by Harry Turtledove
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| List Price: | $6.99 |
| Amazon Price: | $6.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
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Product Description
Jeremy Solter is a teenager growing up in the late 21st century. During the school year, his family lives in Southern California-but during the summer the whole family lives and works in the city of Polisso, on the frontier of the Roman Empire. Not the Roman Empire that fell centuries ago, but a Roman Empire that never fell.
For we now have the technology to move between timelines, and to exploit the untapped resources of those timelines that are hospitable to human life. So we send traders and businesspeople-but as whole-family groups, in order to keep the secret of Crosstime Traffic to ourselves.
But when Jeremy ducks back home for emergency medical treatment, the gateways stop working. So do all the communication links. Jeremy and his sister are on their own, Polisso is suddenly under siege, and there's only so much you can do when cannonballs are crashing through your roof...
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Super Slow, ugh..., 2008-08-04
Well, had moderately high hopes for this, my first Turtledove book. Sadly, i will likely never read another.
I'd really rate it 1.5001 stars, but i rounded up b/c i didn't hate it. It was a speck above that; i needed a distracting read so i picked it up and had nothing else to fill so gap, so i shouldered on.
The science is all wrong; the plot is sickeningly predictable. The characters are insipid. Really, the only good thing is i successfully killed some time; otherwise, i would have given it half a star and never written this review.
Rumor has it the author can do better, but i'm sure i'll never find out.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A bit disappointing, 2007-09-07
If you've read and loved Turtledove's other series as I have, you will probably be disappointed with this take on alternate reality. There is none of the gritty tooth and nail conflicts that made his other works, The Worldwar Saga and The Great War books just to name a few, totally immerse you in their plots. I got the distinct feeling that I was being talked down to and perhaps this is the crux of the issue.
Not far into the book I came to realize that this was written for a juvenile audience. Looking at it from that point of view, the characters which were not fleshed out as they usually are and the more simplistic storyline became far more palatable to me. I believe that this would be a great book for young people who are just exploring the genre. Two teens trapped in an alien environment with no adults for support. It is unquestionably written with great talent, just don't expect the raw, real world environs so predominant his other books.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Teen Angst in Rome, 2006-04-27
Jeremy and Amanda Solter live and go to school in L.A., but they spend their summers working with their parents in an alternate timeline, one where the Roman Empire never fell. When a medical emergency calls their parents away, the teens are suddenly on their own. Then the transmissions from home stop and an invading army is at the city gates.
Predictable plot aimed at teens, only interesting aspect is the look at how Romans lived day-to-day compared to modern society.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Working Too Hard, 2006-04-01
Being a lover of H. Beam. Piper's Paratime Patrol-related books (especially Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen) I hoped for something similar from Turtledove. Alas, I found I just didn't care enough about the characters to look forward to reading what was coming up next in their story. Turtledove seems to try to make them interesting but there are plot eccentricities that jar. Why would anyone sell gaudy wrist-watches and Swiss Army knives in a Roman time line that also has developed a hyper-bureaucracy that keeps track of every little thing that stands out from the bland norm? Or take payment only in grain when buyers offer gold? Or "go for a walk" when there's a Lithuanian army coming to invest the town?
Turtledove could stand a refresher re-reading Piper, or, for authors whose characters I care about: Connie Willis whose plague-year story "Doomsday Book" is searing and wonderful; and Lois Bujold whose Miles Vorkosigan stories are, well, great.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Beware, Turtledove fans!, 2005-10-08
An alternate history where the Roman Empire survives into and past our own time would make for a fascinating read if researched and written well, and Harry Turtledove would be one author who could probably do it. If so, he needs to try again, and a little harder.
Nowhere on the book jacket or cover blurbs or inside this $25 book is there are warning/indication that this is a book for children and maybe (very) young teenagers, but what is what it is. Since it is sold as standard science fiction/alternative history, and the author is well-known for that kind of standard fare for adults, it strikes me as a little cynical to just let the adult reader find this out for himself after buying the book.
Unfortunately, even as a youth-oriented adventure story that happens to be set in another "timeline," it falls short. JK Rowling need not fear this entry into her market.
It seems a little churlish to quibble about details in a kids' story, but kids are smart enough to pick up on this stuff, and Turtledove is smart enough to know better. So here are some of my personal quibbles.
The thing is set in the 2090s, and science has made interdimensional travel possible. Here, it seems to be used primarily for plundering oil and foodstuffs from the other worlds and bringing the goods back home, in exchange for slum trinkets like Swiss army knives and gaudy Japanese watches. Despite the "current" year being some 80 to 90 years ahead of us, very little besides this inter-dimensional trick has changed. Kids are still obsessed with TV and CDs, they shop at WalMart and Home Depot, use a PowerBook computer, and all of the gadgets in common use were in use in our time, 2005. They also speak English. Given the speed at which current fashions and customs have changed in the last 100 years, this is ridiculous. Only one SERIOUS change has occurred, and that is implied by the comment, "Guys in Los Angeles usually weren't so crude." Now that would signify massive change!
Sadly, the kids are too perfect by half, being politically correct to a mind-numbing and eye-rolling extent. Their physical revulsion at the concept of slavery is mentioned dozens and dozens of times, they abhor the idea of personal valor and even question the morality of self-defense, and they also seem to have a very strange aversion, again regularly bringing them to the verge (and beyond) of vomiting, when confronted with the custom of people wearing furs. Most odd, coming from kids wearing and using leather all the time, and craving a good burger and lamb vindaloo. Their precious and unwavering moral rectitude almost had me reaching for the airsickness bag myself at times.
Turtledove presents the Roman Empire roughly as it was in AD 150, adds the invention though not perfection of early gunpowder weapons, and at that point stops all progress. This seems way overly simplistic (and way too easy on an ambitious author). The Byzantine (East Roman) Empire outlasted the Western Empire by 1000 years, and there was significant progress made in that time in every field of knowledge. Why nothing new in 2000 years in this timeline? Why use time-dates at all; it would have been easier to say that the children went back in time itself. They don't need an alternate world for this.
Finally, every sf and alt/hist reader will be familiar with various logical and time-honored conventions concerning the genre. These are either absent or unevenly applied in this case. For example, they are prevented from interfering with the civilization as they find it...but are permitted (and encouraged) to trade goods technologically far advanced. And ultimately they negotiate with an enemy's king, free a slave, etc. This is non-interference? Better to allow them to actively interfere and deal imaginatively with the fall-out. Even the idea of essentially looting all the available food from a culture only slightly above subsistence level is pretty questionable for people who consider themselves moral paragons.
I can't recommend this book to either juvenile adventure readers (it is fairly dull and overly simply plotted) nor to Turtledove fans (way below his form).
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