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A review by isabellarobinson7
The Time Traders by Andre Norton
4.5
Rating: 4.5 stars
Yes, I picked up this book based purely on premise. What can I say, most things involving the words "time travel" are like a siren's song to me. And I seem to have had good fortune with this picking-it-up-because-time-travel recently, because The Time Traders was awesome!
Basically, it is about Ross Murdock, a felon with a criminal record, who "volunteers" for Operation Retrograde, a covert government operation. You can guess what this operation involves: time travel. The Soviets have snuck into an uncharted period of history and, using some outdated technology, created formidable new weaponry. At first unwillingly, but with growing determination, Murdock joins the team engaged in this timey-wimey Cold War conflict.
Now from that description you probably assume it was written in the past 20 years or so. Nope, far from it. This book is the most sneaky classic I have ever read - it was published in 1958! Honestly, I read through all 500 of those pages without even the slightest clue. "Intro to classics" is written all over this book. It should be its tagline: The Time Traders: Read This If You Thought Classics Were Impossible To Understand. No classic author I have read has ever come as close to modern prose as Andre Norton did. And that's not to say either old- nor new-style prose is bad, just that I get how Tolkien's writing can take a bit of getting used to, and some people are reluctant to touch him or his peers with a ten foot pole. But The Time Traders was published literally four years after The Lord of the Rings, and yet it feels more like four decades.
So get ready. As many Time Traders books I can get my hands on, I will be reading.
Yes, I picked up this book based purely on premise. What can I say, most things involving the words "time travel" are like a siren's song to me. And I seem to have had good fortune with this picking-it-up-because-time-travel recently, because The Time Traders was awesome!
Basically, it is about Ross Murdock, a felon with a criminal record, who "volunteers" for Operation Retrograde, a covert government operation. You can guess what this operation involves: time travel. The Soviets have snuck into an uncharted period of history and, using some outdated technology, created formidable new weaponry. At first unwillingly, but with growing determination, Murdock joins the team engaged in this timey-wimey Cold War conflict.
Now from that description you probably assume it was written in the past 20 years or so. Nope, far from it. This book is the most sneaky classic I have ever read - it was published in 1958! Honestly, I read through all 500 of those pages without even the slightest clue. "Intro to classics" is written all over this book. It should be its tagline: The Time Traders: Read This If You Thought Classics Were Impossible To Understand. No classic author I have read has ever come as close to modern prose as Andre Norton did. And that's not to say either old- nor new-style prose is bad, just that I get how Tolkien's writing can take a bit of getting used to, and some people are reluctant to touch him or his peers with a ten foot pole. But The Time Traders was published literally four years after The Lord of the Rings, and yet it feels more like four decades.
So get ready. As many Time Traders books I can get my hands on, I will be reading.