With a different co-author to the previous entry in the book, we get a different feel to this story compared to that, and the original stories. Again, history in the real world has moved on and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ashe, and the Murdocks have to come to turns in treating their former opponents as friends, sort of. Ross and Eveleen also have to work out a way of accommodating what this means when they're out in the field.

Sherwood Smith takes the team and a group of Russian agents back to the headquarters planet, where Ross and Gordon and the technician Renry had found the initial haul of Ancient journey tapes. In the draw that had occurred on their return from this initial trip, the Russians had drawn the tape that led back to this world. The Russians had sent a group of explorers back in time to a point where the jungle clad towers were still occupied by an international civilisation but somewhere along the line, they had stopped reporting back and they wanted to send a fresh mission out. Unable to do this out of their own resources, the Russians invite the Americans along and, along with the regular agents, we get to meet Renry once more. There's a fair bit of exploration as the team sent back into the past interact with the aliens already present though these are largely present only in cardboard cut-out form. Again, it gets a little mystical in parts as Saba (African musicologist) penetrates the deepest mysteries of this time, and of what is being done to various species that make up this strange collection. ( )

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge's Exalted Permission. Title: Echoes in Time Series: Time Traders Author: Andre Norton, Sherwood Smith Rating: of 5 Battle Axes Genre: SFF Pages: 288 Format: Kindle Synopsis: Ross, his new bride Eveleen and a bunch of other Time Agents, both American and Russian, head to the world where they originally found the Baldie chrome ship. A russian group of time agents have already been dispatched and have disappeared so Ross and Co must solve that mystery and figure out if it is some Baldie plot to destroy humanity. My Thoughts: My phracking goodness, relational, relational, relational. Ross and his wife. Americans and Russians. Agents and agents. Agents and aliens. Aliens and... you name it, Sherwood sticks it in there. The previous TT book I disliked because it was a romance, plain and simple. This was worse, in many ways, because it was all about feelings and self-introspection and solving deepseated issues. I can like those kinds of books, but Time Traders was about raw, powerful men getting a raw deal and then fixing it. Preferably with large amounts of violence of one sort or another while at the same time using their brains to keep things under control. I feel that I was riding a Harley motorcycle for the first four books and then suddenly, when I stopped for gas, someone switched it out with a pink vespa. You don't change vehicles mid-ride. It is one thing to restart a series, but to change the tone this drastically, well, you might have done better to start a new series altogether because you sure lost this fan. There is one more TT book and I plan on reading it but as far as I'm concerned, there are only 4 Time Traders books. " ( )

http://www.amazon.com/review/RHP... ( )