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isabellarobinson7's review against another edition
4.0
Rating: 4 stars
Now this is what I'm talking about! After two successive duds in Galactic Derelict and The Defiant Agents, Andre Norton is back on form. Key Out of Time, the fourth book in the Time Traders series includes actual time travel this time! Wooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
While it was more sensical, I suppose, than its predecessor, there is still a bit of what I am calling "wacko science" in Key Out of Time. (I think it's left over from the The Defiant Agents which infamously had the ooga-booga-making machine.) There are intelligent dolphins in this book... and humans talk to them... so it's a bit strange. Personally, the smart dolphins remind me of only one thing - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but that obviously couldn't have been Norton’s inspiration because Hitchhiker's was published over ten years after Key Out of Time. Given that Norton's series is based around time travel, this is all truly ironic.
Back to the dolphins. I should also mention that they communicate with the humans via brain... stuff. Perhaps not completely realistic. But Norton never seems to be going for any kind of hard science fiction with this series anyway. So with the telepathic dolphins from this water planet, they help these people fight off the alien guys from the previous books and end up stuck in the past (due to the aforementioned time travel) with some magic ladies... or are they?
I was excited when I saw that this new planet our characters were visiting seemed to be based on Hawaii and was populated by Polynesian-esque peoples. I live in New Zealand (the largest country in Polynesia) so it is always awesome to see any kind of representation of our country's indigenous heritage. I was a bit disappointed, however, when Murdock and co. left them to do the timey whimey stuff. But it is timey whimey stuff after all, so I wasn't that bummed.
The time travel did bring about this awesome quote from Ross Murdock:
Did he really...? Yes, he actually tried the "what's that?!" tactic on these hyper-intelligent aliens. It still makes me chuckle. I mean, Star Trek: Enterprise's Lieutenant Reed said it best: "Well, it may be an old trick where we come from, but maybe they haven't heard of it here."
So I am closing this review optimistic once again about the future of the Time Traders series. Maybe books two and three were just outliers and on the whole the series is just as good as I had hoped it would be after finishing book one.
Now this is what I'm talking about! After two successive duds in Galactic Derelict and The Defiant Agents, Andre Norton is back on form. Key Out of Time, the fourth book in the Time Traders series includes actual time travel this time! Wooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
While it was more sensical, I suppose, than its predecessor, there is still a bit of what I am calling "wacko science" in Key Out of Time. (I think it's left over from the The Defiant Agents which infamously had the ooga-booga-making machine.) There are intelligent dolphins in this book... and humans talk to them... so it's a bit strange. Personally, the smart dolphins remind me of only one thing - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but that obviously couldn't have been Norton’s inspiration because Hitchhiker's was published over ten years after Key Out of Time. Given that Norton's series is based around time travel, this is all truly ironic.
Back to the dolphins. I should also mention that they communicate with the humans via brain... stuff. Perhaps not completely realistic. But Norton never seems to be going for any kind of hard science fiction with this series anyway. So with the telepathic dolphins from this water planet, they help these people fight off the alien guys from the previous books and end up stuck in the past (due to the aforementioned time travel) with some magic ladies... or are they?
I was excited when I saw that this new planet our characters were visiting seemed to be based on Hawaii and was populated by Polynesian-esque peoples. I live in New Zealand (the largest country in Polynesia) so it is always awesome to see any kind of representation of our country's indigenous heritage. I was a bit disappointed, however, when Murdock and co. left them to do the timey whimey stuff. But it is timey whimey stuff after all, so I wasn't that bummed.
The time travel did bring about this awesome quote from Ross Murdock:
" 'And this is so--behold!'
It was the oldest trick in the world, perhaps on any planet. But because it was so old maybe it had been forgotten by the aliens. For, as Ross pointed, those heads did turn for an instant."
Did he really...? Yes, he actually tried the "what's that?!" tactic on these hyper-intelligent aliens. It still makes me chuckle. I mean, Star Trek: Enterprise's Lieutenant Reed said it best: "Well, it may be an old trick where we come from, but maybe they haven't heard of it here."
So I am closing this review optimistic once again about the future of the Time Traders series. Maybe books two and three were just outliers and on the whole the series is just as good as I had hoped it would be after finishing book one.
teanahk's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
msjenne's review against another edition
1.0
Oh my god this was boring. It was like a kid playing with action figures. "ok this guy and this guy are on the palm tree planet! And Aqua Girl is here! Splash! With her dolphin friends! And they go back in time! Zoom! And the bad guys take them prisoner! But then he fights the one bad guy and they like him! And then BWOMM the aliens come! And they fight the aliens and the aliens all die!!"
jenne's review
1.0
Oh my god this was boring. It was like a kid playing with action figures. "ok this guy and this guy are on the palm tree planet! And Aqua Girl is here! Splash! With her dolphin friends! And they go back in time! Zoom! And the bad guys take them prisoner! But then he fights the one bad guy and they like him! And then BWOMM the aliens come! And they fight the aliens and the aliens all die!!"
bzedan's review
4.0
I'm pretty meh about dolphins, but they do a nice job of being the telepath-link animals used in this entry of Norton's galaxy-colonising, timetravelly, trying not to be noticed by angry aliens we stole tech from sorta series.
Also, there are witches and whoopsie-doo we done went back in time, shit about the history just tryin' to survive.
Also, there are witches and whoopsie-doo we done went back in time, shit about the history just tryin' to survive.
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