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timinbc's review
3.0
I'll go three stars if we can agree that this is a lightweight book, ideal if you arrive at the airport and realize that the one book you brought is one you've already read.
Some of the stars are because there's a not-bad sense of "oh yeah, so what happens next?"
But.
First off, who's this FOR? It feels and reads like a YA, but it jumps right in with a bisected Gavin, spears and swords galore, then guns, and torture, and a serial killer. Is this actually a horror-adventure book?
The timeline shattered "like a jigsaw puzzle" ... this holds up OK if only time shattered, not space (leaving aside issues that the planet, solar system and galaxy are all moving quite fast and Sir Lancelot swapping with Trevor Noah is going to have some problems)
"Merlin" has more or less promised to undo all this, which will be interesting. What will happen to all the people and buildings that got cut in half, as we were so carefully shown in messy detail. Oh dear, he's going to have to do the "make it didn't happen" time travel thing. Like when Superman spun the Earth the wrong way that time. Yuck. Please don't have it end with Amber sitting in a punt with faint memories, like Alice Liddell waking up with her kitten.
I'm OK with the nods to George Washington and Caesar (although the Caesar scene was quite well done). Got a little concerned when Nellie Bly meets Lord Fairfax/Stearne, but so far we haven't strayed into P J Farmer's Riverworld, full of "Hi, I'm Mark Twain." "Pleased to meet you, I'm Henry VIII. Lucky we happened to meet, huh? I mean, the odds are that we'd both be grubby peasants ...."
That is balanced by a decent selection of who else got drawn into our little group: female cop, male soldier, primitive boy, nasty young man, ... but I deduct a huge point for the professor. That's just Dr. Smith from Lost In Space. And Stearne is a tad overdrawn, even though real people existed who were almost as fanatic and corrupt as that. Again, it's a bit melodramatic that THIS is who they met, rather than a grocers' convention from 1953 Iowa.
"Merlin" can regenerate. Uh huh. We'll see. I'm fine with autodocs etc., but in-the-field nanobot regeneration may be a stretch for the 23rd century. I reckon scientists that can screw up the way they have here would not be any more successful with nanobots, and we'd get the pink-goo scenario.
Reckon I'll just read the plot synopsis of #2. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited.
Some of the stars are because there's a not-bad sense of "oh yeah, so what happens next?"
But.
First off, who's this FOR? It feels and reads like a YA, but it jumps right in with a bisected Gavin, spears and swords galore, then guns, and torture, and a serial killer. Is this actually a horror-adventure book?
The timeline shattered "like a jigsaw puzzle" ... this holds up OK if only time shattered, not space (leaving aside issues that the planet, solar system and galaxy are all moving quite fast and Sir Lancelot swapping with Trevor Noah is going to have some problems)
"Merlin" has more or less promised to undo all this, which will be interesting. What will happen to all the people and buildings that got cut in half, as we were so carefully shown in messy detail. Oh dear, he's going to have to do the "make it didn't happen" time travel thing. Like when Superman spun the Earth the wrong way that time. Yuck. Please don't have it end with Amber sitting in a punt with faint memories, like Alice Liddell waking up with her kitten.
I'm OK with the nods to George Washington and Caesar (although the Caesar scene was quite well done). Got a little concerned when Nellie Bly meets Lord Fairfax/Stearne, but so far we haven't strayed into P J Farmer's Riverworld, full of "Hi, I'm Mark Twain." "Pleased to meet you, I'm Henry VIII. Lucky we happened to meet, huh? I mean, the odds are that we'd both be grubby peasants ...."
That is balanced by a decent selection of who else got drawn into our little group: female cop, male soldier, primitive boy, nasty young man, ... but I deduct a huge point for the professor. That's just Dr. Smith from Lost In Space. And Stearne is a tad overdrawn, even though real people existed who were almost as fanatic and corrupt as that. Again, it's a bit melodramatic that THIS is who they met, rather than a grocers' convention from 1953 Iowa.
"Merlin" can regenerate. Uh huh. We'll see. I'm fine with autodocs etc., but in-the-field nanobot regeneration may be a stretch for the 23rd century. I reckon scientists that can screw up the way they have here would not be any more successful with nanobots, and we'd get the pink-goo scenario.
Reckon I'll just read the plot synopsis of #2. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited.
queenmargot's review
I gave up on this book when the serial killer character killed a character that had only been introduced 2 chapters previously. Why introduce her at all?
