[Time Traders / Ross Murdock 07] • Atlantis Endgame · A New Time Traders Adventure

Andre Norton and Sherwood Smith have collaborated on Solar Queen and Time Traders novels, but never before have they created as rousing an adventure as awaits Ross Murdock, Gordon Ashe, and the rest of the Time Patrol in Ancient Atlantis.

In Earth's future, when time travel has become possible, the Time Patrol is the top secret government agency that protects Earth's past, so that our history will not become corrupted by invaders from either our future or from other worlds. For many years, Murdock, Ashe, and other members of the Time Patrol have contended with threats to our time continuum, none more deadly than the alien Baldies, who hate other high-tech civilizations and want to destroy Earth.

Evidence of time travel has been found in ruins dating to the ancient world . . . in the legendary realm of Atlantis. So Murdock, Ashe, Eveleen Riordan, and other Time Patrollers deck themselves out as foreign traders to discover whether something is amiss in Atlantis. They find that the Baldies are there, as evidenced by sophisticated, high-tech equipment, whose purpose it is impossible to fathom. As they try to derail the Baldies' plot, the Time Patrollers realize that time is running out on their mission, when Atlantis is shaken by tremors that presage a cataclysm that may be the disaster that sank the fabulous island state.

But they must be sure they act to preserve, not destroy, history--and if they're wrong, it'll be too late . . . for them and for Earth's future.

From Publishers WeeklyWas the cataclysmic blast that blew the island of Atlantis (aka Thera) to bits a natural disaster, or was it something more sinister? In this latest fast-paced Time Traders adventure (Echoes in Time, etc.), SFWA Grandmaster Norton and Smith (Earth: Final Conflict-Augur's Teacher) take on the legend of Atlantis with a new twist-the blast had a bit of help from an alien species that our time-traveling heroes have encountered at least once before. The "Baldies," named for their complete lack of body hair, are a mysterious race of time travelers who appear to interfere in history to push humans toward some catastrophic future event-but what that event is and why the Baldies need to interfere is something the human time travelers have yet to discover. Dr. Gordon Ashe and friends are joined by a new companion, Linnea Edel, an archeologist who finds an anomalous piece of jewelry at a dig on the island of Thera and brings it to Gordon for examination. This piece of jewelry launches another harrowing time traveling trip-this time to ancient Greece. Norton lends her considerable skill and familiarity with time travel SF to this series, which poses some interesting questions about how humans view societies ancient, new and alien. There's plenty of adventure, a fair scattering of archeological trivia and some new twists on the alien-human relations that carry forward from the previous books.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From BooklistThe Time Patrol discovers that someone has tampered with events in ancient Atlantis, so it sends a team back, disguised as seafaring traders. Soon after it arrives, its members discover two sets of aliens on the scene. One is a familiar enemy, the Baldies, who are trying to mimmick their success elsewhere by preventing the rise of technology on Earth; the other is a new alien race, whose habits provide some explanation, if not an excuse, for the conduct of the Baldies. Trying to salvage Earth's future from the clutching hands of alien intervention in the past keeps the Time Patrol team hopping and will keep readers turning pages. At the end, the latter will laud the meeting of minds between Norton and Smith as well as their historical literacy--and await further volumes. Compact and briskly paced, the new Time Traders story proves that skillful writing can keep a concept launched half-a-century ago afloat today. Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved