Different Than Expected--But an Excellent Listen !

When an author provides a prospective reader with 22 hours of book it is a sort of a offer to enter into a contract: "You invest 22 hours of your time -- and I will make it worth your while." I went into this (based on the title and reviews) thinking it would be an epic 'Small military Unit versus Historical Bad Guys Lost in Time Story." (We have had civil war units, aircraft carriers, destroyers and infantry.) But this is NOT a bang-bang-shoot-em-up story. It is the thinking person's military. I felt as though I were reading the progeny of a cross between Desmond Morris' "Naked Ape" and either "The Martian" or "Seven Eves".

That is lofty company considering the sales of those books! But this author carries it off, albeit somewhat slowly. Compare a police procedural mystery to a cop show with car chases -- this is an 'military-anthropological procedural'. (Some reviewers have characterized "The Martian" as an engineer's recounting of the practical problems with being stranded on Mars, mixed with the single-character study of the psyche of that engineer. This is the "how to" guide to showing up 11,000 years ago matched with a study of small group dynamics.)

It is fascinating. The author clearly knows the real military, weapons and how to write. The surprise is the degree of scholarship beyond things military. It is a little gritty in day-to-day human functions...but there is nothing gratuitous. Also, the narrator is really excellent -- almost worth the listen himself. I'm doing something rare....I highly recommended this book and expect that it may become a one of those you will remember for a long time.

One final note. At least one reviewer felt that the narrative lacked pointers that would indicate which character was talking. As a paper book that might be a problem. For me, this is one of the first books that was written to be listened to. No constant "he said" or "Mike exclaimed." It added a great deal to the experience for me.

171 people found this helpful

Not a series!

Enjoyed the hell out of this story. Author didn't try to make the narrative too dramatic or beat up his characters in a gratuitous manner.

The performance of the audiobook was masterful. The narrator kept a consistent and distinct voice for each character.

The best part was that while it was a long novel, the author resolved the story and didn't try to turn it into a multi-book series. I'm getting kind of tired of that.

79 people found this helpful

Different than I expected

When I bought this book I thought I was probably getting a standard out-of-time book with shallow characters and too much action. Normally I would not buy a book like that but the idea intrigued me and I wanted to give it a try. Surprisingly this was not the book I expected, but something much more substantial and interesting.

10 soldiers are plucked from a convoy in Afghanistan along with their vehicles and transported 10-15,000 years in the past. They must try to survive as a group and as individuals and somehow find a way to make a life completely out of their own time. Along the way they find other groups, also plucked from their times, who are trying to do the same. What we have in this book is more of the day to day struggles, both physical and emotional, to build a working society than warfare between the groups and, given that they are in the pre-historic past rather than in someplace like historic Greece or Rome, there is little of what might be expected in a book like this with people trying to get ahead in what we think of as early civilization.

While I found the book to be interesting and became involved with the characters I was a bit surprised by the way the book ended and it is hard for me to see how there will be a sequel. Since this is listed as Book 1 of the Temporal Displacement Series (see the Kindle version of this book at Amazon) it is clear that there will be a sequel but it is hard to see how it will involve the same characters as in this book.

If you are looking for warfare, in-fighting and the clash of different groups this is probably not your book. If you are looking for an intelligent look at how people might have to struggle to survive in the far past this might be for you. It is well read and I was still involved with the events and the characters at the end of the 22 hours.

62 people found this helpful

Must Have Bacon!

When the commanding officer starts crying seconds after realizing he and his troops aren't on a road in the Afghan war zone any more but in some other time/place, I thought this was going to be an awful listen. Actually, his reaction is described as weeping. That seemed like a very strange reaction just a few MOMENTS into the event. Confusion, fear, disorientation I can understand but weeping? Emotions are not handled very well throughout the story. Combat soldiers weeping and giggling at things that aren't that sad or funny, just seemed odd to me.

