In the year 2034, Theo Quderian, a French physicist, made an amusing but impractical discovery: the means to use a one-way, fixed-focus time warp that opened into a place in the Rhone River valley during the idyllic Pliocene Epoch, six million years ago. But, as time went on, a certain usefulness developed. The misfits and mavericks of the future–many of them brilliant people–began to seek … people–began to seek this exit door to a mysterious past. In 2110, a particularly strange and interesting group was preparing to make the journey–a starship captain, a girl athlete, a paleontologist, a woman priest, and others who had reason to flee the technological perfection of twenty-second-century life.
Thus begins this dazzling fantasy novel that invites comparisons with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula Le Quin. It opens up a whole world of wonder, not in far-flung galaxies but in our own distant past on Earth–a world that will captivate not only science-fiction and fantasy fans but also those who enjoy literate thrillers.
The group that passes through the time-portal finds an unforeseen strangeness on the other side. Far from being uninhabited, Pliocene Europe is the home of two warring races from another planet. There is the knightly race of the Tanu–handsome, arrogant, and possessing vast powers of psychokinesis and telepathy. And there is the outcast race of Firvulag–dwarfish, malev-o olent, and gifted with their own supernormal skills. Taken captive by the Tanu and transported through the primordial European landscape, the humans manage to break free, join in an uneasy alliance with the forest-dwelling Firvulag, and, finally, launch an attack against the Tanu city of light on the banks of a river that, eons later, would be called the Rhine.
Myth and legend, wit and violence, speculative science and breathtaking imagination mingle in this romantic fantasy, which is the first volume in a series about the exile world. The sequel, titled The Golden Torc, will follow soon.
Lovers of Tolkien will want to give this series a try. We have time travel from the future back to dinosaur times, societal implications and a cast of brilliant misfits off to be the intrepid settlers into our past, rather than our future. Turns many things on their ears and is a really fine examination of humanity. It may not seem like such …
The first book of “The Saga of Pliocene Exile.” I just re-read the series and it still holds up! Well worth your time! Enjoy!
An epic reimagining of mythology as part of a science fictional premise; anchored in science, with outsized characters that are explained by the setup, this first book in the Saga of Pliocene Exile is well worth reading. I only give it four stars because without reading the next three, it hangs a bit. Some find it slow the first time, not …
Enjoyed the heck out of it
In a not-too-distant future, humanity has been folded into a benevolent confederation of alien races. Aided by these exotic new friends and led by metapsychic operants — individuals with awesome psychic abilities — the humans have conquered poverty and disease, colonized distant planets, and made astonishing scientific discoveries, and life has …