☆ AN AMAZON TOP 20 BESTSELLER! ☆ Alaska—a land of untamed wilderness and relentless tremors, where the ground beneath your feet can shift in an instant. For the 4th Brigade Combat Team Airborne, a routine night operation turns into a nightmare when a freak earthquake rips open the earth and sends them plunging into darkness. But when they crawl out of the fissure, they’re not in modern-day Alaska anymore. They’ve been hurled 23,000 years into the past—into the heart of the Ice Age. Faced with impossible odds, prehistoric predators, and a world they no longer recognize, these elite soldiers must rely on their training and each other to survive. Cut off from everything they know, they must find a way home—or carve out a future in a land that time forgot.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG ON A STANDARD MILITARY TRAINING MISSION?
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WHAT COULD GO WRONG ON A STANDARD MILITARY TRAINING MISSION? HOW ABOUT ENDING UP 20K YEARS IN THE PAST?
Frozen In Time by S.A. Ison is a well written tell of a group of Army Combat Troops who, during a training exercises that went all FUBAR sending the Spartans 20,000 to 25,000 years into the past with very little supplies other than that of their little extra they packed in their kit. With the normal during a training mission being the supply and logistics would provided most if not all their food and supplies needed after their jump once they made it to the rendezvous.
With little to no supplies, the Spartan's have to find shelter, clean water, and food in an environment that was out to get them from every direction. This group of well trained soldiers have their work cut out for them. The native wildlife is huge and twice as deadly as what is or was in their lives in their time they originally came from.
S.A. Ison has written a story that is full of action and mind-blowing struggles the story's characters face on a daily occurrence. They run into thugs from their original time period, bears standing ten plus feet in height, wolfs, and rhinos the size of a Volkswagen bug. The characters are well developed and well likeable, and you will find yourself laughing at times and crying at others while they face the challenges in this new world for them.
This is a great book for those who enjoy time travel stories with strong men and women characters. I know I enjoyed reading this book and hope you will find yourself enjoying it, too.
Quotes:
"Wishing for things never got you squat. Only doing and fixing your issues did."
Sticks and stones will break my bones, but they're friggin' hopeless against a giant Ice Age bear.
Those pesky earthquakes that open time portals are back again. This time, a bunch of hard-arse, Alaskan paratroopers are sent back to the Ice Age replete with woolly mammoths, giant lions, monstrous bears and other scary beasts. It's just like visiting La Brea Tar Pits, only more realistic. Will they survive, or will they become the Ice Age equivalent of KFC?
The characters seem like they are fresh from the set from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with some unbelievable survival stories. Lots of action completes the image and a fair bit of revenge on would-be woman beaters. I like stories with strong female characters.
The writing seemed to be a bit more amateurish, or robotic this time, with many phrases repeated multiple times. Instead of, “Their heads were on a swivel”, maybe “they were hyper-vigilant” could be used? The plot is formulaic and like most of Ms Ison’s other books, just the characters and time is different. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It’s a successful formula, dropping folks into times past…but gee, I wish she’d come up with a different way of time travel. Maybe a time machine, or space worm hole, or a visit from Dr Who?
I liked this book a lot, but it’s not my favourite time in Earth’s pre-history. Let’s face it, a woolly mammoth is not nearly as likely to cause nuggets in your undies as a T-Rex. While this was reasonably readable...enjoyable even...I felt it wasn't this author's best work. It was more of a lesson in survival training than anything else. However, I shall continue reading her other books in the “time travellers” series. 3 1/2 stars.
EDIT: Ms Ison has been hitting the Thesaurus hard. I learned some new BIG words. See if you know these: Declivity Murmuration Petrichor Deadfall.
I’m so glad you are writing again I truly missed your books. I have to honestly say I never liked zombie or werewolf books but I’m absolutely in love with yours got them all and have read them several times. This last one is very good too. Keep writing.
I love your stories, and want more. Saw somewhere that you had 2 other pseudonyms would love to know them what they are so I can check out your stories. But I can not find it anywhere. Elaine
This is great. Finally, a time travel book (other than Outlander) that has characters that are smart. No 1/4 a book woe is me-ing because they can't believe what they see with their own eyes. No idiot characters that should be killed off, but authors keep them around to make story lines. This is what you hope you would do in these circumstances. Kudos to the author. I will search out more of his books.
If you need to escape for a couple of hours, this book is a great choice. The story is fast-paced and character-driven, with surprising twists when you least expect them. This isn't a testosterone-fueled extravaganza with weapons blazing as many military apocalyptic books are...I was pleasantly surprised by that. I hope there is a sequel.
I really enjoyed this book from the first chapter. There was plenty of action and good side stories to keep you interested in the characters, and never read a time travel to the ice age book. Well done sir.
