Time Spike

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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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Ponce de Leon and the Tyrannosaur, 2008-12-06
Time Spike (2008) is a standalone time travel novel in the Assiti Shards universe. It is set in the Alexander Correction Center -- an Illinois prison -- that has been thrown back to the age of dinosaurs. The maximum-security prison is across the road from the Mississippi River and contains more than twenty-four hundred inmates.

In this novel, Captain Andrew Blacklock is preparing for shift change as the afternoon personnel start punching out. As the head of the night shift, he is short of personnel again. The state cannot afford to hire many replacements because of the budget situation, so most of the men and women have worked double shifts at least three time in the past week.

Lieutenant Rodney Hulbert is the second in command of the afternoon shift. He is a survival hobbyist, spending his weekends on trips into wilderness areas. He is also the best marksman in the prison.

Lieutenant Joseph Schuyler is leaving with the afternoon crew. He is briefing Andy on the incidents during the second shift. The prisoners have been restless today. He decides to stay over with the night shift.

Kathleen Hanrahan is an experienced Correctional Officer who is starting maternity leave after this shift. She already has three kids at home, but her birth control measures hadn't protected her from another pregnancy. With her husband laid off from his job, she can't afford to take earlier leave than the health benefits allow. So she has been working in the communications and control center.

Jeffrey Edelman is a new CO with a background in science and technology. He was a geology graduate student at the university, but had to drop out when his mother became sick. Now he is working at the prison to help his family finances.

Jennifer Radford is the only night shift nurse. She has just completed her orientation training and is working her first duty shift. She is an exceptionally well qualified Nurse Practitioner, but she has never before worked in a prison.

James Cook is one of the new prisoners. He had been convicted of second degree homicide on very flimsy evidence. If he could have gotten a better lawyer, Cook would have probably been found innocent. Now he is preparing himself for the prison environment.

Margo Glenn-Lewis is a physicist who is investigating the Grantville incident. She and her fellow conspirators in the Project are drawing federal grant money under false pretenses to study the available data on that event. Over the past seven years, they have been recording more data on the subsequent minor incidents of the same type. They have converted the equipment in an unused iron mine to collect the relevant data.

Richard Morgan-Ash is a British physicist who has become part of the Project. He had read some papers issued by the scientists in the iron mine and became curious. Now he and his teenaged daughter are living in northern Minnesota.

In this story, the Project detects a high energy temporal event occurring somewhere near the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Apparently it will hit east of Saint Louis. Margo and Richard fly toward the impact zone.

The Project team finds every road to the center of impact has been cordoned off by local and state police. None of the police know about the temporal event. They reckon that the prison has had a breakout and are operating under contingency plans for such an occurrence.

The prison is coping with another day with inadequate personnel when the temporal event strikes. The side effects cause an abrupt shaking of the structures, which lead the guards and cons to believe that they have experienced an earthquake. Their worse fear is that the Quiver is only a prelude to a full-blown shift of the New Madrid fault.

As the COs are checking the structure for damage, someone knifes Elaine Brown, a newby guard. She is within the infirmary being stabilized prior to transfer to the hospital. Then the guards discover that the normal environs disappear about a half mile toward town. There is no hospital available.

The Mississippi river is gone and trees at least two hundred years old are growing where the river bed had been. Part of the parking lot is gone. Then the prison has a visit from a stegosaurus, who scratches himself on the walls.

Kathleen's water breaks and she starts having contractions. Jenny is worried about the baby and the word gets around. Every CO in the prison is expecting the baby to be stillborn.

Jeff is the closest to a science advisor available in the prison. He figures that the prison has traveled in time. After a while, he begins to suspect that the prison is not the only thing effected by the temporal event. Besides the animals from different eras, the locale has humans from other times, from Cherokees on the Trail of Tears to pre-cursors of the Mound Builder indians. There is also a small army of Conquistadors under Ponce de Leon in the area.

This tale takes place in the present as well as a hundred and twenty million years or more in the past. At least there is only a few large predators -- including something like a Tyrannosaur -- in the area where the prison was deposited, but this is the age of the dinosaurs, so many more are outside the immediate area. The humans, however, are limited to the few thousands collected during the event, mostly pre-Columbian indians with only primitive technology.

This novel is based on the same speculative science that underlays the Grantville novels. It contains a larger exposition of the scientific background for these temporal events. However, the Assiti have not yet shown themselves.

Alexander Correctional Center does not exist. However, Tamms CC is sited within Alexander county in the indicated area. That locale in southwestern Illinois has seen a fair number of significant historical events, including those mentioned in this story.

One reviewer assumes that the characters are more intelligent than their occupations as Correctional Officers would indicate. He should have grown up in a small town where there are significant historical sites. In Chattanooga, almost everybody knows a fair amount about the Chickamauga campaign and, in Smyrna, even the kids know about Sherman's burning of Atlanta. Not to mention the Atlanta street named Ponce de Leon.

