Island in the Sea of Time - S.M. Stirling

Overall Rating : A.

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IITSOT is part one of an Alternate-History trilogy where the island of Nantucket (and a bit of the seas around it) gets transported back in time from present-day to the Bronze Age of 1250 B.C. The first order of business is simply to survive the oncoming winter, since very few of the Nantucketeers are skilled in hunting, gathering, fishing, and trapping.

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What's To Like...

This is the best Alt-Hist book I've read so far. The plot moves fast; there's lots of action; and the meticuous research by Stirling is obvious.

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Unlike Eric Flint's 163X series, the Good Guys actually make a few mistakes here. And the Bad Guy, believe it or not, is not Evil Incarnate. He's ambitious, he's Machiavallian, and he's inventive. He and his cohorts manage to spring a number of surprises on the Forces of Goodness, which is a pleasant change-of-pace.

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The good guys' fighting hero is a gay, female black; which is certainly not stereotypical. And lest you think the author is trying to foist his bleeding-heart liberal philosophy on you, he also takes some rather reactionary pokes at gun-control, whaling, and tree-hugging. Yet all this is woven neatly into the plot. No page-after-page "preaching" such as Flint and even Dan Brown are given to.

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Finally, there's actually a climactic ending to the book, even though it's just the first of three volumes. Robert Jordan could've taken some pointers here.

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What's Not To Like...

There's too much space devoted to the technical part of sailing. Good lord, I feel like I'm reading a Tom Clancy novel.

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Stirling gets fixated on a variety of things. To wit, the sounds effects of war; the fact that one's bowels 'void' as one dies in battle (and the consequent stench thereof); the 'down-hominess' of the Good Guys' political hero.

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He also seems to spend a lot of time on the erotic thoughts of the lesbian pair. There's nothing wrong with Stirling giving us his insight in this matter, but you'd think that nothing else enters the minds of these two when they're not fighting and killing. Then there's the Bad Lady's penchant for S&M. Although Stirling handles the sex scenes better than Harry Turtledove does, one still gets the feeling that they're primarily there to make teenage boys hot and sweaty.

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Finally, the Sierra-Clubbing, AmerIndian-saving Pamela Lisketter is just too stereotypical to be believed.

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We Are Yankees, Hear Us Roar...

It should be noted that, like Flint's 163X series, we once again have a small, intrepid group of Americans enlightening the rest of the non-American past-world with our superior technology, government, philosophy, and overall goodness. Just once, I'd like to see something like a modern-day Chinese army dropped into, say, 1700's America. Or maybe the entire nation of 21st-century France. Or the 20th-century British Imperial Navy. Let's reverse the roles for a change.

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It should also be noted that Nantucket Island had an inordinate number of world-renowned history and industrial specialists on the Island at the moment of the time-swap. And a nearby Coast Guard steel-plated windjammer conveniently gets zapped into the Bronze Age along with the island. (*)

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None of these "picked nits" detract from the story, including the fact that a 100-pound Ninja babe can kick any-and-all 200-pound male, barbarian a$$. In reality, the odds of the present-day Nantucket surviving a year in the Bronze Age would be extremely long. Stirling is fully allowed to follow in Flint's footsteps (or is it the other way around?) and "stack the deck" in order allow the story to go on more than one winter.

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This book was a real page-turner for me. And ultimately, that's what counts the most when I read a book for pleasure. We'll give it a solid "A", and see whether the other two books in the trilogy can keep up the pace.

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(*) : Update (11/03/09)...

S.M. Stirling stopped by soon after I posted this in 2007 to let me know that all the skills and technology described in IITSOT did indeed exist on Nantucket in 1998, which is when he visited the island to research this book. Including the Coast Guard's steel-plated windjammer, "The Eagle". You gotta love it when an author takes the time to visit, read, and comment on your book review. (**)

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(**) : Indeed, this humbled me and made me a bit less snarky when writing reviews of someone else's literary efforts.