The Depths of Time has a few pretty good things going for it. It’s got very engaging characters, a fairly plausible far-flung future setting, and a nicely drawn out mystery. Where it falls a little flat are in the in between moments. Those particular plot times after we’ve learnt an interesting piece to the puzzle but have yet to discover our lead to the next. This plot slowdown doesn’t by any means ruin the novel; it just acts as a counterweight to a probably very intriguing mystery.
The story follows one Anton Koffeild a man thrown from his time under a fairly unusual set of circumstances. Koffeild works for the Chronologic Patrol in the year 5127 C.E. his job is to guard by any means necessary his designated wormhole and safeguard causality. Of course this goes horribly wrong and through a complex series of events Koffield is left stranded 207 years in the future facing a daunting mystery.
As you can no doubt see, the story is fairly promising. Koffeild reminds me distinctly of some legendary character that I can’t seem to put my finger on. But he is definitely reminiscent of some long lost epic character, and to that end, he does his role justice. Koffeild is a very interesting character as are most of the players in this story; we want to know the why’s and how’s to them. And their mysteries are compelling.
I’m not really sure what else to say. The only really annoying part of the book was the continuous ups and downs. The peaks, by that I mean the really interesting plot points, we’re punctuated remarkably by some fairly mundane in-betweens. Some of these slow parts we’re obviously designed to flesh out the science to the fiction, but once I’ve invested myself into believing in a Police force guarding time in the 5 millennium, I don’t really need 30 pages describing flying a shuttle craft from point A to B. It was just a bit much. Then again the book is a quick read, if it wasn’t I’m sure those plot lags would’ve bothered me more. In the end, it really is a pretty decent novel, maybe Allen isn’t the strongest writer at the details, but he sure knows how a good story should be structured.
Rating:
