Customer Reviews

Whispers (The Gates of Time , No 1)

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

 

 

Having read all of Mr Parkinson's westens and navel fiction I finally came to this series.. It was magic absolute magic. sceens were painted in a few words and the humor is gut busting. the science theory behind the story is perfictly logical and I had no trouble following the plot as I read the book in bits and pieces on a trip to yellowstone over a week.

Mr Parkinson does not describe every blade of grass and building in a sceen. he lets the readers mind fill in the details with wonderfully chosen strokes of his pen. and the dialog! the word ring true , exactly as some one in the position in the story should say the sly humor of what happenes when people get what they ask for. I wish I were as good a writer as Mr parkinson

My first impression of The Whispers is that it's hard to follow. Plot fragments skip from place to place and time to time, while characters skip through those fragments, not always in a consistent temporal direction. When the story introduced and described its theory of time, space, light, and gravity and the various modifications and corruptions involved, I had surprisingly little trouble understanding.

Why? Because the early narrative led me through time travel from a first person perspective. I don't mean that the reader follows a character through time travel, but that the reader follows *himself* through time travel while working to comprehend the first few chapters. This is either masterful writing or a bizarre accident.

That accomplished, the methods of time travel, their results, and their odd and occasionally hysterical interactions make a fascinating plot and send the reader into extended "what if" musings that often replace the book for a while.

No doubt the science behind this is pure fiction, but I'm willing to allow poetic license for a work of fiction that keeps its pseudo-science internally consistent. An earlier customer reviewer criticized the book's historical accuracy, but that's not necessarily a problem in a story where the past is a fluid concept. "History" at the end of the book doesn't match "history" at the beginning of the book, why should either match the real world?

The characters in The Whispers are, unfortunately, 2-dimensional. They often seem to be placeholders and reference points rather than actual individuals. The book has occasional insights into human behavior, a few of them brilliant, but they don't illuminate the characters.

If you like science fiction, you'll really like this book. I'm only 15, so I didn't really understand it all, but it's a really good book! I highly recommend it to science-fiction fans.

when I first saw this book I found it sounded like it would be interesting, but once I started I found it hard to understand confusing, jumping to one plot after another, I just cannot recommend this book.

This book reminds me of a Poul Anderson type of Time Travel story (my personal favorite). It is very enjoyable reading.

An engrossing story that kept me turning the pages late into the night. I'm currently waiting for more volumes. A series I plan to keep up with.

Time travel and what-have-beens are among my favorite type of book. Highly recommended are Anderson's TIME PATROL, Piper's LORD KALVAN or Dann's TIMESHARE series.

However, Mr. Parkinson has produced a plot with a minimal storyline, characters with confusing pasts, presents and futures, a knowledge of history which would not do justice to a ten year old and glossed over this dross with mathematical constructs and scientific jargon in a mish-mash of nihilism. Having received the enire series plus his TIMECOP work, the best I would note is that Mr. Parkinson's writing is of a consistent level -- unfortunately, that level is poor.

If you like science fiction, you'll really like this book. I'm only 15, so I didn't really understand it all, but it's a really good book! I highly recommend it to science-fiction fans.