The Seeds of Time

Seeds of Time #1

by Kay Kenyon

Clio Finn is a Dive pilot on a troubled Earth in 2019. Public paranoia about the AIDS virus and its successors has led to the imprisonment of the "subversives" of the society (namely, drug users and gays) in forced labor quarantine camps known as quarries. Meanwhile, Earth itself is dying from a progressive lack of greenery, as the UV irradiation from a successively depleted ozone layer is killing off all the plants, and therefore the planet's ability to sustain itself.

To counteract this problem, the powers of Earth have decided that new greenery must be found on alternate worlds, to supplement Earth's dying stock with heartier, alien strains. But since faster-than-light travel is still unavailable, a new method must be found to achieve this. Enter time travel, in which a quick jaunt down through time can bring ships into the position of planets which had rotated through Earth's present position in the distant past, due to the galaxy's extended period of rotation.

As most people are unable to remain awake during these temporal Dives, the guiding duty is left to an exclusive class of Dive pilots. Only dive pilots have a limited span before they burn out. Most can last thirty to forty Dives. Clio Finn has lasted fifty-five, and she is on the ragged end of burn-out, kept on track only by a handful of outlawed drugs.

But the potential rewards are great. A previous haul of greenery, once thought to be Earth's salvation, is dying off, and an illicit jaunt into the future taken by Clio and her colleagues has discovered the violent end of humanity itself. So her current destination, Niang, an Edenic tropical planet, seems the answer to mankind's prayers. Only, on Niang's surface, Clio discovers a desperate secret. The green which may save mankind also subsists on metals, and may therefore destroy all of mankind's existing technology. Clio's dilemma--whether to regreen Earth at the risk of driving man back into the dark ages--is only exacerbated when an accidental loop in time catches her in a paradox between two alternate futures, each of which is determined to eradicate the other completely and absolutely.

From the Paperback edition.

Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

544 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 5, 1997

About the author

Kay Kenyon is a fantasy and science fiction author. She is now working on her 21st novel, a fantasy. She has been a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award and several others and recently had a trilogy optioned for film, The Dark Talents: At the Table of Wolves.

Her newest fantasy series is The Arisen Worlds quartet. Book 1, The Girl Who Fell Into Myth, Book 2, Stranger in the Twisted Realm, Book 3, Servant of the Lost Power and Book 4, Keeper of the Mythos Gate. "A story of powers and magic on a grand scale.” —Louisa Morgan, author of The Secret History of Witches.

Her acclaimed 4-book series, The Entire and The Rose, has been reissued with new covers: Bright of the Sky. Called "a splendid fantasy quest" by The Washington Post.

She loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her at http://www.kaykenyon.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Seeds of Time was Kenyon's first novel, and is a long and thoughtful work demonstrating the importance of acceptance and understanding. It's a near-future science fiction story (published in 1997, it's set in 2019), and demonstrates the importance of ecology and social responsibility without becoming dogmatic. It's also a fast-paced and engaging adventure story. Something for everybody! SF for adults! A real "Dive" into space and time...

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tricky.

Upside: It has a strong female lead and it's got some interesting stuff going on with how it deals with sexuality. The BIG upside is that it does something very interesting with time travel, whereby the human race is visiting other planets by travelling back in time and travelling to the planets that used to be in the same place as the Earth millions of years before. (That's scientific nonsense, of course, but a decent enough premise for a book.)

Downside: It's... not amazingly well written. I struggled in places; in some cases I think it's like the dialogue just starts shedding random words for no reason, as if it got edited in some chapters but not others. Also, there are *a lot* of characters. And the cast varies *a lot* over the course of 600 pages. At points I was just surprised that a character we'd spent 200 pages getting to know was dropped off entirely. (And not in a cool Game of Thrones kinda way.)

