Time shatters into shards of the past, present, and future. A group of survivors dodges threats from across history to locate the source and repair the damage before it's too late.
It's called "the Event." An unimaginable cataclysm in the 23rd century shatters 600 years of the Earth's timeline into jumbled fragments. Our world is gone: instantly replaced by a new one made of shattered remnants of the past, present and future, all existing alongside one another in a nightmare patchwork of different time "shards"--some hundreds of miles long and others no more than a few feet across.
A group of heroes forms: San Diego native Amber Richardson, Cam--a young warrior from Roman Brittania, Simon--a Teddy Boy from the 1950s, Phineas Van Seldoot--a supercilious Victorian gentleman, Blake--a soldier from World War II, an 1880's reporter named Nelly Bly, and "Merlin, and who claims to be the 23rd century scientist responsible for the Event. Aboard Merlin's ship they must return to his lab and repair the damage before it is irreparable. But when a Merlin doppelganger appears, they learn that not everyone may be who he seems to be. Allies may turn out to be deadly enemies.
Dana Fredsti is ex B-movie actress with a background in theatrical sword-fighting. Through seven plus years of volunteering at EFBC/FCC (Exotic Feline Breeding Facility/Feline Conservation Center), Dana's had a full-grown leopard sit on her feet, kissed by tigers, held baby jaguars and had her thumb sucked by an ocelot with nursing issues. She's addicted to bad movies and any book or film, good or bad, which include zombies. Her other hobbies include surfing (badly), collecting beach glass (obsessively), and wine tasting (happily).
Along with her best friend Maureen, Dana was co-producer/writer/director for a mystery-oriented theatrical troupe based in San Diego. While no actual murders occurred during their performances, there were times when the actors and clients made the idea very tempting. Somewhere in the mists of time she lost a grip on what happened in real life and what she made up for her book.
She's written numerous published articles, essays and shorts, including stories in Cat Fantastic IV, an anthology series edited by Andre Norton (Daw, 1997), Danger City (Contemporary Press, 2005), and Mondo Zombie (Cemetery Dance, 2006). Her essays can be seen in Morbid Curiosity, Issues 2-7. Additionally she's written several produced low-budget screenplays and currently has another script under option. Dana was also co-writer/associate producer on Urban Rescuers, a documentary on feral cats and TNR (Trap/Neuter/Return), which won Best Documentary at the 2003 Valley Film Festival in Los Angeles.
Dana is currently working on the second book in the Murder for Hire series, The Big Snooze and writing erotic romance under the pen name Inara LaVey for Ravenous Romance.
This book is why need more sci-fi dealing with Ancient People interacting with other different people from different timelines. This book is the British version of 1636 only it has Merlin in it. This is such a great book, and I love the interpretation of Ancient People when they come to face to face with modern people. It is very rarely done. For another scene in a book, they should be introduced to social media. I wonder how they would deal with it.
At first, I thought, what new perspective can they bring with Merlin? The answer is…so much. There is so much history interacting with each other on a SCALE that you will NEVER GET TO SEE. I WANT THIS SEQUEL NOW! That is how brilliant this book is.
I love the perspective of the Ancients interpreting this divine fate of fortune – I am a history buff, and I’ve enjoyed watching movies like the Mummy/Scorpion King and this very much contains an element of this.
I had read Alexander’s Inheritance by Eric Flint which is what I would compare too….Cam and Kah-tep are my favorite characters. Why do I compare this to Alexander Inheritance? Because that involved a 21st-century cruiser being stuck in Ptolemaic Times. Here, you get such a great diversity of cultures interacting with each other, it is just freakin’ awesome.
I wish more authors would make use of the time traveling and instead of modern people from the 21st-century traveling, why not have a Roman Legion interact with French Napoleonic soldiers? Heck, this was such an amazing book.
I loved one of the scenes where the French soldiers sing the national anthem and the Egyptians sing along with them with their musical instruments.
I am saddened now that this is the first, even with 500 pages it feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface.
And the reason why I say this is because this is what I want to see in sci-fi and fantasy and time travel. We talk about the Ancients so much that they seem distant, but thanks to Creative Assembly and Ubisoft (video game developers) with their world-famous IP franchises such as Total War and Assassin’s Creed, we can see history being bought alive. But we never see much alternate history or time rifts, and I def want to see the effects this has on the Far East and India for that matter.
That being said, the writing was great. The prose was great. The research was fantastic. That being also said, there were times where I felt the authors were constrained in how many POVs of history that they wished to present. The characters are good, but this feels more like a set up of a great series ahead. Cem was my favorite. Vivid descriptions, everything about this is great. I think this could be sorted out in the sequel. But it is rare we get great fiction in an alternate history setting with a time rift and the one I know of now is Eric Flint and his 1636 series. Fantastic book, loved it, giving it a solid 5/5 and I want the sequel now.