Another negative and a warning to those who may be sensitive, there is no PC here. Views on Christianity, women, different cultures, race, sex etc. are handled clumsily. Still, I would recommend the listen. A lot of research went into the details of building a viable, defensible 'village' thousands of years in the past with only the items in two military Humvees and ten soldiers. The story really gets interesting when soldiers from other eras start show up.

So, pros: well researched, detailed, some humor, fascinating premise.
The cons: offends just about every group out there and has one dimensional characters you rooted for only as part of the larger military unit. Recommended for fans of time-travel or post-apocalypse-type fiction.

35 people found this helpful

Suprisingly Boring and Harsh

I tried really hard to finish this one. I spaced it out so the monotony wouldn't get to me too badly and I tried to see things through the eyes of the soldiers, but I just couldn't do it. It was just too boring.

You may be wondering how a group of U.S. soldiers being inexplicably teleported through time to the Stone Age could possibly be boring. Well, imagine that the writer forgot to introduce conflict. No degradation of order like in Lord of the Flies, no creative problem-solving against the clock like in The Martian, no sinister enemy to battle like in Terra Nova. Seriously, I was over 8 hours in and there had been no serious threats to the soldiers, aside from the distant fear of eventual backslide and a general feeling of fluctuating morale.

Most of the character development is interesting and you feel like you get to know them pretty quickly. They don't follow typical archetypes, and I appreciate that the lieutenant is neither the fresh eyed rookie, nor the super-officer that has all the solutions to every problem. Williamson makes them all human and very real. The only problem is Williamson gets kind of caught up in the realism and I get far more detail than is necessary for characters defecating and the like.

While Dennis Holland gets the job done with the voices (some of them very interesting,) the monotone of the narration amplifies the core problem of the book, that being its pacing. I'm not sure if the story was salvageable, but it feels like a military report is being read to me the entire time I'm listening.

This book might turn the corner after the first half, but I wasn't willing to stick around to find out. Maybe if you enjoy reading about the mundane chores of Army life, you will appreciate what this story has to offer, especially because of its unique setting. If you were hoping to read a story about time travel run amok, you'd be better off trying something else.

26 people found this helpful

sjw chass

author clearly just got done aocial justice class.
might want to skip if your sick of being ridden for being a white male lol.

25 people found this helpful

An acceptable waste of many hours

...if your a fan of scifi docudramas without any significant character development. Think of it as a cross between Jean Auel's Painted Caves and a Ken Burns PBS special. If you've ever been to one of those movies that you kept waiting for it to "get good" and that time never arrived then well this is the literary equivalent. I will not even mention the character from Queens with the southern accent. Don't listen to this book around the kids either because every other sentence was interspersed with needless colorful language...I guess to make the characters sound more military? I will say that it filled the time on my way back and forth to work for a considerable period so I gave it 3 stars overall out of consideration for the authors feelings and what had to be a good bit of research time spent compiling some of the details.

25 people found this helpful

rhetoric

This read seemed very preachy, very little time in between long religious talk. Was not for me

20 people found this helpful

Well-Researched Military Time Travel

“A Long Time Until Now” does a great job examining how a small Army patrol would cope with suddenly being transported to Paleolithic Central Asia. The author clearly did his homework and didn’t gloss over any inconvenient details, including problems with language and the psychological impact of the displacement (almost a standard in the time travel genre). There may have been a tad more capabilities in the ten members of the team than you might find in an average patrol, but it wasn’t unbelievable. Williamson also clearly knows his military jargon. Someone without a military background would not catch a lot.

The reader did try to distinguish voices, though sometimes not as the author intended. He also made everyone sound happy too often. And finally he didn’t check with a soldier (or even an Airman) on the proper contextual pronunciation of “hooah.”

16 people found this helpful

Boring

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I really liked the concept of this story and was looking forward to a good read.
This book is so slow and boring. Nothing happens it just goes on and on
I'll be returning this to get my credit back

Would you ever listen to anything by Michael Z. Williamson again?

No, He had a great idea but doesn't appear to be able to put it into words.
To bad, good idea down the drain.

How could the performance have been better?

The narration is as bad as the book.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Very Disappointed

16 people found this helpful