[Kristin Lundgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeds of Time is a terrific SF novel for those who are not as concerned with techno-wizardry, but more on sociological, and even ecological concerns. Set in the future on Earth, a break-through has been made in the ability not to do FTL (fast than light) travel, but in time travel. They can go back, but not forward. Th earth is dying. And so dive pilots, as the heroine CLio is, are used to take a ship back in time, away from the earth and any paradoxes that may occur, to a likely planet that would have been in a specific place in a specific year (i.e. knowing how the stars move within time). They search the planet for signs of flora, and bring them back, working tirelessly to see if they can be grown under the harsh, ozone depleted earth conditions.

Clio has dived over her maximum life-span amount, but she is still one of the best dive pilots around. Dive pilots are found from those people who don't go into complete black-out mode on a dive through time as most people do. The find a planet that seems incredibly lush and verdant, and begin to take samples back. A previous mission had been lost on this planet. But things began to go wrong. Some of the crew want to "go native", and others just to get back to the ship. The plants, as lush as they were, seem to be almost predators. After a fight, where some are killed, and one or two left behind, they manage to escape back to the ship, and bring back the seeds and fledgling plants. Grown under supervised conditions, the plants should be contained. But things begin to go wrong on the ship after it makes it's dive back to their time, and is flying to meet the space station, often a several month long journey. Clio will do anything in her power to bring back the life to a dying earth, no matter the cost. Great stuff from Kay Kenyon. A flawed heroine, and an interesting premise, of how far will you go to avoid a future that seems doomed from one perspective. My second read (the first was in 2007.

[Jessica Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book while looking for some sci-fi with a female in the lead. The plot was fast-paced and interesting enough to suck me in immediately, and kept a steady pace through Part 1. I definitely have lots of issues with it, though.

I mainly chose this book because the description made Clio seem like an interesting, nuanced character; Not just your typical Strong Female Character(TM). Mostly I was hoping she would have some agency of her own, being a renowned pilot and tough lady. Instead, she's thrown from man to man - sometimes in very brutal and forceful ways (there's at least four attempted rapes against her, and many more skeevy verbal sexual assaults). It seems like Clio doesn't form many opinions beyond "I hate everyone and don't care about anything," until the next male suitor or savior comes along to recruit her to his cause.

Even so, you start to appreciate her at the end of Part 1, and then Part 2 comes along and is so jarringly depressing that I'm really not sure why I continued reading at all. The villains are cartoonishly evil, and the whole book is so darkly pessimistic that the weirdly optimistic ending falls completely flat.

This book does deal with some important issues, even all these years later, and it's entirely possible it just didn't age very well, but I don't recommend this one.

[Dragoonfliy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rated pretty high for a book I nearly DNF'd like... twice. Possibly thrice. It's... Good though I guess? I liked quite a few of the characters and a lot of the scifi concepts, and it was ultimately enough to keep me reading until the end. It started interesting and strong, lagged in the middle, and then picked up again at the last third. It really seemed like the blurb on the back really only managed to capture the first little bit of the book.

Was not expecting it to be fairly high tier dystopia, which I think was what nearly caused me to DNF it. I like a healthy dose of grimdark, it's just this one felt really rough, like it's not all that far from a worst case scenario Earth now, just with space travel and stuff. Be cautious if you're looking to pick this one up, it may make you very, very upset.

Speaking of upset, Clio gets sexually assaulted WAY to many times. I feel like I'm really forgiving with that sort of content in a lot of my media consumption but like, damn. Give her a rest. It felt like basically every plot arc of the three there was at least one scene where she nearly gets raped and I just. That's Too Many. You're succeeding in making me uncomfortable but at the cost of me putting down this book with a grimace and not touching it for a week.

Which I did at least twice, possibly more.

[beth fredrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A space adventure set in the near future with a strong female protagonist. Though it is a decade olde, it includes many contemporary themes, including repercussions of the rise in conservatism and intolerance. I especially liked the idea of "evolved" humans and the nostalgic longing for raspberries. Imagine a world without them and you are in the zone in which this book takes place. Likely interesting only to science fiction fans, but a very good read for them.

