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The Lord of the Sands of Time
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Product Description
Product Description
Sixty-two years after human life on Earth was annihilated by rampaging alien invaders, the enigmatic Messenger O is sent back in time with a mission to unite humanity of past eras - during the Second World War and ancient Japan, and even back to the dawn of the species itself - to defeat the invasion before it begins. However, in a future shredded by war and genocide, love waits for O. Will O save humanity only to doom himself?
About the Author
Issui Ogawa is known as one of Japan's premier sci-fi writers. His 1996 debut, First a Letter from Popular Palace, won the Shueisha JUMP Novel Grand Prix. The Next Continent garnered the 35th Seiun Prize. A collection of his short stories won the 2005 Best SF Poll, and The Drifting Man, included in that collection, was awarded the 37th Seiun Prize for domestic short stories. Other works include Land of Resurrection, Free Lunch Era and The Lord of the Sands of Time, published by Haikasoru in 2009.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One of the first wave of Japanese sci-fi novels under Viz's new Haikasoru fiction imprint, Issui Ogawa's novel is classic material of the kind you would expect to find in their manga range, with its exciting blend of action, tradition, and romance that takes on an epic scale not only across millennia, but also cuts across time-lines.
In the Land of Wa, ancient Japan in 248AD, Lady Miyo, the shaman queen of the land, encounters Messenger O, a cyborg sent back in time from Triton in 2598 to meet the threat of an alien invasion which as entered the timestream in an effort to wipe out the whole of humanity at their most vulnerable points in history. The novel follows the attempts to defeat and understand the nature of the attacks through a number of time periods, each seeing an evolution in the nature of the enemies capabilities, but it raises other questions with regard to the splitting of time-lines, the intervention not only potentially having a profound impact on the future of humanity (if humanity even has a future), but condemning those who travel back to never being able to return to where they came from.
The writing is a bit lean and terse - not quite as dynamic as Hiroshi Sakurazaka's similarly themed All You Need is Kill (published by Viz's Haikasoru alongside this) but Ogawa handles the complexity of the time paradoxes well, not only on the grand scale of things, but in the personal lives of those caught up in the conflict.
In the Land of Wa, ancient Japan in 248AD, Lady Miyo, the shaman queen of the land, encounters Messenger O, a cyborg sent back in time from Triton in 2598 to meet the threat of an alien invasion which as entered the timestream in an effort to wipe out the whole of humanity at their most vulnerable points in history. The novel follows the attempts to defeat and understand the nature of the attacks through a number of time periods, each seeing an evolution in the nature of the enemies capabilities, but it raises other questions with regard to the splitting of time-lines, the intervention not only potentially having a profound impact on the future of humanity (if humanity even has a future), but condemning those who travel back to never being able to return to where they came from.
The writing is a bit lean and terse - not quite as dynamic as Hiroshi Sakurazaka's similarly themed All You Need is Kill (published by Viz's Haikasoru alongside this) but Ogawa handles the complexity of the time paradoxes well, not only on the grand scale of things, but in the personal lives of those caught up in the conflict.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This was the first book I have read by Issui Ogawa, and I got to say that it's a very pleasant surprise. It's clearly soft sci-fi and military/action oriented, but none of that crap "Let's kill them all!" or enemies attacking for no apparent reason whatsoever. It's also one of the few samples of japanese sci-fi fiction, which from my experience so far is quite peculiar.
The story is about a cyborg, named Orville, who has the mission to protect humanity from an enemy composed of self-replicant machines, who resemble mononoke (monsters in japanese mythology). Oeville and others like him, have to protect humans in every places from ET's (Enemies of Terra, not Extraterrestrials) and in every epoch. The novel is also about, to a lesser extense, about Miyo, a shaman queen in ancient Japan. However, she is equally important to the story and to the salvation of humanity.
The rough part of the cyborgs' job is when they have to protect humans everywhen. The cyborgs (with the general name of Messengers) dwell more and more into past, starting in the 2000's, going to the World War II epoch, and the 400's or 200's in Japan, all the way to the dawn of men. Of course, like in every other well-thought fiction, this has consequences, especially to the Messengers. To be honest, Ogawa wrote some pretty cool consequences.
One thing that I found very interesting was the composition of the cyborgs. They have manufactered minds (from what I apprehended) and human enhanced bodies, permiting them a period of discovery of the world around, like the babies but with fully developed bodies and minds. What normally reaches the general public is quite opposite, human brains in robots.
There was something I couldn't take my mind off, which was the enemies. Their way of "reproducing" is something I read and seen a few times before, in books and TV shows, like Stargate (which I hated) and a few animes. Not a overly negative aspect, but kept nagging me all the way.
Very enjoyable and good as a quick read (less than a day is enough) an it's very enjoyable. Can't recommend it more.
Till next time,
M.I.T.H. (ManInsideTheHelm)
The story is about a cyborg, named Orville, who has the mission to protect humanity from an enemy composed of self-replicant machines, who resemble mononoke (monsters in japanese mythology). Oeville and others like him, have to protect humans in every places from ET's (Enemies of Terra, not Extraterrestrials) and in every epoch. The novel is also about, to a lesser extense, about Miyo, a shaman queen in ancient Japan. However, she is equally important to the story and to the salvation of humanity.
The rough part of the cyborgs' job is when they have to protect humans everywhen. The cyborgs (with the general name of Messengers) dwell more and more into past, starting in the 2000's, going to the World War II epoch, and the 400's or 200's in Japan, all the way to the dawn of men. Of course, like in every other well-thought fiction, this has consequences, especially to the Messengers. To be honest, Ogawa wrote some pretty cool consequences.
One thing that I found very interesting was the composition of the cyborgs. They have manufactered minds (from what I apprehended) and human enhanced bodies, permiting them a period of discovery of the world around, like the babies but with fully developed bodies and minds. What normally reaches the general public is quite opposite, human brains in robots.
There was something I couldn't take my mind off, which was the enemies. Their way of "reproducing" is something I read and seen a few times before, in books and TV shows, like Stargate (which I hated) and a few animes. Not a overly negative aspect, but kept nagging me all the way.
Very enjoyable and good as a quick read (less than a day is enough) an it's very enjoyable. Can't recommend it more.
Till next time,
M.I.T.H. (ManInsideTheHelm)
Format:Paperback
Haikasoru is publishing a series of very interesting SF novels from Japanese writers translated into English. The Lord of the Sands of Time is an original time travel story in which cyborgs travel further and further back in time to defeat the aliens that are invading the earth. The book focuses not so much on the technicalities of time travel, but more on the plight of the cyborgs who become more and more alienated from humanity is they get more and more distant from their original era. Very original and strongly recommended.
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