Customer Reviews

The Time Travelers Academy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

This is one of the worst books I have ever read. The plot was infantile, the "science" was nonsense, and the writting was cliched. Do not buy this book!

This book was "recommended" by Amazon because of another Time Travel book I had done a search on. It was almost free on the Kindle, so I gave it a shot...

...bad idea. The author spends a lot of time developing the primary character, John Richards, and I actually found that interesting. This was all long before "time travel" was even mentioned. Once the time travel part begins, the wheels come off the bus in so many ways...

...the time travelers travel to a planet they have named "Peligroso", and low and behold, the inhabitants speak English. And many have Spanish names as well. The writing is just plain HOKEY...when the helpful scientist keeps saying things like, "this is what I believe you call X" a number of times. This is supposed to be a book, not a 22 minute TV show where you have to have plot conveniences to move the story along.

...and then the primary character (John) runs from state to state in a fraction of a second, because he has "super human powers" from eating food on Peligroso and now he's like Superman. Then, suddenly, he spins a tornado, and lands on MARS, and then runs around Mars real fast, creates his own Time Vortex, and then spins in a tornado again and goes back to earth.

I can't even go on. I'd say the first 1/3 of this book was written with good character development, and the last 2/3 [...]. I almost stopped reading it a dozen different times, but I hate giving up on a book so I plowed on. As a matter of fact, I showed some passages to my 13 year old son, and he rolled his eyes at the cheese-factor.

[........]

This book has a great premise but the writing just fails miserably at every turn. Characters and plot lines are introduced then dropped. Problems like how to communicate with the aliens are solved by lines like: I thought communication would be a problem but it wasn't they (the people from another planet 5 billion light years away) spoke English. Puhleeze. At least give us a StarTrek style universal translator.

I keep this book on my iPhone, so I can refer to it occasionally. I like to read from it out loud to my helpless friends. It was so jaw-droppingly, mind-numbingly bad that I couldn't stop reading. Think of any pulp sci-fi cliche, and you can bet it's in there, whether it makes sense or not. There are sequels? I can't wait. I recommend this. Just read it for laughs, and hope they don't ever try to make a movie from it.

If you are going to charge $15 for a kindle version of this book you should at least check that the formatting converts properly...

This book was ok but reads like its made for TV series, not worth the asking price IMHO.

This is in my top 5 worst books I have ever subjected myself to. As the title says, this was like a bad mash-up between a weak "Stargate" episode with "The Karate Kid".

Ridiculous leaps in logic, 2-dimensional characters, bad writing and "science" that makes no sense whatsoever.

No sooner do characters and "mutants" pop up for no reason, they are dispatched with little or no drama or logic.

Did I mention that part of this takes place on "Planet Peligroso" which is in another galaxy, millions of years in the past, heading for a black hole....and everyone speaks English! There's even a guy with Spanish name; Guerrero, which he helpfully explains means "warrior".

There's also pointless trips to Russia, a Kung Fu academy with a bad mob shake-down subplot, space bees, emails in space, stereotypical army bad guys sabotaging our heros for no real reason...too much ridiculous dreck to go into.

Seriously, this was the worst book I have read in ages and a complete disappointment. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY

In "The Time Traveler's Academy" by Reginald Williams, a meteor shower lands an organism that, by itself, is completely harmless. However, the organism manages to combine the bubonic plague virus with the avian flu virus. Anyone without natural immunity to the virus who contracts it, dies. John, a former special operatives soldier, is drafted back into service to train and then lead a crew on a time machine to obtain a cure for the virus and save humanity.

Minor spoilers below.

And from there the book plunges downhill. Other than the rather interesting concept of the viruses combining, the science is horrendous. In one particularly extreme example of bad science a human is blown from the Earth to Mars by a tornado. He survives the vacuum of space, then is able to breath the atmosphere of Mars. Without going into detail, all of those events are either impossibly unlikely or simply impossible. The time traveling crew meet up with aliens. Aliens who speak english. Huh? There's a guy who could beat "The Flash" in a race. Again, huh? There are times when the book breaks its own rules for time travel.

I read a lot of science fiction, and not every author gets everything right all the time, but to be believable an author must take time to research and understand basic scientific concepts and must understand them. This book wasn't believable.

I can't recommend this book on any level.

I could only read about half of the book. The characters and dialog are flat. The plot seems like it has been glued together from various movies. Parts where there are tension or action are quickly defused back into the hum drum of the rest of the book.

On the other hand this book is short, easy to read and uses a fairly large font. If made for TV movies are your thing then you might like this book. If you have tried to read science fiction books and disliked them then you might want to give this one a spin; it's not like any science fiction book I've read.

My first search of 'Kindle for PC' to see what is offered and, searching on best-sellers, - up came this book which I noted was 1 of 6 and priced at US$232 for the kindle edition and US$15 for the paperback.
Why? most reviews were pretty derogatory too.

The price for this pulp should not be $14, it should be free, at best.

What this novel needed was to be submitted to John Campbell at the old Analog to be ripped apart and sent back for re-write, and then sent back again, and again, and again. Why? Because the writer cannot write. The plot (?) was an incoherent mess. The character development ... wasn't. .

In short, do NOT waste your money.