[Jessica Burstrem · Rating 5 out of 5]

This engrossing, engaging time travel novel features a gifted, principled, self-named female protagonist, Clio Finn – her birth name is never stated throughout the book – who cares deeply for the welfare of others. Moreover, in line with the spirit of choosing her own name, she strives to govern her actions freely, rather than simply according with the attitudes expected and enforced by those in power around her. The book also offers a complex but fully realized and ultimately completely consistent time travel philosophy that still allows for free will and manipulation of the past as well as the future – an impressive feat since I’ve never yet seen anyone else pull that off.

It was also the kind of novel that, while you’re reading it, invades your mind. You feel, irrationally, as the characters feel, all the time, day and night. Your dreams and thoughts swim with the predicaments of these people with whom you’re connected. You feel inexplicably troubled until the story achieves some resolution. This effect is one of the markers of an excellent book, for me.

I also really loved some of the details, such as some of the characters’ names, a few of which Kenyon does not explain outright, but which made sense, and which I appreciated, even so. I won’t give more details because I am being careful, as I give the rest of my reactions to this novel, to not actually give away anything that would spoil any part of the book – past page 70 anyway – while discussing my thoughts on the book all the same. You’ll just have to trust me on that – or, if you become uncomfortable at some point, stop reading and come back after you’ve read the book yourself. But I really don’t give anything away.

At first when I saw that there was an appendix at the back of the book, “Time Diving: Vandarthanan’s Theories and Corollaries,” I was expecting the worst. If the novel needs an accompanying explanation – if the story itself cannot gradually spin out the necessary information for the reader to weave together an understanding of the logic of its world – then it must be poor writing indeed. But by the end of the book, when I read that appendix, I felt differently. It wasn’t an explanation at all. It was a confirmation of what I already understood – a fictional historical document that fit with the attitudes of the reader’s favorite characters in the book. These characters had long term outcomes in mind – generations hence, when they themselves would be long gone, at any rate, anyway. Others were just obeying orders, or afraid of change, or – worst of all – only interested in enjoying themselves to the fullest in the here and now. A few, too, who were heroic on a smaller scale, attempted to live their lives according to their deeply felt ideologies for as long as they could get away with it, knowing that they were doing the right things, and in so doing shaping, and helping, the people who would be the bigger changemakers for all of time. Maybe, actually, those “little” people, who know they will be left behind and forgotten but do their parts anyway, are the most heroic of all.

This broad perspective is central to the time travelling that takes place in the book as well. The characters never go back to try to change the moments that they regret in their own lives. As Clio reminds herself, “you want to avoid your own historical past—avoid changing it, changing yourself. No matter how much you’d like to redo it. No second chances” (8).

Instead, Kenyon avoids all the problems that plague so many other time travel stories by way of the possibility of parallel temporal universes, which can both be reached during time travel; how exactly one chooses to get to one or the other during time travel is the one matter that Kenyon doesn’t ever thoroughly, convincingly establish, even in the appendix. (In fact, the appendix states that “the future vector upon which one ‘lands’ is a virtually random occurrence” (508), implying that it is impossible to choose on which parallel universe one will “land” – but I believe that in fact the main characters must choose upon which one they will land at least at the end of the book. The appendix goes on to explain that actually each universe will attract time travelers from its alternate (509), which is of course what generally happens in the book, so it is convenient for Kenyon to construct it that way. However, again, there is at least that one occurrence at the end in which presumably the characters choose to return to their own universe that is consequently particularly inexplicable.) Both of these universes – or “Cousin Realities” as they are termed in the book – exist for a relatively short period of time and compete for long-term dominance. “Cousin Realities,” the appendix explains, “are implacable competitors for existence since only one such reality can endure in the long run. Cousin Realities result in a state of reality-time dissonance that the mechanics of the universe strive to resolve” (509; emphasis in original). And they come about, in this book, as a response to a paradox – when an interaction with a time traveler from the future suddenly, radically changes everything and thereby creates another, alternate future – the Cousin Reality (435). The only odd thing is that this Cousin Reality exists, evidently, before the event that supposedly caused it to come into being, because it is this reality that Clio visits – or, rather, observes – when she first travels briefly into the future (see below).

