large main character of the novel.

But then it all came down to the novels everyday man, the outcast of civilization, Robert Ripman. He was a memorable teen character in the 1st novel, and an even bigger and better dinosaur hunter in this one. But there are numerous other memorable, interesting characters in Thunder of Time, along with awesome dinosaurs and lost civilizations - including a new threat - mayan warriors! All very cool.

If this was the cataclysmic follow-up to Footprints of Thunder, then I eagerly await the next sequel to this thrill ride a minute reading experience. If you enjoy such novels and movies such as Jurrassic Park, then you will really be in for a much bigger and better treat - Thunder of Time should be placed in the annals of literature greatness of 'must reads'.

I dare you to enter the wondrous, shockingly daring world of Thunder of Time. David F. James, I and my friends and family give you thuderous applause for writing A-list material.

I read James F. David's novels - Footprints of Thunder and this sequel back-to-back - and what a huge reading treat it was.

This contains everything that needs to be read. Huge dinosaurs. Timeless places. Ancinet places and things. Tons of action and adventure. And even some awesome character driven prose, with a dash of growing and loving relationships thrown in. And Mr. David makes it all fit. fabulous.

I am a new and huge fan of James F. David. I am lookking forward to reading all of his other works. For people who love their reading edge-of-your-seat, along with their cast of characters large and in charge, then this one is for you.

This reminded me a bit of James Axler's Outlkanders series - but better written and more engrossing. More believable action sequences, along with enough mystery and suspence that will keep you up at all hours of the night. With power pyramids and time traveling adventure, along with high-powered weapons and loads of action - Deathlands and Outlanders fans will surely like this.

keep up the awesome work, Mr. David! I hope you continue writing dino books. You were born to do it. Most excellent!

I am - Eric the Red!

Thunder of Time (ToT) is a sequel to Footprints of Thunder, which was an enjoyable if uneven novel about a disaster that leaves large chunks of modern-day earth replaced by their dinosaur-era equivalents. If you haven't read it, I recommend picking up that novel and forgetting about this one, because ToT is a disaster all by itself.

First the plot: ToT is set 10 years after Footprints, when the world has more or less recovered from the events of the first novel. Time is starting to unravel again, an event that may be related to two mysterious structures on the earth and the moon. Expeditions are sent to both sites. Meanwhile, an eco-terrorist group has plans to create a human-free paradise on earth using the time distortions.

Sounds fun, right? The book should have been great popcorn entertainment, but it isn't. That's because ToT could be the textbook for Bad Writing 101. The prose is bland and riddled with grammar and punctuation errors. (Who edited the manuscript? An intern?) Dinosaurs, hidden jungle temples, mysterious moon structures -- these are great fodder for an author's creative writing skills, but David simply tosses most away with one-word descriptions. Most of the writing is just long stretches of bad dialogue. And the action itself is clunky and hard to follow with gaps in time and logic.

The characters themselves are uninteresting and over-simplistic, their motivations defined more by the author's right-wing politics (environmentalists = evil; Christians = good) than their role in the plot. And there is no suspense because David has thrown in a literal army of toss-away characters. It's obvious who will live to the end -- the extras are the dino chow.

As for the dinosaurs themselves, dino-lovers -- I count myself among them -- will be disappointed because they're simply background material here. Only a short few chapters are spent in the world they inhabit. Despite the weird, wonderful variety of dinos to choose from, David sticks mostly to T. rexes and, yes, velociraptors. If a novelist is going to write about dinosaurs, then he should put more effort into the research other than watching reruns of Jurassic Park.

It's best you skip this novel. There is plenty of fiction about dinosaurs for any armchair paleontologists out there, and most of it is better written.