Customer Reviews

Time's Child

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

 

 

This is what time travel would probably REALLY be like. Archivists from a "now-time" of 2300 send back into history and dip up various people, including a 15th-century Italian camp follower, a not quite come-to-manhook Viking warrior, and a 21st-century internet troll. The now-timers have their reasons, but the displaced out-of-history people have motives of their own. Benedetta, the camp follower, escapes from the archives and liberates her out-of-history friends, and they steal the time machine and go fishing in the past for their idea of who THEY want for company.

The out-of-history characters are each complex, unique, very much a product of his or her own historical time and personal history, and utterly convincing. This is a fascinating read. I think TIME'S CHILD sets a new standard for portrayal of alien times, both past and future, and just might become a science-fiction classic. TIME'S CHILD is that rare novel that is both philosophically profound as well as loads of fun.

Ok, I know its SF so I'm not declaring the time travel implausible that device is used in an interesting branching timelines theme.
Here is what is implausible:
* A knight Templar declaring "F the Pope" within seconds of being teleported to a strange and advanced future.
* A 17 year old viking raider learns English, becomes a preeminent physicist, and computer expert able to reverse engineer a time machine that only 2 other geiuses on the planet can also do, this development occurs in a matter of months.
* Everyone from Leonardo Davinci, the lombardian heroine from the 16th century, the templars, and the viking use the f-word. Not just in contemporary times which is plausible, but in their own time. It just comes off as weird, it make it seem like these people went back in time instead of forward.
* The heroine having never driven any sort of vehicle in her life and having only seen a motrocycle once hops on one with a passenger behind her and is able to escape attack helicopters.

So, I didn't like it, it also bugs me when people like to "out" historical figures, in this case Leonardo Davinci. For effect, the author includes Leonardo's mother in the ridiculous use of profanity when she makes an obscene reference to her son's lover as "being the waste of a good (crude reference to a rectum)".
I say pass on this one.

Some of Rebecca Ore's hard-boiled science fiction of years past, such as her novels SLOW FUNERAL and GAIA'S TOYS, are not for the faint-hearted. TIME'S CHILD is a far gentler read, but not for the soft-headed. The novel is not a heroic or romantic tale at all but more of an anatomy, what Northrop Frye defined as a "satire [that] deals less with people than with mental attitudes [is able to] handle abstract ideas and theories . . . relies on the free play of intellectual fancy and the kind of humorous observation that produces caricature [and] presents us with a vision of the world in terms of a single intellectual pattern." Rather than the consciousness of a beleaguered individual struggling for survival, what holds it together is Ore's dry satiric voice and astute eye for setting. She makes credible and interesting the micropolitics of smart, verbal people from various past eras struggling to determine whom to trust in a future Eastern Pennsylvania landscape.

Recommended for readers who are equipped to deal with conversation- or idea-heavy science fiction, such as Blish's CASE OF CONSCIENCE, the last four or five Philip K. Dick novels, and the post-NOVA work of Samuel Delany. Not that TIME'S CHILD is as heavy or as demanding a read --more of a soothing vernal chat with a rapier-witted polymath.

'Time's Child' is built on an interesting idea: time travel has been invented and is in the hands of the historians (an idea borrowed from the infinitely superior Connie Willis novels 'Doomsday Book' and 'To Say Nothing of the Dog', incidentally), but the writing and plotting are so poorly executed as to make the book a complete waste of time.

The central problem with the book is that there IS no central problem; the characters just wander through the plot at half-speed, with no particular sense of urgency and no real narrative thread. I re-read the ending three times trying to find the resolution, before deciding that there simply was no real problem or crisis for the characters to resolve. It's a mess of a book, with characters who lack any emotional depth. The main character is transported from da Vinci's era to the 21st century and her entire reaction can be summed up as, 'huh'. The other characters are similarly forgettable.

Don't waste your time with this one. If you're interested in time travel stories, try the Connie Willis titles listed above. Or just go grab a book off the sci-fi shelf at random. It's bound to be better than this one.

I have read both Neuromancer by Gibson and Snow Crash by Stephenson and others novels by both authors and this book is not in the same league as either. I will admit to not finishing it yet but thus far Ms. Ore has managed to make it very confusing. I don't mind books I have to stay with to enjoy but this reader prefers something a little less confusing. Is our heroine in the present? The past? The future? If she's in the past, why is she using modern syntax? Wait! Is it really a "she" in the first place? I can't figure out squat and as I read for enjoyment, I don't have time to screw around with it which is why it's on the very back burner for the time being.

Read it if you have nothing else better to do.

This plot of this book doesn't go anywhere, and it takes a long time to do it. I was tempted to stop reading it partway through, but I figured it would get better towards the end. It didn't.

By 2308, plagues swept across the earth killing most people and leaving many of the survivors sterile. People from the future send to the Philadelphia National Archive a time machine to gather humans near death from the past and bring them to the present as a library of human learning.

Benedetta, who knew Da Vinci, was one of those scooped away just prior to the French soldiers killing her. Not content to remain a prisoner in a gilded cage, she escapes abetted by Jonah, another incarcerated soul. They free the other time travelers and along with Ivar the Viking steal the time machine. Once they have more machines they plan to scoop people out from different eras and place but there are many people with their own agendas who have plans to manipulate the original people from down-time.

The premise of this paradoxical tale will fascinate readers as people from different times and cultures must overcome their Tower of Babel differences in order to save mankind. The twists are terrific, reminiscent of a classic EC comic (no more or the plot will be given away). The characters especially the heroine and her closest allies seem real as their dissimilarities are greater than their similarities except for core values. Rebecca Ore provides an exhilarating science fiction brave new world thriller.

Harriet Klausner