She even posits the possibility of faster-than-light travel – by “an interface with the fabric of space-time” rather than propulsion (434). That may not make sense to you now, but when it’s introduced in the book, it absolutely, immediately does. The time travel technology in the book also depends on the existence of fusion – and while that was only a fiction in 1997, when this book was published, it too is possible, as we are finally seeing today.

Regardless of the existence of the appendix, Kenyon does indeed leave us to weave the story together on our own. On page 26 we begin getting italicized bits and pieces of Clio’s memories – in this first one, the last moment she ever saw her mother, although the reader does not understand that yet. It is more real this way. Something around us suddenly reminds us of something else from the past, so we dip into it briefly – but then life crowds back in and we must move on. In the same way, we get Clio’s memories in these small chunks as we go along, and the moment we get the rest of her mother’s story – the same moment that Clio herself does – at that point, we understand everything.

These memories torment Clio throughout the book; she feels that she cannot escape her past. My first instinct was to suspect that she was paranoid. But ultimately it turns out to be true: every little skeleton from her past sneaks up behind her and taps her on the shoulder – or punches her in the face – over and over again. “She had allowed herself to feel safe, after all the years,” she thinks, “but events don’t disappear, the future doesn’t carry you away from the past. The past is always there, just behind you, and then it reaches out and touches you on the shoulder. You turn, and you face the thing you did, and it leers into your face and drives a needle into your cheek” (60-61).

Time travel stories are uniquely well positioned to help us try to understand the idea that the distinctions that we think we see between the past, the present, and the future are, in fact, merely fictions invented by our perceptions. Now, for a moment, looking back at this passage early in the book, I can see the distinctions melting away. I can see the past, present, and future merging, just as they do while Clio steers the spaceship/time machine Starhawk through its Time Dives. When all we observe are the three dimensions of space, in fact, we are looking through a flattened fourth dimension of time – and when you flatten a dimension, everything is there, all at once, in one “place” – or, in this case, in one moment. Then, there is only now. In life, it is difficult to wrap our minds around this, though. As Clio thinks, preparing to steer the ship into Dive, “Left side for time, right side for space. As though they were separate, like gates at a bus terminal, and not actually the same, a continuum. The mind wanders off, thinking of it, loses hold. So you split the control panel in two, keep things in their places” (165).

Perhaps this notion of the lack of distinctions between past, present, and future also explains why the Cousin Realities exist before they are created: they are always already there. (That’s my little temporal/theoretical joke – a measure of the true level of my composite nerdiness.) Likewise, it explains the moment when Clio gets a sense of déjà vu – when she is reminded, toward the end of the book, of an earlier interaction with a character, which she, and we, now see differently in light of what we have learned about him subsequently, and which, the reader thinks, perhaps motivates her to make sure that this interaction turns out differently (484). The appendix, in fact, states that “the future already exists,” specifically “as a set of mathematically described probabilities” (508). Thus despite the ever-presence of the future, Kenyon is careful not to suggest that everything is predestined and unchangeable. She has devised a clever way around that, which might even convince this old cynic, as occasionally someone does, that we might in fact have free will. As Vandarthanan posits, and as we learn by way of the appendix, “the future can be mathematically described as an array of identifiable temporal probabilities whose relative magnitudes depends on what happens now.” D.K. Wheaten, the otherwise unknown writer of the appendix, goes on to explain: “The future is an ever-changing array of vectors describing possible futures. . . . The popular and persistent idea of traveling to the future to ‘find out what happens’ is not scientifically possible, since the future—probabilistic and multi-vectored time—is inherently indeterminate” (508). When you put it in mathematical terms, it is easier to buy into, for me.

The mysterious character Timothy Ashe explains further: “future history books in the Cousin Reality talk about [one outcome]. But after we prevent [it], there will be different history books, telling a different story. . . . [The current] future will wink out of existence, and will be replaced by a new future. . . . Our reality winks out too. And is recreated to conform to the new events” (420-21). So there are no paradoxes because no one has gotten close enough to humanity during Time Dives to bring about a grandfather paradox, and any future that one might see while time travelling is just a possibility and thus probably less likely to actually turn out that way than not anyway.

