Rating: 
Summary: Magic Time
Review: This book is initially exciting, perhaps buoyed by Hambly's writing skill. But it quickly becomes a sort of cut-rate, bad comic book cross between Stephen King's The Stand and Sean Stewart's Galveston. Something happens -- we don't get the intellectual satisfaction of learning exactly what -- in a top secret government research facility. Technology stops working, and some people metamorphose. Two foci of presumably destructive power appear -- a rather confusing plot point -- and our questing band of heroes must tackle the first one. There are too many characters for the modest length of the book, and most are not well drawn. The cliched imagery verges on the ridiculous. It really is a comic book -- one person appears to be changing into Catwoman. The plot is fast-moving but shallow and unbelievable. While the basic idea is an interesting one, the book never gets off the ground. It comes across as imitative, lacking themes of its own.
Rating: 
Summary: Waste of time
Review: Warning - read only if you have a few days you want to waste reading disjointed snatches of a re-telling of The Stand. Understand my anger when I tell you I WAS NOT AWARE THIS WAS THE FIRST BOOK OF A TRIOLOGY when I purchased it. By the end - I cared about none of the people and had absolutely no idea what the source/project was and what exactly was done by whom. Furthermore, I don't care enough to read the other books. I love science fiction - love supernatural - this was just plain boring.
| 
