Island in the Sea of Time by S. M. Stirling (1998, Paperback, Reprint)

I am a Sci-Fi nut and in the 90’s I discovered many great what-if authors. I came across this book about3 years ago and it rapidly became one of my favorites.

In a nutshell: The Island of Nantucket (and everything that is within several miles off shore, including a couple of boats and a Coast Guard ship) is suddenly transported back in time about 3000 years. The citizens have to survive in a world where there will be no gas, oil, power, phones and goods not produced on Nantucket itself. They send a ship to the UK to trade with the people there, to get food, grain, seeds…. And come back with 2 guests. One of the people on the Coast Guard ship decides that they can rule the world and sets out to do so.
If you can get past the homosexual relationship between 2 of the main characters (I do not think it was needed for the store and felt more like Sterling was attempting to please a group of readers) you will find the book hard to put down. Though the book can be a read in itself and end there, it is actually the first of 3 books, so if you like this you can continue the story.
Over all I highly recommend this to any Sci-Fi lover out there. And secretly I wish some Hollywood producer would set his sights on making this a movie or miniseries.

Stirling's "Island in the Sea of Time" is an impressive work of science fiction and fact. On the other hand, I found it tedious at times and, dare I say, boring and monotonous. I realize the jacket is rife with praise from renowned authors, and for good reason. However, I could not really get into it. I found the character of the black female captain of the Eagle forced and unrealistic and the juxtapositions of the protag/sidekick and antag/henchwoman a bit too staged and Hollywood-esque.

Stirling doesn't waste any time getting his story off to the races, i.e. to 1250 B.C. We don't get a lot of character set-up or back story; in no time at all, there's a huge freakish storm, and the next thing the people of Nantucket and the crews of the boats nearby know -- they're not in Kansas anymore. That's great, and I love a book that doesn't make me wait for what I already know by the blurb on the back is coming. Unfortunately, for this reader's taste, Stirling spends huge amounts of time in the book detailing incredibly mundane aspects of the Nantucketers' attempts to survive and thrive as a time-displaced society, including pages of stuff that occurs at town meetings, weddings, in make-shift factories, mills, foundries, on the fields, etc. Details of the construction of armor and weapons, of agricultural equipment, generators, etc. I was hoping for a rousing piece of nautical fiction but what I got was a textbook primer in speculative nation building and pre-industrial engineering.

Except for a brief rescue mission in which the captain of the Eagle heads to the Yucatan peninsula, there's precious little time spent in the development of suspense and risk. I can count only three or four times in the story when I thought the stakes had risen enough for me to care. In fact, thinking back, Stirling did not generate enough interest in the characters for me to be invested in them. The tough as nails black lesbian captain of the Eagle did not have one single thought to which I could relate, and her 13th century lover quickly lost her sympathy factor within days after being rescued from slavery and certain death. (I'm not opposed to reading stories with female leads, not in the least, but this one had me at a loss.)

I also felt the action sequences and battles, of which there were plenty, were less guttural and more intellectual, in a sense, for me, as someone who holds various belts in different forms of martial arts, unconvincing. Similarly, I found all nautical references to be more of the book-learned type and less of the visceral type. I didn't read this book with the idea of scrutinizing the story for technical detail but early on I knew I would have to suspend disbelief in many areas of nautical know-how. For example, the use of radios during the roughly two or three years of the story's time line made me wonder how the characters were able to keep their batteries charged and in good working order, and/or how they managed HF Comms over transoceanic distances.

Last but not least, the end left me flat, a clear introduction to the sequel, "On the Oceans of Eternity."

So, who should read this book? I would say history AND science fiction buffs, students of civilization, culture and society, people interested in speculative, intellectual fiction.

(POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT*****)




I continued reading "Islands..." for the simple reason I wanted to have final resolution between good and evil. I didn't get that. Instead, I got a predictable battle

Good story in the Alternate History line of fiction and fantasy. Stirling has reached into his Drakon or projected his Lesbian Heroines. If you can pass through the abberance of "homosexuality" as a life style, and there are no explicit scenes, except through inference, then "the event" is singular in the how we got to this alternate universe and how they adapt to it.

I'm glad I read it and if you like alternate history, you will be also.

Once again S M Stirling reaches out from his alternative view of reality and catches the reader viscerally and mentally. A superbly written tale with unforgettable characters and situations. This novel deserves many literary awards for it's scope of grandeur and adventure that carry the reader along on a tale of untimate survival where the main characters not only endure, but managed to prosper and even improve on their lives and futures. A truly outstanding novel.