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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I can't wait for a sequel! The book supposes that Nantucket Island is transported back into the 13th century, all alone except for a Coast Guard windjammer out on a training mission.
The island characters and Coast Guard are very detailed. Stirling has caught the laconic "Down-Easter" personality very well, reflecting his annual vacations to the Island. He also created a memorable female character in the CoastGuard Captain, Marian Alston, a "black, female, ex-ranker, Southern, lesbian" with a highly developed sense of duty and a wry (mostly internal) sense of humor. Luckily, stranded on the Island are some other very useful characters including a Professor of History who's also a science fiction fan and an astronomer who uses her computer and star charts to figure "when" they are.
Adjusting to the "Event" as they call it, isn't easy but the town sheriff starts getting them motivated to grow their own food and make plans for survival. The Islanders accidentally wipe out most of the proto-Indians in the Boston area with the common cold, journey to England to trade for grain and foil the invasion plans of some war-like immigrants from the mainland of Europe.
Stirling's bio lists his love of history, martial arts and other hobbies and he uses them extensively as background detail.
I hated to get to the end of this book. In fact, I turned back to the first page and started in again. Please, please tell me S. M. Stirling is going to continue the story!!!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I thoroughly enjoyed the story, which is a real pager turner, and as someone with a long standing interest in anthropology, the history of technology and similar subjects the basic scenario punched all my buttons.
Where I felt it was weak was in the rather black and white portrayal of the characters. The good guys are unmistakeably good ( intelligent, omnicompetant, concerned etc etc) whilst the bad guys are either clueless patsies (Lisketter et al) or eeeeevil, self-centred, psychotics (Walker, Hong etc).
Now I recognise that to provide for some narrative conflict its helpful to have an identifiable baddie, but I think Stirling could have worked harder at providing some more shaded protagonists. The author could take some lessons from Kim Stanley Robinson on creating realistic, sympathetic characters whose conflicts arise out of differing value systems and philosophies - with neither side necessarily having a monopoly on intelligence or good will (or stupidity and selfishness for that matter)... As a left-leaning European (and thus probably most of the above in the eyes of a lot of Americans) I find Stirling rather small-c conservative. His sympathetic gay characters are a couple of lipstick lesbians rather than anything a bit more challenging to straight sensibilities for instance and he certainly has no truck with the sub-Rousseau 'noble savage' fantasies that underlie some 'PC' ideas concerning bronze and stone age life. I think the fact that most of the reviewers who express these opinions seem to admire the sociopathic Walker is a telling lifestyle detail however.
... The sex didn't seem particularly obtrusive to me... As for the violence, Stirling certainly doesn't pull his punches, but then melee combat to the death is an ugly, disgusting business and personally I find fiction that sugar coats violence more offensive than a clear-eyed treatment of the causes and consequences of violent conflict.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I simply could not put this book down (sorry boss)! S. M. Stirling's ongoing series--of Nantucket Yankees ingeniously evolving the future while "cast away" into the Bronze Age three thousand years past--is a fascinating twist on the "alternate futures" genre of science fiction. Island in the Sea of Time is a wonderfully realized story of a modern peoples' struggle to adjust and survive in a time of great dislocation and desperate adversity. Transporting an entire group of modern Americans back in time means Stirling can legitimately give them modern politically correct personalities, and most effectively contrast these with Bronze Age mores. Thus understanding our heroes' modern motivations is "simpler" than in the "Byzantine" Videssos Cycle of Harry Turtledove, Stirling's model. The characters are very well drawn and differentiated, nor are we stuck only with laconic New Englanders as this colony in time expands. Only one person is a caricature, a New Age Environmentalist "Nazi" who is set up for a very bad end. I had real empathy for the desperate straits of the Nantucket Islanders isolated from everything familiar, and for the tension and anxiety regarding survival as the dire implications of their limited supplies unfolds. The tight focus on a small group of (once-fellow) Americans is highly involving: my god, what would I do if totally totally cut off from the 20th century? As an archaeologist I found Stirling's fleshing out of bare Beaker and Wessex Culture artifacts (like Stonehenge) to be marvelous, if incidental, fun.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent 1st book in the series.
This and the 2nd book in the series are some of the better alternative hostory books I have read in quite some time. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Andy Watkins
Pretty good overall
I liked this book; I've read one or two alternate history type books before, but it's not a genre I'm heavily into so this was a pretty original idea for me. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Aralla
A good read (but has a few creaks)
This is my first book by S. M Stirling. It's also my first for alternate history which I tend to avoid in the belief that the genre is a cop out and a lot of navel-gazing (i.e. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Rona M.
A fairly good read for science fiction fans.
I quite enjoyed this book but found the very extensive use of sailing terms and martial arts language somewhat excessive. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Blaran Odhar
alternate reality does it for me
another superb book by sm stirling which i can recomend to anybody, the people in the story are instantly believable and while reading i began to wonder how would i cope in the... Read more
Published on 7 Jun 2009 by P. barton
Lacking in all literary merit - and thoroughly enjoyable
This is one of those books that is often said to define its sub-genre (modern people thrown back in time to live amongst savages - it's a surprisingly common theme in bad... Read more
Published on 31 Jan 2009 by D. R. Cantrell
As exciting as the First Turtledove 'World War' novel
I can't really say much that hasn't already been covered, so just two brief points;
first, I enjoyed it all especially the detail of how the people go about surviving and then... Read more
Published on 17 May 2001 by Bucket
Good start to a trilogy that runs out of steam by book 3
Good page turning story and if you are not pedantic, quite plausible. The second book is almost as good. Read more
Published on 15 Feb 2001 by G. Donohoe
Great Read - With A RANGE of positive lead roles
I stumbled across this book before taking off on a two week vacation. I finished it in the first couple of days. Read more
Published on 25 Aug 1999
Fantasy - not science
In good sci-fi, explanations of extrodinary events are created based on present knowledge and speculation of our physical universe. Read more
Published on 15 Aug 1999
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