The story is filled with action. From the scheming prisoners to the predatory animals, the plot never seems to slow down. Enjoy!

Highly recommended for 1632 fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of time travel, primitive conditions, and a touch of romance.

-Arthur W. Jordin


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

A very interesting and enjoyable read, 2008-11-14
After "The Quiver," everything is changed - the staff and inmates in the Illinois maximum security prison suddenly find themselves in another place and time. The prison is intact, and the grounds immediately around it are the same, but beyond that the plants are different and dinosaurs walk the earth once again. But, this is no isolated event - also caught up in the change are a group of Cherokees walking the Trail of Tears, some early Native Americans, and a group of conquistadors under Hernando de Soto.

This has all the makings of a war of all against all, and the staff not only needs to fear the people and animals outside the prison, they are holding onto some 2,000 murderers, rapists and psychopaths. It's up to them to decide how to make a better world for themselves and their (hopefully) children, and they need to work fast, really fast!

Overall, I must say that I really enjoyed this book. I enjoyed how the author used the various characters in the stories, especially those non-modern ones, trying to make them realistic. And, I enjoyed the action and adventure that runs throughout the story. My one complaint is that the story is somewhat thick and heavy, coming in at a hefty 467 pages - when some judicious editing could have brought the story in at a lean and more interesting 350 pages.

But, that said, it was nonetheless a very interesting and enjoyable read. If you liked Eric Flint's 1632 series, then you will like this story. I highly recommend Time Spike to all lovers of good fiction!


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Time Spike, 2008-10-08
Wow! This book was great from start to finish! You never knew what was about to happen. Great job!!! Also,for a first author time should be proud!!


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

The Sound of Opening Doors, 2008-10-04
You can tell from my other reviews that I have been a big fan of Flint's Ring of Fire series, but I thought he was running out of steam. I was wrong. With what amounts to the 14th book in the series, Flint and Kosmatka not only have produced an excellent book in the series, but one which opens many new doors to a possible expansion of the series almost without bound. Big words. How so?

Well, by the end we have a team at the highest scientific level working on the "problem" from the present. They are learning new science about time and how to manipulate it. This can open a door to possible rescue attempts from the present (which will probably be rejected by most of the folks involved who will have built their own worlds by then). It can also open a door to the future with endless possibilities therein. It can open a door to a practical FTL space drive to transport humans to the ends of the universe. It can open a door to the mixing of humanity from all ages with staggering but unpredictable results

There are probably other doors that haven't occurred to me as yet, but I think that is more than enough for one book. This series could easily eventually dwarf even the Honor Harrington series - what a joy to contemplate!


1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Okay reading but not much here, 2008-09-22
One moment the understaffed maximum security prison is in southern Illinois. The next, it's a hundred million years in the past. The prison guards struggle to deal with a couple of thousand confused but dangerous prisoners in a world where the primary food available might be butchered dinosaur, but where a scattering of other time wanderers--including Trail of Tears Cherokees, pre-Columbian, Mound Indians, and explorer/slaver Hernando de Soto also attempt to survive.

A couple of hundred prison guards can't keep two thousand prisoners under perpetual lock-down, and food is bound to run short. But freeing the prisoners would create a killing frenzy--and would probably be equivalent to killing most of them since urban crime is no preparation for survival in a world where even flowering plants are not yet known and where fifteen ton predators will happily dine on humans. When most of the guards leave to make contact with the Cherokees and attempt to forge an alliance against de Soto, the prisoners rebel, taking over the prison and instituting a brutal purge.

Set in Eric Flint's 1632 universe, TIME SPIKE includes occasional glimpses of those left behind--scientists and conspiracy experts who realize that the government has fabricated terrorism stories about both Grantville (1632) and the prison disappearance. Eric Flint teams with new author Marilyn Kosmatka to take the story of time-traveling societies to a much more distant past.

Because TIME SPIKE is set in the land of dinosaurs, we don't get one of the primary joys of alternate history--seeing how modern people interact with the cultures of the past, changing history as they exchange values and information. Flint/Kosmatka attempt to offset this by introducing the Cherokee and Spanish victims of the time spike but for me, this expedient was only partially successful. For me, TIME SPIKE didn't really develop its characters sufficiently--except for prisoner Cook. Finally, if we were going to have a time travel story set in the world of dinosaurs, I would have liked to see a lot more dinosaurs.

Flint and Kosmatka deliver a fair amount of not-too-subtle political commentary. Although I agree with them in this case, political commentary is most valuable when it's developed in the process of the story. In TIME SPIKE, I found the political aspects a bit heavy-handed. And speaking of heavy-hands, my editing pencil kept twitching as I wanted to de-clunk some of the English. TIME SPIKE should be read as light-weight enjoyment. It doesn't pack the interest that the 1632 series does, but it'll do for light reading.

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