A time-warp machine offering the ultimate travel experience is ready to take off to the Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
Now paleontologist Rick Clements and a select group of tourists have arrived—unfortunately, just in time to witness the meteor that once laid waste to earth 65,000,000 years ago.
Oh, the perils of cover art! When I ordered this book, it was the dinosaurs on the cover (and the sale price) that hooked me. The thought of being able to time travel to the Cretaceous was also pleasing and I clicked “buy" without thinking too deeply about the matter. This I regret.
The dinosaurs, when they are encountered, are fabulous. However, this novel is far too people-infested. And they are not very interesting. We have the ice-cold entrepreneur who controls the time machine and his minions (who are crystal clear regarding their status as mere minions). We have the selfish, self-indulgent billionaire, who comes complete with a blonde floozy and a daughter whose affection he is trying to buy. Plus a geology student who has been hired to be tour guide for said daughter, who is judged young and biddable (completely disregarding scientific curiosity).
Off they go, using this mysterious technology, to the Cretaceous. It doesn't take our geology student long to figure out that things are hinky. Apparently our entrepreneur has conked a time traveler over the head and claimed his vehicle, which can only be toggled between the present and the dinosaurs. The site where they are camping was built by future-dude. Entrepreneur needs billionaire to fund the reverse engineering of the tech. Meanwhile, the daughter finds a hidden room, filled with screens and a clock with a mysterious countdown. To the asteroid event that will end the dinosaurs.
The dialogue is dull, the roles of the characters are stereotypes, and I just couldn't find much enthusiasm for the plot. Of course the women must be protected, but not by the fat cats. It'll be the pilot and the geology student who step up. The one brown guy sacrifices himself to comfort the blond floozy, who graciously bestows one (count 'em, one) kiss on this guy she would normally not even acknowledge. Ick. I read to the 52% point, then skipped to the final chapters to see if I was missing anything worthwhile. Let's just say that people from the future are jerks.
I read this book to fulfill the Portal Fantasy square of my Halloween Bingo card.
I'm a total sucker for a well-crafted time travel story. THIS IS ONE OF THEM! I've never read any story that takes place at the KT boundary. I was absolutely enthralled at the amount of time spent during the KT disaster with Will's main characters. I could go on and on about this story, but if you're as much of a fan of time travel as I am you will not be disappointed. I immediately picked up Sea of Time (the sequel) to find out how Con and Rick fare after they're send, sorta, back to the future.
I have a weakness for dinosaur fiction, and picked this one up on a whim. This was Hubbell's first novel and it's a pretty good one. Our Hero, a paleontology grad student, finds himself working for a dodgy time-tour outfit on the very eve of the big end-of-Cretaceous dino blowoff. He and his new girlfriend get rather closer to the fireball than they intended....
Here's a decent review by Donna Scanlon, who liked it rather more than I did: http://www.rambles.net/hubbell_cretse... "Hubbell's Cretaceous Sea demonstrates all the hallmarks of good storytelling: a strong plot, appealing characters and lively, vivid language that evokes the sounds and smells of a world we can only imagine."
I found the book a bit cartoonish and clumsily-written, but still enjoyed it.
Slurp! Dinosaurs, time travel and a little romance. Who could resist? Not I.
In a twist, I had read the sequel first and liked it very much and this one was nowhere to be found. Thank goodness for Roberts books at the beach where this little book was waiting patiently for me to claim it.
I enjoyed this book way, way, way more than I should have. There were so many issues in it, from big to small.
The best part of the plot was the latter half of the book, excluding the ending (gah the ending was just so horribly bad).
Set in the near future, for unbelievable reasons a man acquires a time machine. He sets up a resort in the distant past, finds the richest person on the planet, and takes the rich guy and the rich guy's lover and his daughter to the past.
All of the story set in the past (the Cretaceous period) was great. The world seemed so real, the dinosaurs were cool, it would have been a perfect vacation.
Then there's more unbelievable plot about the time machine owner and the richest man in the world wanting to take over the world from the past. And "aliens" (people from the future, might as well have been aliens). Just so much unbelievable stuff.
Stuff happens, and three of the main characters (the daughter plus two staff members) are the last people left alive. And trapped in the past. And the meteor that killed the dinosaur is going to hit that very day.
The story got so good at that point. I don't know how seeing the meteor hit, the world next to destroyed, and the aftereffects could be so realistic when everything else was so bad.
All that makes the book sound pretty good, but there were so many bad elements. From the technical: The ebook was a scan of the paperback, so there were tons of errors and issues. To the writing: Every Single Time a character opened their mouth, the dialogue was so unrealistic. The two female characters alternated between being sex objects and as stupid/weak/emotional as toddlers (it was actually insulting how badly the women were written). All the characters fell in love with each other at the drop of a hat.