It was also incredibly slow to get to the point. I was giving it some time but that death was really dumb.
It was also incredibly slow to get to the point. I was giving it some time but that death was really dumb.
tensy's review
3.0
Amber, a young woman out on a date in 2016 England, experiences a catastrophic event where time seems to have split into limited land areas, called shards, and where she encounters prehistoric dinosaurs alongside people from a variety of time periods. This is a lightweight compendium of several genres, fantasy, hard sci-fi, horror and mystery. There are quite a few holes in the time shattering theory of the plot, but I sense we aren't expected to analyze this too closely. It ends without much resolution enticing the reader to pick-up the next volume in the trilogy.
blodeuedd's review
3.0
Time is crazy, I mean to even try to think about this. Mind blown. Time shattered. This took place int the future. And now that future is gone and everything that has been has been thrown together like a patchwork quilt. Everything else...who knows. Gone? Never existed? Tiny fragments, bigger fragments. A coffee shop from 1993. A town from 1662. A swamp from the Jurassic Era. Woven together. So you might walk down a road and you are actually walking through different eras, but now they all exist at once. Like father time took things from here and there and made a new world.
Amber attended a Con and is now stuck and has no idea what the F happened. She is a nerd (love that), she is resourceful, kind and well just wants to get the h out of here. I liked her.
We meet a few others on the way too. Cam, a Celtic warrior, who just wants to get home to his village. Poor guy, everyone he meets does not speak his language.
A scientist who says he has answers. A soldier who wants to do good. And a whole lot of Cornwellian soldiers with a zealot in their midst. I say that this new world would have been much much better without them!!! And more that I wont spoil. But think about it, not many made it, we as a race are young. A lot more came before.
Dinosaurs, pre historic monsters, there are dangers lurking everywhere.
And the book was intense! At one time I was all, I hope this will not give me nightmares! What a hellscape to be stuck in. And you can think that there was a lot of action since so much is out to get you.
A good book with one crazy new world
Narrator.
Aaron Shedlock
I really enjoyed his voice. He was perfect for this and he made this one guy sooo creepy. Shivers ran down my spine. In a good way.
A nice range and he kept the up the speed
Amber attended a Con and is now stuck and has no idea what the F happened. She is a nerd (love that), she is resourceful, kind and well just wants to get the h out of here. I liked her.
We meet a few others on the way too. Cam, a Celtic warrior, who just wants to get home to his village. Poor guy, everyone he meets does not speak his language.
A scientist who says he has answers. A soldier who wants to do good. And a whole lot of Cornwellian soldiers with a zealot in their midst. I say that this new world would have been much much better without them!!! And more that I wont spoil. But think about it, not many made it, we as a race are young. A lot more came before.
Dinosaurs, pre historic monsters, there are dangers lurking everywhere.
And the book was intense! At one time I was all, I hope this will not give me nightmares! What a hellscape to be stuck in. And you can think that there was a lot of action since so much is out to get you.
A good book with one crazy new world
Narrator.
Aaron Shedlock
I really enjoyed his voice. He was perfect for this and he made this one guy sooo creepy. Shivers ran down my spine. In a good way.
A nice range and he kept the up the speed
calluna_vulgar1s's review against another edition
5.0
Short review, I may come back to flesh it out... but this is a great start to this series. Easily I could recommend this to just about anyone. I love the Cam/Amber sub plot and of course the time breaking up part was overall great. Such a neat take on time travel instead of the usual (not that I'm tired of the usual by any means)
pharmdad2007's review against another edition
3.0
There were so many things about this book that could have bothered me. So many ridiculously improbable things, so many historical/scientific/continuity errors, so many cringe-worthy moments. So I guess it's a credit to the authors that none of them really bothered me that much. That being said, I'm not sure I'll read any future books in this series. I mean, how many deus-ex-machina moments to save you from the clutches of someone you just realized was a serial killer can one person take?
thomcat's review against another edition
3.0
Most time travel stories involve the travel of individuals, a few have groups. In this book, huge fragments of the world travel in time, allowing primitive Celt to meet up with Victorian and modern inhabitants of south-eastern England. This first book in a series leaves many questions unanswered.
Among those questions are whether this can ever be un-done. Most time travel has some handwaving about how the travelers accomplish the feat - here that must expand to the entire world. How did this "chrono-event" keep everybody in the same geographical place, considering a rotating and orbiting planet whose sun is part of a rotating and orbiting galaxy, etc.? Perhaps some of this will be answered in future books.
