What do You think about The Depths Of Time (2001)?
Having purchased this book in a bulk lot of 30 from a local auction website I wasn't expecting much. I was very pleasantly surprized.This novel feels like an Asimov book. Not surprising really considering both authors worked together on some three laws robots books. There is a real hard science feel - the book opens quickly demonstrating how humanity has created artificial worm holes that use time travel combined with years of sub light travel in cryogenic suspension to travel interstellar distances and arrive at the destination at almost exactly the same time that they left. i.e.: Travel 35 light years in cryo to a wormhole hole half way to your destination, drop through the wormhole 70 years into the past and then travel another 35 years in cryo to your destination. The net result being that you come out of cryo only a few days or weeks after the date you left Earth. The author does a great job of quickly building an interesting base for how the technology works, the problems with it and the associated dangers - for example people trying to use the wormholes to travel backward in time with knowledge of the future which could catastrophically adjust history. As a result I found myself drawn into the story and the Allen's universe with many "WOW!! I never considered that!" realizations about the problems and implications of space / time travel, the difficulity of terraforming and the use of cryogenics to live hundreds of years beyond what would have been your natural life span. The book ends with a fantastic cliffhanger climax that left me wanting more. I immediately consulted the internets, discovered it was the first in a trilogy and started a search for the the second and third books in local libraries and auction sites.I expect that many people won't like this book because there is quite a bit of dialogue and soul searching by the key characters and apart from the open chapter or two, very little intense action.Some people will hate the cliffhanger ending - it comes as a surprize and there is no warning on my copy of the book that it is the first in a trilogy. So now I'm stuck trying to track down a copy of books two and three while the details are still fresh in my mind.Most importantly it was the hard science feel and the implications & issues of that hard science really captured my interest and imagination. I'm very much looking forward to reading the other books. My apologies for the very brief review - I'm in a rush and really don't have a clue how to write an interesting review yet :)
—Phill Coxon
Much like I said in my review of Bright of the Sky, I wanted to give this book a 4-star rating. In this case though, it wasn't Roger Allen MacBride's writing style that disappointed, it was his rushed ending. The book started out brilliantly, I read the first 100+ pages almost without stopping. In fact, because I was on vacation and didn't have access to a bookstore, I had to force myself not to finish the book as quickly as I might have!First though, a minor complaint. FictionConnection, a resource my library system (and perhaps yours) provides access to, has been pretty good about showing me books similar to the title I've searched for. Typically, I search for Pandora's Star or The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton, click the Find Similar button, and start browsing. In this case, I was trying to limit myself to recent books, as I was leaving soon for a 2-week vacation and had planned on sharing books with my father. The Depths of Time showed up on the list, and the description (or maybe the Publisher's Weekly review) painted the book as having a great handle on time-travel. This certainly interested me, as the concept is always interesting but the execution often leaves my head spinning. Causality can be a huge monkey wrench in the works it becomes distracting (Star Trek is a prime example, except "Cause and Effect" oddly enough). In the case of The Depths of Time, its preventing causality that gets to be a distracting issue. But worse still, time-travel actually has little to do with the story beyond those first tense, exciting 100 or so pages.Eventually, I suspect I will read the next book in this apparent series. I'm not really sure what I expect to get out of it, though. The end of The Depths of Time obviously points the way to book 2, but doesn't really hint at an interesting plot. The great opening to book 1 gets explained, vaguely, at the end. Sadly though, its explanation curtails the potential for another such scene in the next book. While I haven't looked yet, I suspect reviews on Amazon.com for the next book won't be quite as good as they were for this book.
—Kyle Johnson
Really more than 3* but definitely less than 4*.Firstly, this book has sticking power. I started it, and plodded through the first couple of chapters, which are full of explanation as to time travel, paradox and the to-and-fro nature of space travel in this universe. I like hard science fiction. This just dragged. I did not want all that information delivered in a dry and, to me, hard to understand format.Then POW a battle! Oh, shit, this is bad. Oh, death. Oh, dear.Then, even though I had decided to give up, every time I picked up my kindle, and it was still in the book, I just read a bit more and a bit more and suddenly I was half-way through and enjoying it more than a little bit. It was when it stopped trying to dazzle me with science and started being more of a mystery that I really got into the mind-set this book requires. However, I hated the ending, with a passion. And such a clever, clever arch-villain? I sort of found him hard to believe. Not rushing to read books 2 and 3. I will, but am reading The Girl with All The Gifts right now, and enjoying that book immensely right from page 1.
—Bookmole
