Island in the Sea of Time (Mass Market Paperback)

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!!!

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.

Agree with other comments about the martial arts, its OTT.

Too many blinking naval engagements aswell.

'ayup'...irritating beyond belief, though I bet its authentic.

Ends with too many characters overall and this is why some are weak. I'd have liked to see Swindapa explored more (sic:-)

Second book Walker is the most interesting character and in the third he seems to realise this and tries to introduce half a dozen new characters and situations which means he skips about too much. 'The greek one' works well though :-)

On balance take a break between the 2nd and 3rd book and you'll have a lot of fun with this trilogy