Author Dana Fredsti is a self-described B-movie actress, and co-writes with her husband David Fitzgerald. Their characters were interesting, with the tale told from multiple viewpoints. I wanted to see a section from Alex's viewpoint, and obviously one from "Merlin", but perhaps that will also have to wait for a subsequent book. The main villain of this tale is a caricature, unfortunately. The specific story here comes to a conclusion, but the world story definitely doesn't. I'll probably dig into the next book when I can track it down.
Among those questions are whether this can ever be un-done. Most time travel has some handwaving about how the travelers accomplish the feat - here that must expand to the entire world. How did this "chrono-event" keep everybody in the same geographical place, considering a rotating and orbiting planet whose sun is part of a rotating and orbiting galaxy, etc.? Perhaps some of this will be answered in future books.
Author Dana Fredsti is a self-described B-movie actress, and co-writes with her husband David Fitzgerald. Their characters were interesting, with the tale told from multiple viewpoints. I wanted to see a section from Alex's viewpoint, and obviously one from "Merlin", but perhaps that will also have to wait for a subsequent book. The main villain of this tale is a caricature, unfortunately. The specific story here comes to a conclusion, but the world story definitely doesn't. I'll probably dig into the next book when I can track it down.
garlandpubliclibrary's review against another edition
3.0
Entertaining story! Time travel, dinosaurs, neanderthals, and modern man all stuck together in one timeline!
ezzydesu's review against another edition
It's called 'The Event,' an unimaginable cataclysm that shatters 600 million years of the Earth's timeline.
This book was a strange experience and I haven't read any book feeling the same. So what's going on? Time Shards has one of the best plot ideas for a SFF book I have ever come across, and it was awesome reading about it, but it just doesn't work with a all-words-no-pictures format. I am going to explain why later. First I want to add some content warnings to this book. Time Shards contains: Violent/graphic deaths, suicide, abduction, torture, & (violent) attempted rape.
This book is about how all of time shatters into millions of pieces and reorganises into a new version of Earth where dinosaurs can roam from their 'time shard' into the one with a piece of New York. This time shattering is called 'The Event'. Imagine you have 100 jigsaw puzzles and you just make a new one with pieces of all the puzzles. It would become one giant mess. That's basically how the Earth looks like after 'The Event'. Pretty cool, right?
In the story itself you follow Amber, a young adult cosplayer that is enjoying a date right after Comic Con when 'The Event' happens. The world is in pieces, just like her date, and she has to figure out where (when?) she is and what's going on on her own.
Now, I'll explain to you why I think this story doesn't work in a regular novel format. In short, the whole book relies on visuals and without it, some things won't make sense or the essence of the story gets lost. But when you are telling about what happens with the landscape and the people when 'The Event' is happening in real time, in a book that takes up so many pages to just visualize a few different times and places where the timeline is torn apart. It creates a 'Ten pages to describe a tree'-syndrome in a book and really messes with the pacing. This kept happening throughout the book when the main characters walked from shard to shard or encountered strange things. In a movie, all these pages could be summarized in a few shots or short scenes. This is because one visual can replace half a page of words.
Long story short, the book concept is amazing, it was written very well, but just the way how books work doesn't agree with this story and that's a shame. I think many people would put this book down as the book as it's slow points,
The cast of this books is really enjoyable. It's a thrown together bunch of different ages and personalities and that's always fun. My only pet peeve was that all of the cast originated in the last 100 years and then one from hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. There are freaking dinosaurs roaming around, give me Greek prophets or a sassy Golden Age theather player.
The type of story telling reminded me a bit of The Walking Dead, as both are stories without a super direct plot (''Oh we have to do this to save the world!'') in which the world as we know it has gone to shit and the only thing the survivers can do is adapt and survive. The plot got a bit more directer the last third or fourth of the book as you eventually learn more about what is going on. It's a light type of story and I really enjoyed it.
Besides the story telling, I also quite enjoyed the writing style, so I am definitely interested in reading more books by either author. When scrolling through both Goodreads, I saw quite some interesting books among them, so I am definitely keeping Dana Fredsti and David Fitzgerald on my radar.
I wouldn't per se recommend this book as it has its flaws, but you should definitely check out this book if you are a sci-fi fan. Time Shards is one very original and interesting SFF book that definitely deserves some love for the creativity. I really hope someone in Hollywood finds this book and options it for a movie, as that would be absolutely amazing!