City at the End of Time

A missed opportunity to really explore cosmology

I am usually a fan of Greg Bear, but his was disappointing. While there are big scientific ideas at work in this novel, they are buried and difficult to work out. They are so poorly developed that the novel is really a fantasy rather than than hard science fiction. After all, the good guys win by joining, what in any other work, would have been called "magic stones" -- here, they are "summing stones." The characters are poorly developed and most of them are uninteresting. They are merely vehicles for a plot that grinds along until it ends with something very close to "And then a miracle occurs." Now, it's possible that Bear was trying to avoid having a scientist character who would lecture for pages about the science at issue. That is a noble undertaking. But it's not an excuse for putting the science in a Cuisinart, scattering it through the book and among the characters, and never developing it fully.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer

In Seattle, three people (Ginny, Jack, and Max) separately and with no seeming connection see a newspaper ad that stuns them. The advertisement states: ¿Do you dream of a city at the end of time?¿ Each can answer in the affirmative as they have had visions of a dark desolate landscape of a devastated wasteland they also share in common a form of amnesia in which none of them know anything important from their respective pasts. They only have just flashes of urban desolation. ---------- They respond and soon learn they are the Protectors of time. An enigmatic, at one time seemingly omnipotent race has created a million-year sentient species experiment. Now after a hundred trillion years the ancient Kalpa is the last vestige of true knowledge and is rapidly deteriorating as the universe dies. The insanity of chaos fills the vacuum. The trio understands their mission is to save any form of awareness of being to pass on to the rebirth and know the danger they face in attempting this, but consider the alternative nothingness. --------------- THE CITY AT THE END OF TIME is not an easy or fast-paced read but worth the time for those science fiction fans who appreciate a very complex story line that increasingly turns even more complicated as Greg Bear explores an ontological theme. The key characters especially the threesome, the ad taker, and those at the Kalpa discussing the end of times seem real enough to have the audience feel the countdown to the big crunch has begun. The hope is that the trio will save a flicker of light that survives into the universe reincarnation that the Kalpa inhabitants believe will occur. Mr. Bear provides a well written cerebral sci fi tale.------------------- Harriet Klausner

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

I need opinons on this book!

I'm going to start reading this, maybe in a few days. Is this worth my time?

Aweful!!!!!!!

First book that i absolutely could not finish reading! I could not figure out what was going on in the 100 pages I read. It might have been from intense boredom that i zoned out while reading it, but I believe it is from the lack of explanation from the author. I hated it!! I feel I wasted my money!

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Another Awesome Book From This Awesome Author

This book was incredible. The story of an evil that devours time and the rush of past and future heros to stop it. I really don't want to say too much but this was an awesome read. The way the the characters in the story shift and move through time is dynamic and inventive. I can praise this story forever. Read it! Nothing further.

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