This book was very interesting and enjoyable. The world building was great and an interesting one. I really enjoyed the narrative coming from all the characters. The last part of the story was very interesting and really made the whole thing livable . I enjoyed the book.
Hard for me not to find something in a book to like. Yet..... thoroughly disappointed. Much of the writing felt robotic....like I was listening to an and ai voice. Lacked depth and excitement.
Not a fan of this authors writing (style). This reminds me of a book I might have read in the 3rd grade and done a book report on. This is not a "grown up" book.
When they climbed out of the fissure and saw lions and noticed it was warmer, that was enough evidence to know they time traveled????? And to guess they were in the ice age???? To know they traveled 20,000 years into the past???? You need more story than that to convince the reader why they came to that conclusion. Maybe after the mammoths, they could have come to that conclusion.
Overall, this book had promise and potential, but I feel that it came up way short of that. Parts of the story that needed details were lacking, and the parts that were filled with boring details could have and should have been left out.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Several paratroopers, male and female, survive massive earthquakes while on maneuvers in modern day Alaska and are somehow tossed back in time. They are confronted by huge predators and discover many species of plant eaters as well. This book is the story of their survival.
This book was a bit of a disappointment. I guess I was expecting more action. While there were some harrowing incidences, for the most part it was just a story of people adjusting to a very different time. No explanation of how their time travel could possibly occur, not once did they eat or drink something that made them ill. There was, conveniently, a guy who excelled at orienteering, a sharp shooter woman, another female that took one botany class in college and knew the names and uses of plants in a state and era a long way from her university, chance meetings of people from the military exercise where things went wrong miles and miles from the landing site, and only one person that was truly freaked out that they had ended up 20,000 years in the past. How they even knew that's how far back they'd gone just minutes after seeing one prehistoric animal is just weird.
It's an okay read, just not "Jurassic Park" exciting.
Time travel book about a group of soldiers on maneuvers in Alaska. When a earthquake strikes they've transported back thousands of years. Where American Lions, wooly rinos. Mammoths and other predators are. Good book I was disappointed my favorite prehistoric predator the Saber tooth never showed up.
I love books with a plot such as this one has. I fell in love with the characters. It was written so well that I laughed and cried.Thank you for this book.
The book was a well written, interesting and fun to read. It was different than most time travel books but seemed to accurately demonstrate the periods environment
It was...ok. Some army people are parachuting to an exercise and caught in an earthquake, naturally this means a time portal and they're back in the stone age.
They look around and it's hey we're in the past, some kind of time portal! Utterly unlikely anyone would first think of that and accept the idea so easily.
Anyway after some adventures they meet some people of the land.
"These people might not live past the age of 35",. Uh no. The reason people in the past had a low AVERAGE is the death of children was so high. If you made it to adulthood, you stood a good chance of becoming an old person. Sigh...authors should learn their facts better.
Anyway the book doesn't last much longer...it jumps ahead, and they all lived happily ever after.
The premise of this book was interesting, but it was not executed well. The author's writing style is rather juvenile, and I felt like I was reading a book for middle-school-age children. The book is about military personnel on a training exercise in Alaska who are somehow transported back in time to the ice age. Way too much time is spent on silly things like what kind of plants and spices they're gathering, but they don't develop any type of meaningful, cooperative relationship with the indigenous people. There was nothing in this book that couldn't have taken place on a deserted island or something. It was just a survivalist story, and what would have been the most enticing part for me (time travel) didn't have much importance. i would not recommend this book.
Like 1.5 .? This was not a good book. It wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t finish it but it was clunky and there were so many holes and there was no explanation for things. Lots of repeating do the same things and the way the authors talked about “the women” was so weird and especially when the romance stuff started happening. Idk it was overall just bad and I kept reading it more for the entertainment of how cringey it was
I liked this book. Man (and woman) against nature. The only thing I did not like was how casually they said and accepted that they fell back in time. It was like they were saying out was Wednesday. But I guess the story was about survival, not how they got there.
Audiobook (6 hours 38 minutes) narrated by Stephen Floyd
The narration and audio is flawless.
Ison taps into her inner time traveler, or hops into the machine she has hidden in the attic? the basement? the secret room under the stairs? or maybe it's an app on her Apple watch? idk, but that is the real secret here.
Moving on, Ison taps into her inner time traveler, knits her findings together with her love and knowledge of Alaska, pops out a few characters from her back pocket, spins them into the story along with some creative world building from under her left shoe, and there you go. A novel!
I'm sure it isn't as easy as all that, but she sure makes it seem so.
TLDR: My love of historical fiction and science fiction time travel comes together in many novels by S.A. Ison. All enjoyable, especially given the unique detailed touches by an author who uses settings of places where she has traveled and loved.