I loved this book! In the first book in this series, we got to see the destruction wrought by 'The Event' and met characters from a few different time-lines. In this book, we get to see many characters from many different time-lines and see how they interact. People are pulled from the middle of war zones and dropped next to completely different times and places. Do they continue to fight? Or do they attempt to determine what has happened to their worlds? Can peoples from different times come together to attempt to save the world or are their differences too great? The main characters are trying their hardest to attempt to save the world(s). However, they have a new, very creepy, antagonist to fight against and humanity's default of distrust the outsider makes their journey even more difficult. They do find some new allies but the group becomes separated which makes their lives even more complicated. I loved the new times and places (especially Ancient Egypt!) and really hope to see more of some of the new characters (especially Hypatia!!). I really, really can't wait for the next installment in this series and highly recommend these books to everyone who enjoys alternate histories and science-fiction. An excellent read!!
Shatter War is the second volume in the Time Shards series, and returns readers to the future where time itself has been broken into pieces, and multiple time periods share the same world.
Whilst Shatter War is a second volume it actually managed to catch me up very quickly with what had come before. During an experiment to harness faster than light travel the timeline was broken, splitting the world into various different shards, places where different times exist. As a result, pre-historic animals, modern day cities, and medieval knights can all exist beside each other.
As the people across this broken world try to figure out what has happened, and in many cases struggle to survive, a small group has come together to try to repair this damage, before powerful aftershocks destroy the world completely. This group of heroes includes Dr Jonathan Meta, the 23rd century scientist who caused the event; Amber Richardson, from modern day, first century Celt Cam; world war two veteran Sergeant Blake; Victorian conman Professor Winston Harcourt; and nineteenth century journalist Nellie Bly.
This mismatched team have a plan: get to the lab where things went wrong and fix stuff; but this doesn’t last particularly long into the book. Unfortunately for them they run afoul of Meta’s evil counterpart, Dr Colonel Janos Mehta. Now, it’s not really clear who this person is, except that he looks and sounds exactly like Meta, including his strange eyes, but comes from a different time where he’s an insane mass murder. What’s the most unclear, however, is if this is an ancestor of his from Meta’s past, or if he’s from an alternate timeline.
The book sets Mehta up to be the big villain in this book, and makes him the cause for everything that goes wrong for the group, with no explanation or reasoning for his being. This is made even worse within the last pages of the book. I won’t say exactly why, as it’s a big spoiler, but things get even more confusing.
Sadly, this Mehta/Meta confusion isn’t the only thing that makes the conclusion of the book a little disappointing. A few hundred pages of the weighty 500 page book are spent in establishing just how many warring factions are making a few of the time shards in Egypt their home, and is building the way towards a conflict. But the book doesn’t deliver on this. It’s coming, but apparently not in this book. I understand that this is a part of a series, but it really felt like the conflict between these time-displaced armies would be the conclusion for this book. It felt like the war in the title is missing.
Whilst we are on the matter of the length of the book, there’s a lot in Shatter War that adds to the world; whole sections of the book where we leave the main characters behind to follow the inhabitants of the various shards. These can range from just a few pages to thirty or more. These sections create some background for the places and people that the heroes will encounter later on, but often the information presented here and the context given is stuff that comes up later on anyway. For example, we spend a while following a ship captain from ancient Egypt as he travels down the Nile for days, lost as he sails from shard to shard, before finally being discovered and captured by soldiers a thousand years from their future. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with this, we see this information relayed to the heroes later on, meaning there was no need to really see it.
This isn’t something that happens just the once, but several times across the book. We see events, then we see our heroes told about these events. This happens so often that it comes to feel that 100 or more pages are given over to these tangents. Whilst I didn’t mind one or two, it happens so often and adds so much to the length of the book that I couldn’t help but get bored by them, and even began to feel like it was being done for padding to add length to the book.
Whilst there was a lot about Shatter War that I enjoyed, especially the inclusion of the real life Nellie Bly (a totally amazing woman who should be taught about in schools!), there’s so much that’s left unexplained, and so much build-up for so small a pay off that it feels like nothing really happens for 500 pages. There may be another book coming that will answer these mysteries and give the reader a resolution, but I can’t see this being a popular middle part, as so much of this story could have been told in half the page count. Thankfully, I hadn’t read the first book, because after waiting a year and a half for another entry in the series I would have been disappointed that this is what I was given.
