eBook Portal (Boundary) ePub

I really liked the first two books in this series. Although they both had an excess of serendipity, they also had sympathetic characters, plenty of action, some interesting scientific questions, fun discoveries and lots of 'What If?' to balance it all out.

That sense of balance is what this book lacks. Too much of the story is a series of disasters and discoveries that repeatedly hurtle onto the page with no breathing room left between, leaving no chance of character or relationship developments. There's one disaster after another, but somehow each would-be tragedy is paired with a spectacularly improbable save. Not everyone makes it, of course, but at one point or another, almost everyone lives in some unrealistic way when they really should have died. To top it all off, during the final incredibly prolonged rescue attempt, yet another impossible discovery happens, even though the odds against it are worse than the odds of one person winning ten Powerball lotteries in a row.

I did, finally, get to the last page--but it wasn't easy or pleasant. All those death-defying escapades and shocking discoveries made the book both tedious and exhausting. I just wanted the story to end--and I can't think of another book I've felt that way about. There are plenty of well-written books I find dull: the subject doesn't interest me, or I don't care enough about the characters, or I feel the author's world is too claustrophobic, ugly or painful for me to stay immersed in, so I don't finish them.

With this one, however, I had a different problem. I wasn't ever bored, as there's far too much going on, the situation itself was fascinating, and I still cared about the characters and wanted them to find a way to survive and win against their enemies. I just desperately wanted everyone to get off the rollercoaster safely and be someplace where they could relax long enough to regain their sanity. At that point it felt like we all needed room to remember that most of life is made up of very ordinary things and that most of us are very ordinary people, who are living mostly very ordinary lives. The extraordinary does break through our lives sometimes, and some of us become extraordinary for long moments of time, but that's not something we can sustain for long. After a certain duration, even extraordinary events become banal, because that's the only way we can survive them.

In that way, Portal strongly reminded me of Jean Auel's Clan of Cave Bear, a book in which a woman who begins as a sexual tool and slave to the men of her group, manages to raise herself up socially, invent language, discover fire, develop new methods of hunting and farming, and completely reshape her entire society. Clan of Cave Bear's heroine didn't seem like a real person because she was just too good at absolutely everything, as well as so unbelievably lucky that Auel should have just made her the personification of Good Fortune. She was more a goddess than a human being, and as the book went on, she just kept adding to her list of accomplishments. After a certain point, I just kept wanting to laugh. I was waiting for her to split the atom while stumbling into a portal into another dimension where she'd find the Fountain of Eternal Youth and incidentally decode the human genome...

Portal isn't that ridiculous, since at least the characters are mostly lucky in their own fields, but the sheer number of wild escapes and earth-shaking discoveries became so overwhelming that it actually got tedious. No sooner had they Macgyvered themselves out of one bottomless pit than they were falling into the next even deeper one, or else tripping over yet another revolutionary bit of science, all while making miraculous discoveries that propel them light years ahead of everyone else in their fields. No one has such a long run of luck this bad or this good, and even Jeremiah Joe Buckley was pushing his fortunes much too far by the end.

After a certain number of authorial missteps, the reader can begin to regret her once-willing suspension of disbelief, and to lose faith in the author's willingness or ability to keep the story aloft, steer it well, and guide it at last into a satisfying harbor. This book certainly had me doubting Eric Flint and Ryk Spoor, and yet because I've read and liked so many of their other books, their works stay on my reading list and I'll continue with the fourth book of the series.

OK, I am a fan of Roger Zelazny and David Drake. When I discovered Jumper, it was wonderful. I bought some sequels recently here and found them a good continuation, interesting and well-developed. This is not the best book I have read by Mr. Flint, but it is still far beyond the shalllow scifi so common today. Yes, there is action, but it is intelligently developed, and the science plausible. I will continue to buy Eric Flint's work. I am older than the reader base he seems to be aiming for, but have learned a lot from these books.
A lot of people consider "fiction" just fiction. They fail to realize that a fictional venue allows the author to explore areas of our own world, highlighting by contrast and similarities the things we often ignore because we are too close to them, or try to ignore because they are so difficult to accept by those with a moral base. A book like these offers a portal into a life I will never live, never be able to comprehend in most other ways. These books provide, by extrapolation, a bridge to each of our own "realities." Excellent writer, good book!

I love this entire series by Flint & Spoor (Boundary, Threshold & Portal). The characters are the most likable and admirable folks I have encountered in fiction in a long, long time. Although there was a villain in the second installment, the emphasis in all three books is on scientific discovery and overcoming the hazards of life in space. Sure, there are holes in the science. Sure a lot of the minors problems (like toilets) are glossed over. But the sheer adventure of paleontology, travel to the Martian satellites, landing on Mars, the subsequent race to Jupiter's moon, and the marooning on Europa all combine for one of the most entertaining series in recent hard SF. And of course all the subtle (and not-so-subtle) tributes in the text to the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne -- the writings of which inspired the scientists in the novels -- lend a realism to the conversations that are missing from a lot of SF books. You will love these books!

If you enjoy good, hard SF where the heroes have to use brains and knowledge to save the day, this is your kind of book. If you want blasters and space opera, this isn't your book. Picking up where Threshold left off, the crews of the two wrecked ships are stranded on Europa and only have themselves and what they brought with them to save themselves - rescue is literally years away. A great example of how interesting a story can be and still rely nearly entirely on current hard science knowledge and just a few logical speculative extensions of that knowledge. Well written and entertaining.

I worked for NASA for 20 years. I have been reading Sci-Fi for over 45 years. This is one of those special stories that uses imagination in such an unique and imaginative way that it will stay with you for a very long time.

This is the third in a series and by far the best. The first two are good and definitely worth reading!

HO-HUN, DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD, AND SO ARE ALL THE BAD PEOPLE (OR ARE THEY?) VERY BLAND, FULL OF GRATUATOUS DIALOUGE AND "FEELINGS," UNNECESSARY BACKROUND AND DETAILS, AT TIMES JUST RAMBLING ON AND ON... I KEEP WISHING THIS BOOK WOULD END. IT IS FILLED WITH ALL THE TRICKS, GIMICS AND "SURPRISES" THAT ERIC FLINT WOULD NEVER ALLOW IN HIS FABULOUS "1632: the GRANTVILLE CHRONICLES" SERIES, WHICH IS WHAT MAKES THAT GROUP OF BOOKS A WONDERFUL READ. THE "PORTAL" DOES NOT MEASURE UP TO THE FIRST TWO ENTRIES OF THIS TRILOGY. HOPEFULLY, THERE WILL BE NO MORE ADDITIONS OF THIS POOR CALIBUR.

All science fiction should be written like this. Realistic science and wondrous technology used to overcome difficult obstacles -- marooned on Jupiter's water moon, Europa. And, finally, first contact!