Clio is not a mathematician, though, so at first, she falls victim to this confusion about the future. When her friends, the botanist Hillis and the astrophysicist Zee, convince her to pilot them into the future and discover the fate of the world, at first she thinks that it is determinate and stops trying to bring about the future that she wants instead. “Knowing the future is a curse,” she thinks. “You can’t hope for things, you can only wait for them” (71). That is, of course, the appeal of the idea of free will. We want to believe that what we are doing matters. And, indeed, we need it – we need that hope – if we are going to have the motivation to try to improve our lives and the world around us at all.

Clio also copes by wishing that her mentally challenged brother Petya’s life turned out better than hers: “Though she and Petya had been separated, she had been running ever since. And in all that time Clio pretended that Petya had escaped and was living somewhere, free in ways that she was not. Free enough for both of them. It was the kind of fantasy that became more real with the passage of days, as the fantasy became memory of the fantasy and then purely memory” (314). This thought is italicized, in fact, as are Clio’s memories throughout the rest of the book – and thus this moment is also about time and its power to change our perspectives on reality. Memory and stories are itself events that we experience.

Willful ignorance is, of course, not brave or honorable either. Thus Hillis admonishes Clio, “You can’t always run from everything. . . . You can’t run forever” (78). The future, after all, is not really distinct from today. This predicament – this tug-of-war – between hope and, shall we say, duty, or responsibility, is the unanswerable question beneath so many time travel stories.

Clio, though, is an optimist at heart. Still not knowing whether it can even make any difference, she is eventually caught up in Hillis’s and Zee’s zeal and, like them, risks everything to try to save the Earth from complete environmental desecration – the path that Kenyon evidently believes we are on.

This part of the premise behind the book is, I think, pretty cynical, as well as limited. Kenyon implicitly posits that there are two kinds of people in the world – only two: those who try to better it through love and connection, and those who try to master it, overpower it, and control it with power and violence. And ultimately, she suggests, these two kinds of people cannot come together at all. She literally splits the space/time continuum into these two factions, warring with one another to ultimately gain the dominant position and triumph in the long run of time. As cynical as I may be, I still see more nuance to people than the kind of either/or attitude from whence this story presumably originates.

But she does cleverly compare where, in 1997, she saw our society headed – a viciously homophobic society that quarantines gays and lesbians, drug users, and people with “the Sickness” in “quarries” much like Nazi death camps – with where humanity has been – supposedly, the worst humanity has been, in the Dark Ages: “‘They had the plague,’ Clio responded. ‘A rigid society controlled by a fanatical church. Burned people at the stake for acting strange’” (276). I would hope that anti-gay sentiment is finally on the wane, but even today, plenty of people still foolishly believe that one’s sexual orientation is a choice, as does Col. Tandy in this sequence: “‘But of course there are differences,’” he claims. “‘Today, a tenth die, those that choose sexual and drug-based lifestyles’” (my emphasis, 277). This really does not sound so different from what people say in 2013: that people deserve to suffer who make poor choices. That people who make different choices deserve to suffer.

In this book, it is knowledge and technological superiority – however it is achieved – that will ultimately determine the victor. The end trumps the means, here. You don’t have to have developed the knowledge to wield the power. “The Dive panel displayed its controls in a bank of lights and touchscreens, toggles and switches, giving the mystery of time the outward semblance of common mechanical function. You press buttons, visit the past, return to the present” (165). You just have to get ahold of the technology that grants this power – even if that means stealing it. Killing for it. Dying for it.