The ending was the worst. From the point the "aliens" arrived on, it was just so bad. I don't even know why I kept reading, it was all so stupid and unbelievable.
It had so so so many bad issues, that I should have hated the story. But instead I enjoyed it so much I carved out time out of my day just to read more, and I often thought about the story when I wasn't reading it. I wish all the bad parts had been as good as the Cretaceous period stuff.
It was a fun read though I did feel it was a little "quaint" but I suppose I did come to like the characters somehow because I found myself wishing for a happy ending. I would read more from this author.
EDIT: I now see there is a sequel but maybe better leave well enough alone, the characters weren't quite that endearing (to my tastes, ymmv) and I can only imagine how quaint that would have to be.
I genuinely liked this book. Didn’t really expect much, based on the premise and slow start, but I absolutely raced through the last half! If you like time travel, stories of survival against all odds, and a bit of romance, you’ll probably enjoy. While it isn’t winning any literary awards, it was a throughly satisfying and entertaining read.
_Cretaceous Sea_ by Will Hubbell is a fun and well-written tale of time travel to the end of the Mesozoic Era.
The book centered on two main characters. One is Constance (she prefers Con) Greighton, whom we meet on the first page of the novel. Daughter of wealthy industrialist and investor John Greighton, she finds that her Dad - who neglects her most of the time - is trying to win her affection by taking her on a very expensive vacation to make up for his overall poor parenting skills and lack of attention paid to her (Con's parents are divorced). Unfortunately, joining these two is Sara Boyton, an extremely attractive and much younger woman that is also John's fiancée.
Con's presence is not altogether welcome we find. Not so much by Sara - though there is that element - but by the man who is wining and dining her father and inviting him and his guest(s) to an extremely secretive resort, one unlike any other anywhere (or anytime). This mysterious man is Peter Green and he has sworn his first paying guests to secrecy as to their destination; a location called Montana Isle, an island just offshore of a coast in what is now the interior of the United States but what 65 million years was near a shallow sea. This resort is back in the Mesozoic Era, a small and unbelievably exclusive vacation spot in a time when pterosaurs still flew the skies and dinosaurs still stalked the land.
Though not pleased by Con's inclusion on the trip, Peter allows it so as to not spoil his plans in trying to secure John's aid in a project of his. He is even less pleased though when one of his employees in an attempt to be useful secures the services of a first rather incredulous college paleontology student by the name of Rick Clements. Wanting to keep outsiders away from his time travel technology and particularly leery of anyone of a scientific background, Peter makes sure that Rick understand his sole mission on the trip is to serve his guests and keep Con happy - and out of his way. Not to do research, not to see dinosaurs - unless that is what Con wants.
The book is really three sections if I can risk "spoiling" it for the reader (though I think I don't really run much risk of that given what is printed on the back cover). There is the time spent in the resort camp, as Rick tries to stay out of Peter's way, starts to question how Peter and his crew got the time travel devices and the other wonderful items they find on Montana Isle in the Cretaceous Period, and at the same time keep a spirited young woman happy, one who has grown increasingly estranged from her Dad and at first rather suspicious of Rick. While Rick gains the trust and more of Con, he starts to question Peter's and soon John's motives...how did they get this technology, so far beyond anything that Rick has ever heard of? What are their plans? What, if anything, should Rick do? Can he trust Con with his suspicions? Who among Peter's people can Rick trust, if any?
As one I am sure can see from the back cover, unfortunately the resort was located at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The very end, as in days before the extraterrestrial impact that ushered in the massive extinctions that closed the Mesozoic Era; this very event, arguably one of the worst if not the worst calamity to ever befall the Earth, has to be endured by Rick, Con, and the others. Can they survive the initial impact, not to mention the fires, floods, storms, darkness, and cold afterwards? How will they get back home, to their time? Is that even possible?
The final part deals with who rescues the protagonists. I don't want to give anything away, but who they are and what their goals are has a very big impact on the course of events in the sequel and it was not the people I would have guessed to come to the rescue.
A very enjoyable book, I have only a few complaints. Some of the secondary characters working for Peter Green were kind of poorly fleshed out, if not quite stereotypical. Rick is able to rattle off the name of many of the dinosaurs he sees...fine for many, certainly, but I always thought if someone actually saw one in the flesh there would be a lot more hesitation (though he isn't able to identify all of them, and he meets a new type, a crucial plot element in the second section of the book). Other than that, I liked it. His description of scenery and events during and after the impact was vivid and their struggle for survival was engrossing, and the nature of their rescue afterwards was intriguing and well explored in the sequel, _Sea of Time_.
