Key Out of Time (1963)

Quite readable - but it was only a 'spare' book on my iPod, to read when other stuff was not to hand. I read it kinda episodically as a result. ( )

Oh my god this was boring. It was like a kid playing with action figures. "ok this guy and this guy are on the palm tree planet! And Aqua Girl is here! Splash! With her dolphin friends! And they go back in time! Zoom! And the bad guys take them prisoner! But then he fights the one bad guy and they like him! And then BWOMM the aliens come! And they fight the aliens and the aliens all die!!" ( )

I still don't like Ross, but he definitely has better adventures than Travis. There's a lot of excitement here - first the extra people pulled through the time gate, then three antagonistic peoples, then the discovery of Baldy meddling. It really is too easy, though - in a matter of days, Ross is speaking an entirely alien language without even the telepathic touch to help him. Let alone cultural matters, in three different cultures. But that aside - they finally go up against the Baldies, who are not nearly as dangerous as Ross, and they, think they are. And with the immediate crisis over...what? A totally fuzzy future lies ahead of them - I'm amused that the dolphins count as "human" in the final paragraph. One woman and two men - not enough to continue the race. Live and die, I guess. Though since there are later books, I know Andre changed her mind about disposing of the Time Agents... much later, and with a collaborator. I don't know. It's a good adventure, but too easy, and I don't really like any of the characters. Not wonderful. I will no doubt read it again, though. Also, I figured out why I don't like Ross - he's feral, and bonded to Ashe (who seems to be oblivious). He really can't handle anyone or anything coming between them. Now I want to read the later books (the collaborations), because I know Ross gets married and I want to see the woman that could do that. ( )

Good fun...nothing heavy. I read it out of sequence from her time travel series. Might have to go back and read some of the early ones in her time travel series. ( )

I'm pretty meh about dolphins, but they do a nice job of being the telepath-link animals used in this entry of Norton's galaxy-colonising, timetravelly, trying not to be noticed by angry aliens we stole tech from sorta series.Also, there are witches and whoopsie-doo we done went back in time, shit about the history just tryin' to survive. ( )