Time Spike
by Eric Flint, Marilyn Kosmatka
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Book Summary Information
Author: Eric Flint, Marilyn KosmatkaEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-05-06
ISBN: 1416555382
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Baen
Book Reviews of Time Spike
Book Review: One of Flint's better works
Summary: 4 Stars
Time Spike is collaboration between Eric Flint and Karilyn Kosmatka in the same storytelling universe as Flint's 1632 series (hereafter referred to as 163x) -- though the events of that series features little in this story. The story has twin plot threads: One element deals with the people transported into the past and the other deals with a group of scientists left behind struggling to understand the event (and the earlier "Grantville Event" that created a group of people able to understand a second event). I'll address that latter plot thread in a moment.
In short, a small area of southern Illinois along the Mississippi River is thrown back in time to the Cretaceous Period. It's basically the same idea behind 1632, but it's quite a bit more action-oriented than 1632, despite dealing with the same sort of basic survival and growth story. To make things different from 1632, Flint also throws in the curve that event picks up people and places from time periods between the modern day and the Cretaceous. In effect, it creates a situation where southern Illinois resembles something out of Baxter's novel Time's Eye -- a mosaic world of different times and places.
There seems to be a fair bit of hand-wavery involved in order to create the most interesting setting for a story. Flint seems to have picked and chose what characters, flora and fauna he wanted transported to this period. The area of effect grows the further back in history you go, so while the modern portion of the event is limited to just a maximum-security prison, it encompasses a far larger area in the 1830s, 1500s, 1000s, and 600s AD.
In addition to the maximum-security prison that serves as the linchpin of events, there's also a substantial number of Cherokees who were on the Trail of Tears, multiple native villages, a large number of interesting animals from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, and the most interesting grab -- several hundred Spaniards of Hernando de Soto's American expedition in the 1540s. If you've got an eye for archaeology, you'll really enjoy some of the descriptions of 'native' life, and even if you don't, there's plenty of eye candy along the way.
I won't go into much detail about the plot -- a cast of characters that includes the Mounds Civilization, a modern maximum-security prison, a caravan of Cherokees, and several hundred conquistadors should create all sorts of wonderful images in your mind. I'm pleased to say that most are brought forward and are very well colored in the book, even if we don't get much characterization beyond the "modern" Americans. The rest of the characters are cardboard cutouts -- well-colored cardboard cutouts, to be sure, but underdeveloped.
There are plenty of references to Flint's earlier works; in particular his "Rivers of War" and 163x series. There's also several quick allusions to other alternate history books, including For Want of A Nail. The book doesn't pull any punches with the descriptions of life in a maximum-security prison, nor does it shy away from reams of bloody gore wrought by conquistadors or criminals. In some places, the action becomes extremely gory, but serves to advance the plot, rather than just being imagination candy.
There are, however, some problems. The most glaring of these is the "modern" plot line, which revolves around a 'Project' of scientists who came together after the Grantville Event to discover the mysterious truth behind Grantville's disappearance in the 163x series (the government having clamped down on most knowledge of the Event). This plotline begins as the scientists detect something strange in Illinois and attempt to get to the Illinois site before the event, but arrive just too late. They proceed to gather evidence and make their case that there's a giant coverup.
It's all well and good, but it's just plain boring. The whole plotline reads like nothing more than fanservice to the folks who read the 163x series, and doesn't contribute to the book. It merely distracts from the story of the others trapped in the Time of the Dinosaurs (though admittedly serving as a way to explain what's happened fairly well). I found myself skipping the chapters towards the end that contained this secondary plotline.
Flint also continues his habit of including romances in every story he writes. I don't have a problem with that -- what better way to create rounded characters, after all. But the problem comes from the fact that he created several romances in each plotline. Because there's so many, it's tough to keep the relationships straight and the story moves too quickly for adequate development. I wasn't made to care that so-and-so fell in love with so-and-so by the end of the story.
The other things that bugged me were the standard problems of alternate history: the story has bad cases of know-it-alls and "As you know, Bob" syndrome. Flint needed to have characters who knew how to survive and he needed to have characters who knew what was happening in order to explain those facts to the reader. Unfortunately, there's far too few places where someone says "I don't know." Those breaks are always refreshing, to me, and create a wonderful sense of trial-and-error, similar to Martin Padway's experiments in Lest Darkness Fall or those of the Crosstime Engineer in the first three books of that series (before it went completely off the rails).
Even with these problems, the central story is an enjoyable one. There's a lot of wonderful color in the beginning of the book (though I did have to puzzle through some jailhouse slang), and Flint uses a lot of his research for past books in this one. At only one point (in a scene with the Cherokees) does that research seem to be overdone.
The book feels as if Flint wrote about 60% and that Marilyn Kosmatka wrote about 40%, but I imagine that the percentage is probably closer to 80/20 in Kosmatka's favor based on past Flint collaborations. There are places when the writers' styles differ, particularly when you compare the jailhouse scenes with those involving the Cherokees, but I'd say that it was a successful collaboration overall. The book starts out well, does very well in the middle sections, but I found myself disappointed by the ending. It seemed too much of a pat ending, but it seems as if Baen or the authors themselves wanted to leave a big hook for a sequel if this one sells well enough. This could've been a really good one-off novel, but the need to leave a hook really took away something in my eyes.
Even with these little nits, I'd recommend picking it up. If you're a fan of the 163x or Rivers of War series, you'll enjoy it. If you're not a fan of Flint's writing, I'd say that it doesn't quite measure up to 1633 -- that's probably the gold standard in my eyes.
It's worth getting on release for Flint fans. All others should probably wait until paperback.
Summary of Time Spike
Captain Mark Stephens was overseeing the change of shifts at the state of Illinois' maximum-security prison when the world outside was suddenly ripped. They thought it was an earthquake until they found that the Mississippi river had disappeared, along with all signs of civilization. Then the sun came up -- in the wrong direction. And a dinosaur came by and scratched its hide against the wall of the prison...Something had thrown the prison back in time millions of years. And they were not alone. Other humans from periods centuries, even millennia apart had also been dropped into the same time. Including a band of murderous conquistadores. But the prison had its own large population of murderers. They couldn't be turned loose, but what else could be done with them? Death walked outside the walls, human savagery was planning to break loose inside, and Stephens and the other men and women of the prison's staff were trapped in the middle.
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