Time Siege by Wesley Chu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel is one of nearly never-ending battles upon the benighted Earth of the future. Corporate greed and the fall of civilization has led time travelers to scavenge the past for the resources they no longer have in the future. It's the ultimate Zero-Sum Game.

That being said, this novel picks up after our MC disgraced Time Traveler James has drawn a line in the sand on the side of the poor remnants of future Earth who are just a few steps above savagery and are surrounded by peoples just as afraid and willing to go to war over the remaining resources. Plus we've got the added and much more difficult conflicts with the Corporations as well as the other Chronmen who serve them.

I think I'll always like Grace the best out of all the characters. She's the super-egotistical inventor of the time-travel and the laws that everyone follows when it comes to time-travel. She really plays fast and loose with them, too. :) Elise is fine as a leader and the fixture of hope when it comes to curing the disease that has nearly wiped out humanity, dragged out of her original time period, like Grace, as part of the Big Guns to solve everyone's problems, but it's Grace's personality I like most. :)

Anyone who likes a lot of war and conflict and action should really pick up these books, and they should really get into this one even more. Bad situations follow even worse ones regularly, and we even get to see James drink himself into a stupor over all the things he's gone through and need to earn his sobriety chip over it. Probably the best part of all the action surrounds all the tech surrounding the Chronmen. Pretty flashy stuff. Pew Pew. :)

Not to spoil anything, there is an interesting turn of plot, even if it's not unpredictable, either when it comes to Elise or to all the poor people under siege, but that's what book three is going to be for. :)

My only complaint is how I wish I liked James more and how I wish these time-travel books had more history in them. As they are, it's just a few jumps in future history with varied successes and failures. They're relatively ineffective. Most of the action remains, even with this great tech, in the dystopian future full of war. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I can at least respect the author for sticking to his guns. Literally. :)

Action, please!

View all my reviews