This is a classic driver in time travel stories, of course. Why would you travel to the past? To change things. Why would you travel to the future? To learn things, so that, ultimately, you could change things. Knowledge, and control of time, bring power. Thus, when Hillis proposes that Clio take them to the future, he says, “I think Vandarthanan did it years ago. And I think we just never heard about it because the powers that be didn’t want us to hear about it” (69). If very few people know that it is even possible to know the future – at least, the one which the vectors describe right now – then they won’t even know that there is that knowledge out there which they themselves lack. Meanwhile, the ones who know, and know, and know, hold all the power. As the Starhawk’s captain Russo confirms later, “The government, the Bureau [of Time Management], Biotime [their employer]—they all know we’re headed for disaster. And not a goddamn thing they can do about it. Except give the common folk a pat on the head, keep them quiet while the ship goes down. Keep the top brass in power a few years longer. . . . The bureaucrats keep their privileges, Biotime gets fat, and the masses stay quiet” (217). Biotime and the government, we are to understand, represent the worst kind of people, as above: the ones only interested in enjoying themselves – and their power – in the here and now. Power means consumption rather than responsibility for most people; hence Col. Tandy describes the stars as “‘time, time that represents the currency of our human lives, so that if we are to live we must have the stars—spend them wisely, of course—but we must reach out and grasp our days.’ . . . ‘We deserve the stars, Clio. . . . We are a great civilization on the brink of claiming the stars for our own, and all the planets they warm. Exploration and knowledge and wealth unlimited’” (340). He sees the stars and their planets as something to possess – to grasp, to claim – and to spend, like currency. And he is also drawn to knowledge. Both wealth and knowledge bring power.

Then again, can we ever really know everything? It does depend who tells the story, and who hears it, does it not? For instance, when we do finally get the rest of the story of Clio’s mother, we do, somehow, know that what the source tells, and believes, is not really what happened. We can read between the lines, piece the picture together, and recognize that what the source claims is betrayal is, in fact, the very opposite – the utmost example of courageous loyalty, even though the teller himself, seeing the same picture, cannot recognize that at all (142). Likewise, Col. Tandy tries to tempt Clio with the way history would portray her: “‘Your name . . . may be famous among explorers, much as Christopher Columbus, Coronado, de Gama.’ . . . ‘“Clio Finn, searching for Earth’s biological salvation, stumbles upon the first alien artifact and ushers in a new age of galactic exploration.”’” Clio replies, “‘That telling leaves out a lot’” (342). This book reminds us of the inherent unreliability of narrators. On the other hand, of Timothy Ashe we get a different impression: “Somehow, despite his incredible story, he seemed true. And his Telling, all true” (427). I love that this book ultimately celebrates oral “Telling,” as it’s termed there – even if it is only as a last resort, when other forms of recordkeeping become impossible – and that it also celebrates the power of words to create reality (494). It is a book about writing itself.

Perhaps this is what drives me as a teacher: helping people see what is there all along, if only you know to look for it. I have to believe that it’s possible to open others’ eyes – that I can make a difference – or why would I bother?

One more nebulous comment: I also love that this book advocates letting others choose how to live their own lives, no matter what – even if you believe that their choice(s) may cause them to die. Maybe I believe in free will after all.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the near future, the Earth is dying as increased UV radiation is killing off more and more of the planet's vegetation, destroying its ability to sustain itself. The only hope lies with the Space Recon programme, which uses time travel to seek out Earthlike planets where plants that might endure Earth's more and more inhospitable atmosphere might have developed. With most people unable to remain awake during a temporal Dive, Dive pilots are highly sought after, especially since they tend to burn out after a few dozen Dives. Clio Finn has lasted longer than anyone else, but she is rapidly reaching her limit, only able to continue Diving with the help of illegal drugs. Then her crew discovers Niang, a thriving world that might be the answer to all of humanity's hopes - but it brings its own set of dangers.

Intriguing premise and an engaging read, but the uncomfortably and unnecessarily large amount of sexual assault taking place in this novel makes for very unpleasant reading at times. And the fact that apparently every single male character in this book (apart from her brother and her gay friend) wants to jump Clio's bones very quickly went from exasperating to downright annoying. Not a fan of the ending, either.

[Lucas Kuhlman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good premise to a book that seemed very interesting and peculiar.

I will say the book is a tad dull but It has good science fiction elements with cool time jumping spaceships and the characters are pretty thought out and imaginative. The books deals with sexuality and you can kinda tell it was written in the 90's due to that but it is still interesting none the less on those takes. The first half I enjoyed the most and the last part I enjoyed but I felt there was something missing in the last half compared to the first half. Overall A good novel with some interesting world building and character development.

