So one of the science-fiction series that I have enjoyed is the Timewars series by Simon Hawke. It started off quite fun, very pulpy type reading. And then, somewhere around the sixth installment it got tediuos and now I'm kind of just slogging through them. It doesn't help that the later books in the series are very hard to find and sell for exorbitant prices - compared to the $1.50 that I'm used to paying for used books. So I'm not too motivated to buy them. But if I happen to find one for a couple of bucks, I pick it up.
I found the eighth book in the series recently for $2 so I snatched it up and it went in the reading queue. Well, I just got around to reading it and I'm really disappointed. Maybe it's been too long since I read the seventh book and I've forgotten how bad it is. Maybe it's just that the author is getting sloppy. But there's all sorts of problems with the story.
Here's an example. There's a team of time travellers who have travelled back to nineteenth century England on a stake-out. It's a pretty big team but there's a lot of ground to cover and they're stretched to the breaking point. The author makes a big point about how tired everyone is getting. And that's just crazy. Why should you get tired if you're a time traveller. Couldn't you just clock out to some other time, get a good eight hours of sleep, do some exercise, take a shower, eat a good breakfast, and then clock back a minute after you left? Or stay away for a week. Take a vacation. You've got the technology. Why be stupid and run yourself ragged? There's absolutely no reason for a time traveller to suffer from time constraints.
Maybe I've forgotten the rules of time travel that Simon Hawke set-up at the start of the series where he covered the prohibition against this sort of behavior. Or maybe I'm just a nitpicker ;-)
