An Evil Hour

The New John Connor Chronicles #2

by Russell Blackford

Judgment Day is coming! Following the events of Book 1 (Dark Futures), the future war between the human Resistance and the forces of Skynet takes an unusual twist as Terminators from an alternate timeline invade the world of John Connor and his mother, Sarah, seeking to bring about the inevitable war that the Connors had merely delayed with their actions. But another cyborg has traveled across the dimensions to protect John -- and nothing is going to prevent her from carrying out her mission!

Genres: Science Fiction, Ebooks, Fiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published April 3, 2003

About the author

Russell Blackford is an Australian writer, philosopher, and critic, based for many years in Melbourne, Victoria. He was born in Sydney, and grew up in Lake Macquarie district, near Newcastle, NSW. He moved to Melbourne in 1979, but returned to Newcastle to live and work in 2009.

Reviews

[Kristoph Kosicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took me a long time to read. The first half of the book is a chore. So many characters to keep track of, and many of them get a lot of "screen time" for being pretty faceless characters. I really didn't want to spend half the book reading about the stand-ins at the Pentagon and the brainwashed cyberdyne executives, but holy crap.

I almost gave up, but the second half of the book is where the action starts, and the author decides to have some fun with crossing dimensions through time and space. Of all the non movie characters, Rosanna was my favorite as she works on the time vault and overcomes her reprogramming. She is probably the most fleshed out character, despite the author wanting us to care more about Jade and the other specialist, even over JC.

I will admit though, sending T2 time line JC into the future to aid the resistance was a bold idea, and it was executed well. I think Genesis is the only terminator movie to send it's characters forward in time instead of back, and it's a similar vibe here. But it was exciting and I do look forward to reading the 3rd book, where they are likely to travel to yet another dimension to fight an even more deadly skynet.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think honestly this second book was somehow more disappointing than the first. At least book one had a clumsily done typical Terminator plot in the John's World material, and while I was frustrated by the way Skynet's World rushed to 2029, getting to see the future war was cool. But this book feels like it's almost all filler, with a rushed last act that could be pretty cool if it had time to breathe and feel like it had the proper scale.

The book took somewhere around 20% just to catch back up to the surprise ending of the previous volume, with yet another Terminator showing up to get help from John Connor. In theory seeing Cyberdyne and the US government handle the aftermath of the raid on the latest Cyberdyne evil science center should be fun, but instead it's a lot of bureaucratic nonsense and a mind control plot that amounts to very little in the long run. When it finally got resolved with the new Terminator shooting a lot of people most of the way through the book, I couldn't be bothered to be excited but instead was simply relieved it was done.

Skynet's World makes a return, but this feels somewhat wasted. There's a sudden jump back to 2006 but it's entirely so John can meet Danny Dyson and get a bunch of exposition about time travel. It is kinda cool getting to see the final battle with Skynet from John's point of view, watching as he is forced to send wave after wave of troops against the seemingly invincible machines until they finally capture the time machine and destroy Skynet's mainframe.

This is finally the point where the plot gets either stupid or cool depending on your perspective. In a development reminiscent of the twist in T3, it turns out Skynet has a backup facility ... in Spain of all places. All seems lost until the two story streams finally cross, with kid John, Sarah, the latest Terminator and the surviving human resistance cyborgs, all showing up in the future to help kick ass. This should have been the bulk of the book but instead it only takes up less than a quarter of the end and winds up undercutting what should be an epic final battle. Instead, it's a run and gun fight similar to the previous raids on Cyberdyne facilities and culminates in shooting some missiles from a helicopter. Crossing over two John Connors and having the early movies meet up with the Future War is a really cool concept, and I wish it had been done in something better than this.

Of course, there's still another book, but this one doesn't really do a good job of creating a sequel hook. Signs point to making another time jump to the world the cyborg bioenhanced resistance fighters came from, but there's no sudden new character showing up for help from John to pull you along to book three. Then again, even if they did, it'd take a million pages for them to actually do anything. I am going to read the third book, but I don't have high hopes for it. At best, maybe there'll be something interesting in the worldbuilding for the latest bad future.

[Karen Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant, but once again like the first it needed one more proof read.

[Jim C · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second book in a trilogy. The first book must be read to understand this one. I enjoyed the first novel more than this one. The first half of this book was slow. I believe it spent too much time on the theory of time travel and its paradoxes. I did enjoy the second half and I thought the battle with Skynet was entertaining. I would recommend this book if you are a fan of the movies and cannot get enough of that world.

[Molly Hart · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was something. I didn't hate it, but I didn't really like it. I felt like every decision that every character made was questionable and plot elements just got resolved waaay too easily. I don't know if I missed something, but the whole plan of fixing the time vault and timeline jumping just seemed to come out of nowhere and the whole final battle was resolved rather too conveniently. Things were either explained in way too much detailed or no detail at all (e.g. the laser gun constantly being referenced/ explained vs. the importance of the factory in the final fight never really being mentioned until after it was destroyed). I did like the skynet timeline and being able to see John Connor post T2 and in 2029. It just felt like this book spent the entire plot building to something that was resolved fairly quickly and then we were given a completely new plot point for the last seventy or so pages. Of Terminator books this one was not the worst, but was far from the best. Still enjoyable though.

[Dave Hendrix · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the overall story, but it needed a bit more polish. Also, it rehashed too much of the last book. It's clear after reading this that it was written as one long manuscript and then tweaked later to split it into 3 parts, and as a result, this book suffers. I rated it a 4 because it is a great and compelling story, but it's honestly a 3.5 Star book.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

maybe .. maybe having so many characters is a bad thing
like I had fun it was really fun to read. but God please cool it with how many characters there are

[Joe Pranaitis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the time parallel universe angel in this book as I did the first one but now that it's ended one war with Skynet there are still two others which have to end. But I'm looking forward to reading book three in the trilogy and I'm enjoying them so that's all that matters.

[bluetyson]

isbn,original

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting twists on the theme. Still a bit heavy on machine guns and hand grenades but what can you expect when big machines are the enemy?