Loved the first book and could not wait to read this one. However, this book dragged and I almost didn't finish it. Its saving grace were the parts that actually had the main characters from the first book. Other than that...this book could have been about 200 pages shorter and been better. I hated the extra stories that went on for pages and pages, chapters and chapters and then BOOM. That whole plot line had no impact on the rest of the story. They were boring AND a complete waste of time. Completely pointless. They also get really detailed in some places so it reads like a war novel/historical fiction complete with the details that only people in the profession or into that genre will understand. What I really hated was the paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of dialog in other random languages that the authors KNOW at least 80% of readers won't understand because then they go on to translate the whole thing. 🤦🏼♀️ They took the long route and it wasn't very scenic. Highly disappointing compared to the 1st book. Won't bother with the third.
I loved the first book of this series so much, but I felt the opposite about the second.
The first book was such a fun romp: The timeline shattered, and chunks ("shards") of time got all mixed up, so you'd have a mile of Ancient Egypt next to a block of 1950s America next to a football field-sized patch of prehistoric jungle next to a three square foot chunk of city from the year 3,000. A group of characters from vastly different times got together and were trying to survive.
The second book was set in the same world, but felt so much different. The plot's bad guy had a "chemical compound" that would turn humans into perfect slaves. If he ordered them to stop breathing or stop their heart beating, they'd do it and die. The compound lasted forever. (In the book, an advanced AI checked the compound and confirmed it was a mix of chemicals, so it wasn't nanotech or something.) You'd think with the rest of the storyline being about the timeline shattering that I could just accept that that chemical compound existed, but it made zero sense to me. What chemicals could do that? And never wear off?
The book's bigger issue was the Nazis. The authors had the entire human and pre-human history of the world to play with. They needed a bad guy group, and they picked the Nazis? That's about the easiest, least creative choice you could go with. In the whole history of this world (and fictional thousands of years in the future), there wasn't one single more interesting choice than Nazis?
And lastly, a complaint held over from book one: I fully understand that all through history women have been raped, and if you go not too far back, men sometimes talked about women like nothing more than objects, but wow. I got tired of reading it in these two books. The history in the books seemed to be accurate, so I understand where all the rape and the "don't be selfish, share your white woman with our army" stuff came from, but I didn't enjoy reading it at all.
I don't know why I've been pushing myself to not DNF books lately. I was ready to DNF this one at the 30% point, but I pushed myself to finish it (with lots of skimming). I should have DNFed it.
I was so looking forward to this book! Totally biased will admit that from the get-go. David and Dana are two of my favorite writers! :) Couldn't wait for this one after I read the initial one - Time Shards! Great titles, great writing, loved the element of the history interwoven into the book. The writing was so well done as always. Enjoyed the story and totally looking forward to the last installment - Shatterfield.
For people who are interested in the strange things that could happen in our world, you'll definitely enjoy this fantastic journey! The storyline is wildly interesting and the writing is a smooth experience. Have fun! :)
Confusing, and quite a bit of story that felt unnecessary, or at the very least, could have been told in much less detail. Entire book felt like filler - not much happened to advance the story in any understandable way, and it was all just set up for next book. It was a disappointing follow up to a first book that I really enjoyed. Still like the main characters (although Cam was starting to feel a bit wooden by the end) - just wanted them to have more to do, or even see them more.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I absolutely LOVE this series! I wish I could give it a hundred stars. I would enjoy reading about the continuing adventures of Amber and Cam and Nellie in all sorts of historical settings. This is book 2 of a trilogy, so don't read this until you have read Time Shards. I can't wait to read book 3.
3.6 stars. I really like the concept but find some of the characters to be too trope-y. I also don't like the over-reliance on Deus Ex Dinosaur. It's interesting and enjoyable enough that if there are any more, I will keep reading.
I have received this book for free from Titan Books. My opinion remains my own.
I have a lot of the same feelings towards this sequel as book one, so instead of retelling everything in this review, I will recommend you to read my review of Time Shards and I will tell you what I thought differently about Shatter War.
In Shatter War, the maincharacters are going with Merlin in his space ship to try and salvage what is left of the time line and perhaps revert the damage. This book is way more character driven than the first book in the series and that really improved the overall storytelling.
Though there were more interesting things happening in book one, Shatter War had a more coherent and straightforward storyline. The POV’s were less all over the place and so was the story itself. It was much easier to follow and get through. I did expect more action in this book, but I am not mad it didn’t happen. The way the story folded out made sense and worked neatly towards the upcoming conclusion, Tempus Fury. The big downside was that the pacing didn’t really exist in a straight line. It wasn’t all over the place, but it didn’t feel as strong and stable as I am used to in fiction.
After finishing book one, I was less motivated to read the following book than I am now. If I didn’t have Shatter War as review copy, I am unsure if I would have picked it up at all. But now, after finishing this sequel, I kinda look forward to figuring out how this ends. I recommend this series to everyone who enjoys strange timetravel science fiction books. Trust me, you’ll love this. Even though this series is by far not the best sci-fi I have read, it’s strange and enjoyable, and I think that counts.