THUNDER OF TIME

The dinosaurs are coming, the dinosaurs are coming—and so is the kitchen sink.

Though somewhat more restrained than the author’s previous work (Ship of the Damned, 2000, etc.), this sequel to 1995's Footprints of Thunder won't dislodge David from a favored place among the poster boys of run-away plotting. Set in the present, the near future, the distant past and the way distant past, this is a cornucopia of the convoluted. Ten years after the mysterious and terrifying “time quilts” began appearing in the U.S., overlaying and obliterating cities such as Atlanta, Portland, Oregon and others, and replacing them with forests primeval (think Jurassic Park), things have settled down. People are coping. Dinosaurs still chomp, of course, but this mostly affects the foolishly unwary. Now, however, to certain experienced space-time continuum watchers, the status quo seems imperiled. “Chaos was coming, and it was coming soon,” if you asked Nick Paulson, Director of the Office of Security Science and his like-minded colleagues. Enter Vince Walters, closet zealot. In one guise, he's assistant director of a respectable research center; in another, a die-hard eco-terrorist. Dr. Walters is bent on destroying a civilization grown irredeemably corrupt. He then plans a redesign, envisioning a society more closely attuned to the worship of a godlike him. So the game's afoot. In effect, it’s a struggle between good and evil, though as the plot twists and turns, thematic and narrative clarity are sacrificed. Pity the beset heroine, for instance, who, sharing her confusion with the reader at one head-scratching point, plaintively wonders: “How could she kill herself and still exist?”

Two-thirds of a pretty good adventure story, but the rest will wear you out.