- LK

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really fantastic novel! I loved the time travel mechanic, it was distinctly different than any other I have yet read. The whole book is packed with great content and it stays lively the whole way through without burning out the reader. Clio is an excellent character, I found her so real and in some ways relatable. I'm excited to read more books by Kay Kenyon now - this was one of the best books I've read in a while!

[Nightwing Whitehead · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It was a very interesting twist on how shall we survive a dystopian future. I was caught from the very first scene and didn't even really breathe again until the last sentence. Easily one of the best books I've read in a very long time.

[andrew orillion · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was her first novel and it kind of shows. The book is just too long and the story isn't very engaging. Kenyon would go on to become a very good writer, I really enjoyed the "Rose and the Entire" series, but I couldn't even finish this one.

[Username · Rating 2 out of 5]

It makes no sense. It's kind of fun, but it makes no sense. Is there artificial gravity in the ships? They go hunting for biological material but use no suits in the planets?
Still, a lot of unpredictable turns.

[Ralph · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Good read. What an imagination.

[Anastasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book, but I don't love it. The main character is in turns admirable and frustrating. But that's the realism - you don't typically love people when their bad sides come out.

I enjoyed the first half quite a lot, the second half a lot less, and the end made me want to strangle someone.

As far as dystopian futures go, this one is interesting and believable. The part where I get stuck is that apparently this all happens in 2019, which seems so unrealistic now that it brought me out of the trance, as it were. It's also interesting to realize how much things have changed since this book was written in 1997. There's little mention of things like cellphones, and obviously no idea that there might be inventions like tablet PCs or iPads or other technology that we forget is so recent.

All in all, it was nice to step back into sci fi for a change. It's not a perfect novel, sure, but it keeps my attention and, despite the parts where I want to smack people, is an intriguing tale.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clio Finn is the best Dive Pilot there is, and she's having trouble getting her job done lately. She might finally be over the hill. But one last mission to save a dying earth beckons, and she jumps on the chance. This mission, to Niana, is one that will change everything...or will it?

I rather liked this book, but I have a penchant for lady badasses in space settings (there's a reason Kira Nerys is my fav Star Trek character bar none). I would say that the development of the world is a bit limited (mostly to Clio's POV, but it's not terrible), and characterization of others besides the main is a bit limited -- everyone has a role to play, whether the consummate good or evil. I found the last third of the book to be rushed, as suddenly we are in a race between people who didn't exist before and suddenly do now, and I would have liked more time to let this situation develop, instead of rushed explanations. Definitely recommended, however.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've spent the whole morning reviewing books I've read in the last year and finding in all cases that others have already expressed opinions similar to mine better than I could have said it. I got to Seeds of Time and saw only a few reviews, all short, and thought, "Hey, here's my chance to write a review that might actually be helpful to someone."

But now I'm thinking about it, and I'm not sure what I'd say in addition to even the small handful of reviews already here. The book is fast-paced and entertaining. It's got action, romance, hard sci-fi concepts, an epic story, and my favorite - time travel. So there you have it. Read the description up above and know that it basically delivers on those promises. It's a good read but not too heavy. I'd recommend it, but it's not so good that I can rave about it for 6 or 7 paragraphs.

[Verity · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good action/adventure SF. It started on the first page and never let up. I kept thinking that this would make a great movie. There are great plot twists and the plot didn't get predictable till near the end. Once i stated reading I couldn't stop.

[Scott Armitage · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find the world believable, or the mechanics self-consistent. It was unfortunate the author felt the need to dwell on mysticism and an utterly made-up view of how a multi-dimensional universe may work. For the most part I found the characters disinteresting and the settings mundane.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book marred by a poor ending.

[Esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite Sci-Fi book and it would appeal to all readers. I will review this book more thoroughly this weekend.

[Cait]

Like reading an action movie. Dark, unpredictable, compelling.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good read that I stumbled upon by accident. There are a few jumps in the timeline, but it is a great idea, and enjoyable to read.

[Nick Von Hoene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, one of the few books that I have read multiple times... excellent idea, well done, amazing first work.