What would you do if you had access to a time-travel machine?
H.G. Wells had his Time Machine traveler go far into the future, returning once to grab a few volumes from his library to help the growth of the society he found there. Leo Frankowski scattered generations of a world-wide time-police organization across 2000 years of history to make sure that one man, his Cross-Time Engineer, survived in medieval Poland. And L. Sprague de Camp assumed a historian traveling to Imperial Rome would want to prevent that empire's decline, Lest Darkness Fall.
But Peter Green and Ann Smyth, the lucky owners of the time-warp apparatus in Will Hubbell's novel, have a better idea. They'll sell—to multi-millionaires only—the chance to vacation in the "unspoiled, pristine wilderness" of the inland sea that existed in mid-America at the boundary of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods.
The millionaire backer they've chosen first, Greighton, has good reason to desire an escape from the crowds. His new—young—fianceé has a disturbing propensity for attracting young men and spending his money, and he wants a chance to solidify his relationship with her away from such distractions.
Greighton insists on bringing his spoiled teenage daughter along as well, and Smyth promises him there will be a "staff naturalist" along to keep her out of Daddy's hair. To geologist and fossil collector Rick Clements, it sounds like the perfect graduate-school job. Even though he's not sure he believes the machine can really take them back, he's eager for a chance to collect living specimens of the animals he's only seen immured in rock until now. And Constance Greighton, the "child" he expects to babysit, will not prevent him from making the most of this opportunity.
Perhaps Green and Smyth's skewed view of what to do with such a windfall comes from the source. They are not inventors of this technology. They stole it from the original owner, who (Green surmises) came from a future time when time-travel technology is fairly commonplace. Or maybe it is a result of the disturbing fact that only one time—the Cretaceous (K-T) boundary—and only one place can be reached with their ill-gotten transport. Fortunately for Green and Smyth, they find ready-made living quarters at their proposed resort.
Unfortunately for all of the vacationers, there's more at the destination than a convenient group of summer cottages. It's the usual problem of stolen technology—there's no manual, and an undocumented feature will sometimes crash the system. In their case, the malfunction leaves them stranded on the edge of the Cretaceous Sea, where they will have an excellent view of the meteor that ended the Age of the Dinosaurs.
Hubbell has written a thriller in time-travel guise that mingles just a little geologic and dinosaur fact with lots of adventure. Don't expect it to stretch your brain—this story is time-travel light. It's strictly for fun, and at that, it succeeds very well.
I really enjoyed this book. (I say that a lot...) Anywho, the pace was nice, and the writing was good. The characters were understandable in the reactions to things that happened.
Rick - grad student turned tour guide he's our main guy in this book. He's young-ish and kinda just thrown into the leadership role when things go sour. But he manages to not lose his head and keeps focused, because if he loses it, the others will too.
Con - the rich girl, who both loves and hates her emotionally unavailable father. She's stubborn and a little childish at first, but when things go south that transforms into actual strength and perseverance.
Joe - the wild card of the situation, at least at first, is he an ally or an enemy?
Despite the rather hokey cover, this book actually delivers a decent story about time travel. When a greedy businessman steals a time machine from someone from the future, he can only see dollar signs. Wooing a potential investor by taking him and his family on a 'vacation' to the Cretaceous period, he is totally oblivious to the fact that the original intent of that 'vacation' spot was to watch the meteor crash that ended the time of the dinosaurs. As the holiday unfolds, the truth is discovered, but the time machine has not replenished enough power to leave in time and those stranded there are faced with some difficult decisions.
My only complaint with this book is that it was not longer. I love time travel books and of course dinosaurs,but have never read one taking place during the K-T boundary impact. He could have made this book twice as long just focusing on the survival of the characters after the impact.I wisely chose not to even read this book till I had the sequel for when I finished it I immediatly picked up the sequel and devoured it. Great read for a book who's cover looks like it would belong to a 6th grader.If you love time travel books definetly pick this up!
A very well-written dinosaur fiction novel, but I would have enjoyed more dinosaurs. The human characters were very much human and believable and the plot interesting, but in hindsight many of the twists were rather obvious. The dinosaurs were portrayed very well and the author has clearly done his research into current theories. This is a good choice for a adamant dinosaur lover and a very good book overall.
A very satisfying time travel adventure, well written and well researched. The reconstruction of the Upper Cretaceous period of Montana, it's topography, flora and fauna, is very close to the currently held consensus among paleontologist. The story has some unexpected twist. Definitely a good read.