Time Siege

Starred review from June 6, 2016
In this engrossing sequel to Time Salvager, Chu continues a futuristic saga that pits fugitive time traveler James Griffin-Mars and his allies, who seek to rescue a ravaged Earth from utter destruction, against Valta, the megacorporation that rules the galaxies. While James and Grace Priestly, the Mother of Time, embark on an interplanetary search for a cure for James’s unwell sister, Sasha, scientist Elise Kim and the Elfreth tribe seek refuge from Valta’s ruthless Senior Securitate Kuo on “the dreaded Mist Isle,” formerly Manhattan. Through Chu’s convincing worldbuilding, the future New York and Chicago become eerily familiar and frighteningly strange locales that integrate seamlessly into the story’s elaborate interstellar landscape. James rescues Levin, his former nemesis, from prison, and has ongoing exchanges with the spirit of his murdered friend Smitt, but still insists that “the past is already dead.” Smitt’s response—“You only think that, my friend”—captures the bizarre, provocative reality the characters inhabit. The story’s intricate plotting, breathtaking battles, and hefty doses of cruelty, betrayal, sacrifice, courage, and hope culminate in a cliff-hanger that will leave readers longing for the next installment. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary.

May 15, 2016
Second installment of a series (Time Salvager, 2015) in which time travelers salvage what they can from the past to help sustain a solar system ravaged by corporate wars.Time traveler James Griffin-Mars, formerly of ChronoCom, rescued scientist Elise Kim from certain death in the past and thereby broke all the laws of time travel. He also rescued his young sister, Sasha, and brought her into the present. However, 26th-century Earth is polluted, plague-ridden, and depopulated. Now fugitives, the three, along with Grace Priestly, the inventor of time travel, have joined with the Elfreth, one of the few bands of hardy survivors that remain. But because he can no longer obtain the essential drug that protects against time travel's effects, James' jaunting days are nearly over. Worse, Kuo Masaki-Europa of Valta Corporation, the most powerful of the corporations that battle to control the solar system, knows about Elise (Valta needs her for their own purposes) and relentlessly harries the Elfreth from their Boston home all the way to Manhattan, a mist-shrouded, electromagnetically shielded refuge. To help out, James busts his former mentor and one-time nemesis, Levin Javier-Oberon, out of jail; and, with his last time-traveling gasp, he grabs irascible old know-it-all Doctor Titus 2.3 to treat the ailing Sasha. Chu hasn't developed much of a philosophical base to support his time-travel shenanigans--in fact, there's no real scientific basis for anything that goes on here. What readers are signing up for are the thrills and spills, spectacular battles, relentless chases, cliffhanging rescues, and pounding excitement.Computer-game style: formulaic but exhilarating.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2016

James Griffin-Mars broke the time laws and left his job as a salvager for ChronoCom in order to rescue the people he loves and maybe even protect planet Earth. At the end of Time Salvager, James and Elise Kim, a scientist he reclaimed from the past, were living among the barbaric-seeming survivors on a poisoned Earth. The hope is that Elise can develop a cure for the plague that killed so many of the planet's inhabitants, but James has made too many jumps to the past to bring the remedy himself. They require another salvager, and they also need to hide from the Valta corporation, which will kill anyone who gets in the way of them retrieving Elise. The portrait of a far-future Earth devastated by disease is gripping, especially in the story's last third as the Chronmen and Valta get closer to the community that Elise leads in a former skyscraper in a desolate future Manhattan. VERDICT Chu ("Tao" series) delivers another riveting sf entry, although newcomers will have to do a bit of work to catch up.--MM

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2016
The follow-up to Chu's Time Salvager (2014) follows renegade chronman and alcoholic James Griffin-Mars as he attempts to fight the combined might of his own former employers and their sinister megacorporation allies. James' group, including those rescued from the past, such as biologist Elise Kim and the Mother of Time, Grace Priestly, as well as the Elfreth, one of the many struggling tribes of Earth, find solace and allies in the former Manhattan. Once there, however, they settle into a state of siege and guerilla warfare with the vicious Securitate Kuo. Chu's world continues to be an engaging exploration of a burnt-out, far future preying on the various sf settings of its past, with the heroes relying on trips back into giant space-opera conflicts and earthly dystopias alike. Chu's picture of a future full of brutal violence laced with melancholy is riveting and makes his heroes' struggles seem all the more dire. Fans of the series won't be disappointed, and new readers are recommended to give this entryas well as the first volumea try.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)