- Title:
- Time Spike (1) (Assiti Shards)
- By:
- Eric Flint
- Pages:
- 467
- Rating:
- 2
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.
I would’ve enjoyed this more if it had actually gone somewhere, but from the time the Spike happens and we learn there’s no way of going back, it’s sink or swim for certain and there’s no gray area. This means the scenes set in the present with the research team are completely redundant.
As if that wasn’t bad enough (nobody likes a story with a predictable ending), the sheer level of proofing needed to make this work publishable put me off:
* Glove Department rather than compartment
* Clinched teeth, rather than clenched, Crustaceous rather than cretaceous, and Adolph rather than Adolf (Hitler, you know?) all in the one paragraph!
* Pepper spay? What on earth is that?
* a “grocery story”, rather than a store. Really!
* and “the identical sort of look”. Grammatical nonsense!
These are just a few of the things I angrily highlighted. Sloppy editing, sloppy plot, interesting characters, just, and an idea that could’ve been worth reading in the hands of a decent writer. These aren’t there yet