Sea of Time: A Novel of Time Travel

_Sea of Time _ by Will Hubbell is the riveting sequel to his earlier book, _Cretaceous Sea_. The book opens again with Con, now Con Clements, married to Rick and living the life - incredibly - of her ancestor in 1880s Montana. A happy and successful mine owner, she is enjoying life raising her son Joey and living with her ammonite-collecting husband. Though she would have liked to go back to the 21st century, she had convinced her rescuers that being where she was and doing what she was doing was the best thing possible for the integrity of the timestream. Unfortunately for the happy family, others disagreed. A man from the far future came to visit Con one day, a person who looked very human but was clearly, well, not from around there. He was a _Homo perfectus_ or Kynden, same species that rescued Rick and Con at the end of the first novel (one of three human species existing in the future by the way, the others being our race which in the future are called the Sapenes and one called the Gaians). This man goes by the name of Sam (full name Samazatarmaka) and he was the man who initially possessed the time travel technology that Peter Green stole. Con thought that Sam had been killed (that was what she had been told) but no, he is very much alive and offers to help Con and Rick if they will help him. Con declined his offer and Sam took his leave. Not long afterwards Rick is murdered and Joey dies of starvation in the brutal Montana winter, with Con not far behind. A nearly dying Con is rescued by Sam and his daughter Kat (Katulumamana) and brought back to life. Given kind reassurances by Sam, she is assured that she will be reunited with Joey and Rick one day - if she merely helps Sam on a few tasks to fix history, which will, according to Sam, have the happy side effects of undoing Rick's murder and the resulting starvation of Joey. Con is informed by Sam she has to journey to the 27th century and impersonate a recently deceased genetics worker working for a major corporation. Apparently assassinated before she made some historic breakthrough, Con is to carry through with those important scientific advancements. How on Earth is she to do that? Well the how is covered by Sam and Kat, as Kat installs a mental implant in Con's skull and downloads directly into her mind the skills (and language, as they don't speak English in 27Th century North America) to do what she needs to do. However, other particulars bother her. Who assassinated this woman, this Ramona Eberlade, and why? Will they try to kill Con? Even knowing Ramona's thoughts and skills, Con still doesn't understand exactly why this breakthrough is so very important, why someone would kill to make sure it doesn't happen. Con also realizes she is at the mercy of Sam. Though Sam has been very nice to her, she starts to have suspicions about his motives. Why is he doing what he is doing? Does he really want to help Con? Can he really undo Rick's and Joey's deaths? Con also under

In Cretaceous Sea, Will Hubbell took us on a wild ride 65 million years back in time, to an era when dinosaurs ruled the world - until the K-T Event, of course, which we experienced in the company of Hubbell's characters. That steep temporal plunge back into the Cretaceous Period looks like a small ripple in the Sea of Time compared to the experiences chronicled in this follow-up novel. Cretaceous Sea was ostensibly about time travel, but Sea of Time really mines the depths of questions, possibilities, and repercussions the subject of time travel engenders. We're with familiar characters as well, as the wonderful heroes from Cretaceous Sea are back - in one temporal form or another, anyway. The heart and soul of the story is still to be found in Constance (Con) Greighton, who is also Con Clements. At the end of the first novel, Con and Rick Clements, the paleontologist she fell in love with on Montana Island in 65,000,000 BC, settled down in 19th century Montana to live the life of Con's legendary ancestor - yes, Con became her own ancestor. Con was ready to forget all about time travel and live happily ever after - but this was not to be. The mysterious futuristic man Sam, whose stolen time machine had transported Con back to the Cretaceous Period, shows up unexpectedly and tells Con she has been tricked into changing the course of history. Suddenly, Con's husband is murdered and her son has died, and she is more than willing to do anything Sam wants - if he can bring Rick and Joey back to her. Thus begins a series of time-skipping adventures that take Con centuries into the future to do Sam's bidding. She assumes the person of a scientist whose work changes human history in some unknown major way, and she later travels farther into the future to see just what she has done. Thirty-first century Earth as she finds it is a terrible place, where Sapes (Homo Sapiens) live lives of misery, hopelessness, and genetically engineered addiction, surviving only as the servants of a new and better breed of humans. Blaming herself for the troubles of numerous future generations, Con is increasingly distraught. Then she is visited by three future time travelers of the Home Perfectus species, and they explain to her that Sam has been using her not to "fix" history but to pervert and change it according to his own designs. They want Con's help - but Con refuses to do anything until she is reunited with Rick. She gets her wish, but unfortunately this Rick comes from a time before he ever met Con or traveled back in time. Suddenly transported to a poor and filthy thirty-first century world and forced to deal with a "crazy" woman who insists she is his wife, Rick is not the happiest of men. To succeed in her new mission, Con must once again win the trust and, she hopes, the heart of the man she fell in love with 65 million years ago. As strong a character as she is, she alone cannot possibly survive some of the challenges she faces here. The

Rick and Con Clements are back on another zigzag and bizarre adventure through time to save the present from the twisted mind of Sam, a whacked-out scientist from the far future. On the way, the author presents us with plenty of characters and stops in time to stretch our imagination. Like Creataceous Sea, the ending is totally unpredictable. Hubbell's writing puts you right in the middle of every plot turn and character encounter. I can't wait for the next book in the series--what happens to that embryo?