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Constance Clements #2
Sea of Time
Constance Clements is an 1880s Montana mine owner—and a time traveler. But she never saw the murder of her husband Rick coming.
To get Rick back, the shocked, grief-stricken Con must gain the trust of a Rick from an alternate timeline, who has never met her, and race to the Jurassic Period—where they will have to outwit an enemy who has mastered both time and space...
To get Rick back, the shocked, grief-stricken Con must gain the trust of a Rick from an alternate timeline, who has never met her, and race to the Jurassic Period—where they will have to outwit an enemy who has mastered both time and space...
368 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 27, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 6, 2016
This was my "paperback at lunchtime" read the last week or so. I'm reading big and literally heavy hardback books at home that cannot be carried by me back and forth to work.
The book is a very decent take on time travel and the paradoxes that it may hold for beings that mess around with time. I picked this book up and realized it was a part two but the libraries couldn't cough up part one anywhere and I was already hooked, so I read it. A good ride. Different cultures, ecosystems, languages and a bit of soulmatery combine into something that is fun to read and just challenging enough without one's head spinning. And the hideout for time travel is the Cretaceous period. You got it, trilobites, ammonites, plesiosaurs, allosaurus, etc and so on. Cool beans!
The book is a very decent take on time travel and the paradoxes that it may hold for beings that mess around with time. I picked this book up and realized it was a part two but the libraries couldn't cough up part one anywhere and I was already hooked, so I read it. A good ride. Different cultures, ecosystems, languages and a bit of soulmatery combine into something that is fun to read and just challenging enough without one's head spinning. And the hideout for time travel is the Cretaceous period. You got it, trilobites, ammonites, plesiosaurs, allosaurus, etc and so on. Cool beans!
June 10, 2017
_Sea of Time _ by Will Hubbell is the riveting sequel to his earlier book, _Cretaceous Sea_. The book opens again with Con, now Con Clements, married to Rick and living the life - incredibly - of her ancestor in 1880s Montana. A happy and successful mine owner, she is enjoying life raising her son Joey and living with her ammonite-collecting husband. Though she would have liked to go back to the 21st century, she had convinced her rescuers that being where she was and doing what she was doing was the best thing possible for the integrity of the timestream.
Unfortunately for the happy family, others disagreed. A man from the far future came to visit Con one day, a person who looked very human but was clearly, well, not from around there. He was a _Homo perfectus_ or Kynden, same species that rescued Rick and Con at the end of the first novel (one of three human species existing in the future by the way, the others being our race which in the future are called the Sapenes and one called the Gaians). This man goes by the name of Sam (full name Samazatarmaka) and he was the man who initially possessed the time travel technology that Peter Green stole. Con thought that Sam had been killed (that was what she had been told) but no, he is very much alive and offers to help Con and Rick if they will help him. Con declined his offer and Sam took his leave.
Not long afterwards Rick is murdered and Joey dies of starvation in the brutal Montana winter, with Con not far behind. A nearly dying Con is rescued by Sam and his daughter Kat (Katulumamana) and brought back to life. Given kind reassurances by Sam, she is assured that she will be reunited with Joey and Rick one day - if she merely helps Sam on a few tasks to fix history, which will, according to Sam, have the happy side effects of undoing Rick's murder and the resulting starvation of Joey.
Con is informed by Sam she has to journey to the 27th century and impersonate a recently deceased genetics worker working for a major corporation. Apparently assassinated before she made some historic breakthrough, Con is to carry through with those important scientific advancements.
How on Earth is she to do that? Well the how is covered by Sam and Kat, as Kat installs a mental implant in Con's skull and downloads directly into her mind the skills (and language, as they don't speak English in 27Th century North America) to do what she needs to do.
However, other particulars bother her. Who assassinated this woman, this Ramona Eberlade, and why? Will they try to kill Con? Even knowing Ramona's thoughts and skills, Con still doesn't understand exactly why this breakthrough is so very important, why someone would kill to make sure it doesn't happen.
