Status
Available
Call number
Collections
Publication
Roc (2000), Paperback, 640 pages
Description
Fiction. Literature. Science Fiction. HTML: Ten years ago, the twentieth century and the Bronze Age were tossed together by a mysterious Event. In the decade since, the Republic of Nantucket has worked hard to create a new future for itself, using the technological know-how retained from modern times to explore and improve conditions for the inhabitants of the past. Some of these peoples have become allies. Some have turned instead to the renegade Coast Guard officer William Walker. And for ten years, the two sides have tested each other, feinting and parrying, to decide who will be the ones to lead this brave new world into the future. The final battle lines have now been drawn. And only one side can emerge the victor..
User reviews
LibraryThing member majackson
More of Stirling’s exciting swashbuckling excitement…high marks for that. BUT!
The first 2 books in the trilogy restricted the date jumps to the chapter beginnings; but this book, the last one, jumps the dates AND locations multiple times within each chapter. And, instead of labelling each
With that out of the way…we come to Stirling’s real writing weakness: he doesn’t know how to end the series. The battles are going bad-to-good based upon our modern ability to think-out-of-the-box (i.e. in novel ways) and were quite enjoyable. And then the entire series ends when the “all powerful bad guy” is conveniently/fortuitously poisoned by a side-character—who is only rarely mentioned in the books, and doesn’t even belong there in the first place. Who is Helmut Mitler? I have no memory of him from the first book, and only one or two brief sentences mentioning him in book 2. At no point do I recall any mention of how a left-over Nazi a) survived WW2; b) was drafted into Walker’s retinue AND was still young enough to function. What did I miss? Is his existence in the story solely to provide a convenient death, at the right time, to end the story? Talk about cop-out! Stirling has the same problem with the succeeding Emberverse series… “we’ll just take a quick jaunt into never-never land, kill the evil there and return home lickedy-split to live happily ever after”. In both series the dénouements take place so quickly that it took me a while to realize that the stories had ended. There was no catharsis for me. Between this, and the “German”, I have to lower my rating for this book.
The first 2 books in the trilogy restricted the date jumps to the chapter beginnings; but this book, the last one, jumps the dates AND locations multiple times within each chapter. And, instead of labelling each
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subsection-within-the-chapter with the appropriate date/location Stirling (or the publisher?) congregates all of the dates/locations at the front of the chapter, leaving us to figure out where/when we are from the context. I admit to having difficulty placing the strange names in context—when you couple that with where-the-hell-are-we?: California, Patagonia, Spain, Greece, Connecticut it becomes very confusing and not at all fun anymore. I found myself leaving a bookmark at the start of each chapter for appropriate reference to when/where we are.With that out of the way…we come to Stirling’s real writing weakness: he doesn’t know how to end the series. The battles are going bad-to-good based upon our modern ability to think-out-of-the-box (i.e. in novel ways) and were quite enjoyable. And then the entire series ends when the “all powerful bad guy” is conveniently/fortuitously poisoned by a side-character—who is only rarely mentioned in the books, and doesn’t even belong there in the first place. Who is Helmut Mitler? I have no memory of him from the first book, and only one or two brief sentences mentioning him in book 2. At no point do I recall any mention of how a left-over Nazi a) survived WW2; b) was drafted into Walker’s retinue AND was still young enough to function. What did I miss? Is his existence in the story solely to provide a convenient death, at the right time, to end the story? Talk about cop-out! Stirling has the same problem with the succeeding Emberverse series… “we’ll just take a quick jaunt into never-never land, kill the evil there and return home lickedy-split to live happily ever after”. In both series the dénouements take place so quickly that it took me a while to realize that the stories had ended. There was no catharsis for me. Between this, and the “German”, I have to lower my rating for this book.
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LibraryThing member Karlstar
Nothing surprising in this one, as it is the continuation of the Nantucket event series. The Republic is still battling for control of the ancient Earth with William Walker and his allies. Will the goodness, cleverness and strategy of the Republic win versus Walker's dictatorship? I bet you can
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guess the answer, but even so, these books are fascinating. Show Less
LibraryThing member jcopenha
Loved it. A great conclusion to the Nantucket series. Perhaps the end gets condensed a bit much but it was a great book.
LibraryThing member ffifield
I felt like this was a good story but in the last third when I saw the setup for how it was going to end I was not happy. The ending is contrived and weak, with a character added in this book that had only a brief one line mention in book 2 before becoming the major antagonist of the end game in
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the final book. Show Less
Awards
Sidewise Award (Finalist — 2000)
Language
Original publication date
2000-04
Physical description
640 p.; 6.84 inches
ISBN
0451457803 / 9780451457806
Local notes
Nantucket, 3
DDC/MDS
| Fic SF Stirling |
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