SOJALS rating:

Good (3/5)

I first read this in August 2001.

In the world of the future, Earth is suffering a global ecological collapse. Flora and fauna are dying, plagues sweep the world. There's no hope of emigrating to foreign worlds - Faster-Than-Light travel has eluded the world's scientist, but they have an amazing pseudo-substitute: time travel.

Now the only hope for mankind is to dip back into the distant past in the hope of recovering some seeds or plants that may prove viable in the hostile conditions of the modern Earth.

But so far, nothing has transplanted successfully to this dying world, and the iron grip of the world's governments and corporations tightens as conditions become more desperate.

Clio Finn is burnt-out at 27. Still she has a tough job: she's one of the very few people that can pilot a time-ship back into the past, She holds the record for the number of trips, but this record is getting increasingly hard to maintain. She drugs herself up to the eyeballs just to get through another day. Brother, I know how she feels.

But there's another trip coming, and this one is a little different. This time there's real hope and Clio's going to have decide what she wants and how far she'll go to get it.

This is a very good novel, but it's not perfect. Great ideas, good writing but it does go on a bit toward the end.