Con also realizes she is at the mercy of Sam. Though Sam has been very nice to her, she starts to have suspicions about his motives. Why is he doing what he is doing? Does he really want to help Con? Can he really undo Rick's and Joey's deaths? Con also understands though she has little really choice. When Rick and Joey died and Con was removed from the 19th century, she ceased to exist in the 21st century; as she was her own ancestor; in effect her grandparents, parents, and her own childhood ceased to exist. She was a refugee from an alternate timeline that no longer existed, "a bit of wreckage washed up on the shores of the sea of time" (curiously, in these novels if one changes the past, everything "upwhen" in the future changes, but one cannot retroactively change the past, which is "downwhen;" if your past was changed so you didn't exist but you happened to be at a point in time well before that change was made, you stick around and don't vanish, even though technically you were never born). Con in essence has no home to go back to, though also she has a strength that she doesn't know for a while that she possessed, a strength uniquely hers, as a result.
What follows are some incredible adventures in the 27th century, later on in the 31st century as Sam sends Con to follow up on events she had instigated, and then it is back to the Jurassic for a final showdown.
Very enjoyable book, for the most part it was quite different from the preceding novel, up until that is when they get to the Jurassic Period and the story had some similarities. Cardboard characters aren't any kind of problem here and many of the people in the novel were quite distinct. Each of the two future centuries Con visited were also quite distinctive and original (and chilling I might add). My only complaint - and it is a slight one - is that the author twice in the book had a fair amount of build up for a confrontation between some adversary of Con's and then when the encounter finally happens, it is over in a paragraph or three. While still producing important events in the plot, I felt there could been a bit more pay off. Still, a very good novel and one of the best time travel stories I have ever read. It had many surprises and tied in nicely with events in the first book without being in any way a kind of rehash.
Unfortunately for the happy family, others disagreed. A man from the far future came to visit Con one day, a person who looked very human but was clearly, well, not from around there. He was a _Homo perfectus_ or Kynden, same species that rescued Rick and Con at the end of the first novel (one of three human species existing in the future by the way, the others being our race which in the future are called the Sapenes and one called the Gaians). This man goes by the name of Sam (full name Samazatarmaka) and he was the man who initially possessed the time travel technology that Peter Green stole. Con thought that Sam had been killed (that was what she had been told) but no, he is very much alive and offers to help Con and Rick if they will help him. Con declined his offer and Sam took his leave.
Not long afterwards Rick is murdered and Joey dies of starvation in the brutal Montana winter, with Con not far behind. A nearly dying Con is rescued by Sam and his daughter Kat (Katulumamana) and brought back to life. Given kind reassurances by Sam, she is assured that she will be reunited with Joey and Rick one day - if she merely helps Sam on a few tasks to fix history, which will, according to Sam, have the happy side effects of undoing Rick's murder and the resulting starvation of Joey.
Con is informed by Sam she has to journey to the 27th century and impersonate a recently deceased genetics worker working for a major corporation. Apparently assassinated before she made some historic breakthrough, Con is to carry through with those important scientific advancements.
How on Earth is she to do that? Well the how is covered by Sam and Kat, as Kat installs a mental implant in Con's skull and downloads directly into her mind the skills (and language, as they don't speak English in 27Th century North America) to do what she needs to do.
However, other particulars bother her. Who assassinated this woman, this Ramona Eberlade, and why? Will they try to kill Con? Even knowing Ramona's thoughts and skills, Con still doesn't understand exactly why this breakthrough is so very important, why someone would kill to make sure it doesn't happen.
Con also realizes she is at the mercy of Sam. Though Sam has been very nice to her, she starts to have suspicions about his motives. Why is he doing what he is doing? Does he really want to help Con? Can he really undo Rick's and Joey's deaths? Con also understands though she has little really choice. When Rick and Joey died and Con was removed from the 19th century, she ceased to exist in the 21st century; as she was her own ancestor; in effect her grandparents, parents, and her own childhood ceased to exist. She was a refugee from an alternate timeline that no longer existed, "a bit of wreckage washed up on the shores of the sea of time" (curiously, in these novels if one changes the past, everything "upwhen" in the future changes, but one cannot retroactively change the past, which is "downwhen;" if your past was changed so you didn't exist but you happened to be at a point in time well before that change was made, you stick around and don't vanish, even though technically you were never born). Con in essence has no home to go back to, though also she has a strength that she doesn't know for a while that she possessed, a strength uniquely hers, as a result.
What follows are some incredible adventures in the 27th century, later on in the 31st century as Sam sends Con to follow up on events she had instigated, and then it is back to the Jurassic for a final showdown.
