{"id":5345,"date":"2015-09-21T20:44:26","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T18:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.military-history.us\/?p=5345"},"modified":"2016-08-08T12:11:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T10:11:58","slug":"book-review-a-long-time-until-now-by-michael-z-williamson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/2015\/09\/book-review-a-long-time-until-now-by-michael-z-williamson\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: A Long Time Until Now by Michael Z Williamson"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have read all of Michael Z Williamson’s previous books and found them to be excellent combat sci-fi with a little politics and social commentary thrown in. \u00a0A Long Time Until Now<\/a>\"\"\u00a0is not excellent. \u00a0In fact, it was a total disappointment. \u00a0I pre-ordered this book on Amazon in February and eagerly awaited its release in May given the dearth of\u00a0my kind of sci-fi recently. \u00a0Unfortunately, with the release of this book my wait continues.<\/p>\n

Williamson’s Freehold<\/em> books are nothing more than political commentary dressed up as sci-fi but if you can ignore the politics they are rollicking good adventures on their own. A Long Time Until Now<\/a>\"\"\u00a0is none of those things. \u00a0The basic premise is that a group of ten American soldiers, 2 female and 8 male, in Afghanistan circa 2010-2011 are whipped back in time by 10,000 years and have to survive while dealing with prehistoric humans, Romans, and other groups as well as the environment. \u00a0I thought this could not go bad and when I first read the publisher’s synopsis I was thinking this book was going to be a modern take on the classic fantasy\/sci-fi The Doomfarers of Coramonde<\/a>\"\"\u00a0but it is not.<\/p>\n

The book is if anything boring as hell. \u00a0There is very little action but\u00a0what little action does happen is in true Williamson style well-written. \u00a0For the most part the book is endless descriptions of what the soldiers do every day to stay alive and try to prosper in the world in which they find themselves. \u00a0Call it closet survival with a twist. \u00a0What I found amazing was the sheer encyclopedia of knowledge these 10 soldiers apparently had. \u00a0It seems that this group of soldiers was the most thoroughly rounded group of Joes to ever exist and thank God they were together and could call on the seemingly inexhaustible supply of knowledge to survive or they would have all died. \u00a0One can ID\u00a0plants as edible, one can build a forge, one can use the stars to determine the date, one can build bows by hand and knows how to make\u00a0edged weapons out of flint, and these are just the skills I remember as being so ridiculous in the average soldier.<\/p>\n

I found the characters to be caricatures throughout. \u00a0You would think that the characters could\u00a0have developed quite well in 600+ pages and you would get an idea of who you were dealing with, but you do not. \u00a0They are presented as at best stereotypical\u00a0and at worst plot cutouts. \u00a0I also found the divergence of beliefs among this group of 10 to be odd at best. \u00a0There is a female wiccan, a vegetarian militant feminist, a male Christian Fundamentalist, a humanist, and the rest are portrayed as various degrees of Christian. \u00a0I was surprised there was not a transgender nymphomaniac to at least lighten the tension, but alas there was not.<\/p>\n

The book essentially drones on for 30 endless chapters until strangers from the future show up who have a magical temporal communicator and manage to get everyone extricated and returned to their own times in order to end the pain of reading the book I assume or maybe it was just because the author had run out tings for the flat two-dimensional characters to do. \u00a0Either way, I am glad the book ended when it did.<\/p>\n

This will not keep me from reading Williamson in the future, though it will cause me to get his next book from the library instead of buying it myself. \u00a0Amazingly, this book has went up $5 in price since I got it in May from $15 to $20 for the Hardback. \u00a0I cannot recommend this book to readers of military sci-fi or even sci-fi in general. \u00a0I will recommend Williamson’s other works but he whiffed this one and hit a 90 degree slice. \u00a0He is a generally good author and I hope his next outing is better but two strikes and you’re out is generally my rule and there are not enough good sci-fi authors out there as it is from my perspective so I would hate for another one to go down the rabbit hole of writing garbage because he has hit a few home runs.<\/p>\n

If you absolutely must read this book, save yourself some money and irritation from the inevitable disappointment by getting it from your local library or borrowing from another of the suckers like me that already shelled out the money for it. \u00a0Williamson completely misses the mark on this one but I am sure he got some good sales from people like me who pre-ordered based on the strength of his previous work. \u00a0I think I am going to wait on his next book before ponying up the cash again.<\/p>\n