I recently completed a pair of excellent books: The Time Ships by Steven Baxter and Eagle: The making of an Asian American president, volumes 1-5 by Kaiji Kawaguchi.
Time Ships was a fun read, with interesting takes on time travel and parallel universes. It was recommended by forester on CVGamers.
I like the early confrontation between the hero and Nebogipfel; it shows us how different the concept of hopping around and imposing current morals on greatly different cultures works out. The world of that visit is excellent, and does a good job of providing the motivations and restraints that shape the character from then on.
The departure from that future is great– and it really shakes things up to see the consequences of his escape. From there it’s like a whole separate plot is mushed in, with a cool (but very different) time war, a blurred World War with great domed cities, and cool steampunkish technology.
The third and fourth chunks are interesting, but a step back from the action of the second chunk. The Palaeocene and White Earth were interesting, but in a different way. The conclusion of the book was fitting and closed the circle, though the provenance of that bit of metal at the end is a little “simply handed over”. Still, it makes for a good conclusion… and wandered far further into the realm of overarching frameworks than I would have imagined prior to White Earth.
The second “book” is a collection in five volumes. It’s a fascinating look at the rules and decisions, and does a good job of anticipating the 2008 elections. It’s half a solid analysis of the rules and a look at the game, and half over the top character driven action and romance. I wolfed them down in a long and lazy afternoon.