Very enjoyable book, for the most part it was quite different from the preceding novel, up until that is when they get to the Jurassic Period and the story had some similarities. Cardboard characters aren't any kind of problem here and many of the people in the novel were quite distinct. Each of the two future centuries Con visited were also quite distinctive and original (and chilling I might add). My only complaint - and it is a slight one - is that the author twice in the book had a fair amount of build up for a confrontation between some adversary of Con's and then when the encounter finally happens, it is over in a paragraph or three. While still producing important events in the plot, I felt there could been a bit more pay off. Still, a very good novel and one of the best time travel stories I have ever read. It had many surprises and tied in nicely with events in the first book without being in any way a kind of rehash.
August 10, 2016
After its light treatment in his first novel, Cretaceous Sea, Will Hubbell has followed with a sequel that really digs into the philosophy and paradox of time travel. The second novel looks at the present-day and future of an age engendered by the incidents detailed in the first.
... In a fine and suitably ironic way, Sea of Time is the mature child of its juvenile parent.
Spoilers to the first novel may follow.
Alteration of the present by the past is an important concept in this novel. At the end of the first story, Constance “Con” Greighton and Rick Clements are rescued by people from the future, and taken to their own past, to gold-rush California, where Rick and Con are married. (Con thus not only founds the family fortune in a California gold mine, but also becomes her own great-great-grandmother.)
What should have been a “happily ever after” ending to the first novel instead becomes a launching point for multi-dimensional murder. The evolved homo perfectus society that created the time machine is worried about awareness of the possibility of time travel in unevolved people in their past. Con is approached by one of them who warns her.
Minutes later, Con learns that Rick has been shot to death. In the ensuing weeks, her only son also dies of cold and starvation. Having lost all she holds dear, she agrees to come to the future with the “Kynden” Sam, to work against those who supposedly arranged her husband’s murder, in order to “undo” his and her son’s death.
In the future, however, Con finds things not quite as Sam presented them to her. There are three groups of people in this “perfected” future world: homo perfectus or “fecs”, homo sapiens or “sapes”, and the Kynden, who sit between the two, and want to eliminate both species from 27th-century Earth. Sapes occupy something of a plantation-slavery role in this society, due to a virus-imposed addiction to kana, a drug that is only available from the fecs.
Con has an advantage in the sape camp; because she doesn’t need kana, she can use her daily supply to barter for information. She learns that Rick Clements has also been snatched from 21st-century Earth, and decides to connect with him. Unfortunately, the Rick she finds is from the future determined by the death of Con’s son in 1851. This Rick has never met Con.
Before Con and Rick can resolve their different pasts, they are confronted with yet another evolution of humankind, homo gaia, whose own future had been eliminated while they were harvesting food in Earth’s Jurassic past. These remnants of a larger civilization have been trying to eliminate Con as the root cause of their extinction, a tool created by the Kynden Sam to redirect the powerful flow of history. The Gaians tell Con why they killed Rick in 1851, and have been trying to kill her.
How Rick, Con and the Gaians unravel this twisted thread of altered history to save the past and their future is fascinating reading. Hubbell has done a masterful job of presenting these confusing lines of cause and effect in a way that explores the innate paradox of travel through time. I recommend reading Cretaceous Sea first (it’s not too demanding, remember), to fully enjoy the contrast and the story of the second novel.
In a fine and suitably ironic way, Sea of Time is the mature child of its juvenile parent.
... In a fine and suitably ironic way, Sea of Time is the mature child of its juvenile parent.
Spoilers to the first novel may follow.
Alteration of the present by the past is an important concept in this novel. At the end of the first story, Constance “Con” Greighton and Rick Clements are rescued by people from the future, and taken to their own past, to gold-rush California, where Rick and Con are married. (Con thus not only founds the family fortune in a California gold mine, but also becomes her own great-great-grandmother.)
What should have been a “happily ever after” ending to the first novel instead becomes a launching point for multi-dimensional murder. The evolved homo perfectus society that created the time machine is worried about awareness of the possibility of time travel in unevolved people in their past. Con is approached by one of them who warns her.
“They may alter your reality instead… If they were to change your past,” replied Sam, “from that point onward, the resulting reality would be the only one you knew. They might erase all who stand in their way, all who are precious to you.”
Minutes later, Con learns that Rick has been shot to death. In the ensuing weeks, her only son also dies of cold and starvation. Having lost all she holds dear, she agrees to come to the future with the “Kynden” Sam, to work against those who supposedly arranged her husband’s murder, in order to “undo” his and her son’s death.
In the future, however, Con finds things not quite as Sam presented them to her. There are three groups of people in this “perfected” future world: homo perfectus or “fecs”, homo sapiens or “sapes”, and the Kynden, who sit between the two, and want to eliminate both species from 27th-century Earth. Sapes occupy something of a plantation-slavery role in this society, due to a virus-imposed addiction to kana, a drug that is only available from the fecs.
Con has an advantage in the sape camp; because she doesn’t need kana, she can use her daily supply to barter for information. She learns that Rick Clements has also been snatched from 21st-century Earth, and decides to connect with him. Unfortunately, the Rick she finds is from the future determined by the death of Con’s son in 1851. This Rick has never met Con.
Before Con and Rick can resolve their different pasts, they are confronted with yet another evolution of humankind, homo gaia, whose own future had been eliminated while they were harvesting food in Earth’s Jurassic past. These remnants of a larger civilization have been trying to eliminate Con as the root cause of their extinction, a tool created by the Kynden Sam to redirect the powerful flow of history. The Gaians tell Con why they killed Rick in 1851, and have been trying to kill her.
”…to change the shape of a river, a hand or a boulder won’t do… You need a dam, Something totally unnatural… [Sam] created an entity that is largely unaffected by the forces that keep the timestream on its natural course…”
”And I have this ability because I’m my own ancestor?”
…”You are able to change history,” said Oak, “because you are your own ancestor and you are your own ancestor because you changed history.”
How Rick, Con and the Gaians unravel this twisted thread of altered history to save the past and their future is fascinating reading. Hubbell has done a masterful job of presenting these confusing lines of cause and effect in a way that explores the innate paradox of travel through time. I recommend reading Cretaceous Sea first (it’s not too demanding, remember), to fully enjoy the contrast and the story of the second novel.
In a fine and suitably ironic way, Sea of Time is the mature child of its juvenile parent.
January 24, 2016
As I reviewed in part one of this tome, I'm a sucker for a well-crafted time travel story. I've not only read many of them, I've published my own two-part time travel story. It is terribly difficult for me to find a story that pulls me in so deeply that I don't want to get out. This is that storyline. This one is so well written that it was extremely difficult to put it down.
I'm sad Mr. Hubbell went to the dark side and is writing fantasy instead of scifi nowadays. I say that only because I was so taken by this outstanding story. This second and final installment of his story is the best I've ever read in this genre.
I'm usually attracted to stories with strong male leads. This story had one of the strongest and most important female scifi leads I've ever had the pleasure to read; and Constance, the 'souped' girl, goes on some of the most amazing adventures I've ever been lost in.
Again, if you love the time travel sub-genre of scifi, you will not be disappointed.
I'm sad Mr. Hubbell went to the dark side and is writing fantasy instead of scifi nowadays. I say that only because I was so taken by this outstanding story. This second and final installment of his story is the best I've ever read in this genre.
I'm usually attracted to stories with strong male leads. This story had one of the strongest and most important female scifi leads I've ever had the pleasure to read; and Constance, the 'souped' girl, goes on some of the most amazing adventures I've ever been lost in.
Again, if you love the time travel sub-genre of scifi, you will not be disappointed.
March 17, 2014
I read this as a paperback and have not been able to find the ebook. I think this sequel is a worthy successor to the original. It's more than a romp in the age of dinosaurs. The plot takes you from the 19th Century West to a dystopian future, to an even more dystopian far future, then back to the Mesozoic before the storyline is resolved. As time travel novels go, I think Will Hubbell's two books are highly underrated.
May 7, 2020
How can this book only have 9 reviews? It made such an impact on me when I read it. Admittedly, that was fifteen years ago, so I can't leave a detailed plot analysis or anything, but I do remember it had some really great science fiction concepts. I made the rest of my family read it and they liked it too. We still talk about it on occasion.
October 1, 2014
I enjoyed this book as much as the first one even though they did not stay within the dinosaur time period it kept hopping from future to future to past to past.I wish he could have written more sequels I enjoyed it that much,if you enjoy time travel books pick up this and the prequel "Cretaceous Sea."
February 1, 2009
Looks like I picked a winner from the used book shop! Amazon had 5 stars listed!
February 7, 2013
The sequel to Cretaceous Sea drags for the first 100 pages and is generally confusing. After settling down it reads like a YA with a few adult situations.
May 15, 2009
I just couldn't get into this one. Sounded interesting but the characters seemed lifeless.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews