Customer Reviews

The Seeds of Time

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Out of nowhere pops Kay Kenyon with a top shelf first book though with the imperfections of a first timer. It is so rare to find character development of this quality in a sci-fi novel. A woman as strong central characters is reminiscent of the Alien series. I liked this book so much I bought all her other books and every one is a gem. I recommend them all.

Kay Kenyon is absolutely amazing. This story about a Dive Pilot named Clio Finn and her adventures in Space/Time Travel kept my face buried in this book from start to end with very few breaks. All good authors have strong points in their writing which breaks down into 3 or 4 different styles of writing. You get some that are proficient in one and sometimes two, Kay Kenyon is a true marvel as she excels in all ways and in my opinion is one of the finest writers whose work I have had the pleasure to read in a long time.

The good parts:

1. SF ideas: parallel universes approached not quite as usual and an interesting means of space travelling by time-travelling thus solving the eternal problem of FTL

2. The picture of a grim but not so impossible future with an ecologically devastasted Earth. I know, we've seen all this before, but it never fails to impress me, it's sooo possible...

3. The characters, most of them. Except of the fact that most of the good guys were women and most of the bad guys men. This is not very credible (and it's a woman saying this).

The bad parts:

1. The fact that the book was basically split into two distinct parts: the first half and the second half. They were connected through the actions, but the characters are entirely different. Except for Clio and Harper Teeg (the bad guy) there was nobody from the first half of the book which appeared in the second. It was kind of difficult to get used to some people just to have them replaced afterwards by another ones. The ones in the second half of the book were better, though.

2. Too much sexuality! The beggining of the second half, the part in the quarries, rambled on and on about how Clio was forced to give sexual favours in order to survive. It may have been true, but I hate it when a SF book spends too much time on this. And what about her relationship with Hillis? I didn't get the point there. It never seemed real to me, and it seemed entirely pointless. What did it matter whether she loved him or not? It was not connected to the action in any way, it had no influence on it.

3. Harper Teeg: the main bad guy. I have always thought that as a writer, one should be able to create a credible negative character without making him mad. I mean, he could have had other reasons for his actions than his delusions of grandor and fixation with Clio (sex again...).

Other than that, it was enjoyable reading.

Why only three stars. Weeellll. At times I found the story was a little drawn out in places and was retelling what I alread knew. But what do you expect in a first novel? Perfection???

So, this is a story of an earth that is dying of pollution (hey, that's us!) The population is doing nothing because the government and large corporations have it all under control. But they don't. They just don't want to panic the population.

So, can a group of pilots "Dive" back to a fertile planet and bring back plants that can survive polluted earth, or are we going to fizzle out of existence?

For the answer to that one you will just have to read the book.

this book is obviously written by someone who is scientifically-challenged. basic astronomy, math, ecology, etc., do not add up. ---------------------------- this is especially unfortunate, since the characters were created so well. they were people who were real - complex mixtures of strengths, weaknesses, inconsistancies, virtues, stupidites, etc. in fact, the characters and basic story were so well done, that i pushed on in the book much further than i should have, hoping that bad science would go away and i could enjoy the interaction of the people, but alas, after a hundred or so pages, i could take it no longer.

I got this book because I was looking for scifi and it was recommended if I liked Octavia Butler, I'd probably like this one. Well, I did! It is one of those books (much like Butler's) that keep you reading because you've got to know what's going to happen next. And when you try to predict the next move, she throws you a curve. I just found out that Kay Kenyon has a new one out-I'm going buy it right now. You should too!

Reading the other reviews before paning this book, I realize I just must be getting jaded.

Clio - the main character - didn't impress me as a strong character.

The weird plot twists were just over the top. Everyone was so busy advancing their own agenda and lying to everyone else you just had no idea what was really going on. Except for the fact that there were good guys and bad guys. The good guys were on the side of right, and always lied for good purposes. The bad guys lied to advance their nefarious agendas.

And this whole environmental apocalypse thing. Ho hum. _Sheep Look Up_ was sorta fun in that hysterical environmental sort of way. Having read that, _Seeds of Time_ fails to impress.

And there are some fairly irrational plot twists to make the story - um - interesting (I found the whole bit rather annoying actually).

Give this book a miss.

What I mean by raw is that Clio, the main character, isn't a pretty picture. Strung out on drugs and not the smartest person she is never the less able to get you into her corner as you make your way through this book. If you have problems with time elements, such as the future and the past, etc. then you won't like this book because the author jumps from time period to time period which means Clio is living differently in all of them. I liked it because it kept me on my toes.

I just finished reading what I could manage of this book. That was all but the last 120 pages. A new reader of science fiction, an adult reader, might find this book enjoyable to read. Indeed, I liked most of it myself, except for the beginning of the second part of the book, which rambled so that I gave up. Clio Finn is a dive pilot, one of only a few who can pilot a dive ship through time without sleeping through the experience. She is the best dive pilot, having performed a string of dives much longer than average without burning out. She uses drugs to do this. Clio is on the run from DSDE agents who short-list her for extermination because she killed an agent when she was a child. While running, she had taken this dive job when her proficiency tested positive. Now she dives to find plants to transplant in an ecologically devastated earth. There is action, mutiny, killing, science, etc in this book. If I hadn't already read so many science fiction and fantasy novels, this might have seemed fresher to me.

Fun action, personable characters, and interesting ideas. Definitely a keeper even if the story was a bit corny. Easy to overlook the flaws. I'll read more by Kenyon.