I had pretty good fun with this one. It's a big story, all over the place. I really enjoyed the bits with Tony Donuts. I wasn't completely impressed with the interactions with Erin when she was two years old, because that leads to temporal gaps that can't easily be explained. For instance, if she's gone back in time to two years old, that means she was unsupervised for at least that much time back when she was two. This doesn't seem realistic. Then, a merman who lives at the bottom of the pool doesn't really either. But that's the thing about Sci-Fi. You take that as truth if it's backed with good science - even made-up science. The talking dog, deer and parrot - well, they're explained well enough that you accept them. But telling me a two-year-old can conjure up the plans and furthermore command the attention of the whole bar to make it happen? Just a little uncomfortable.I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Robinson though, and really enjoy his stories. This one was fun, as I listened to Barrett Whitener narrate it. He's got a pretty good voice for this stuff.
The biggest reason I almost didn't like this book is entirely the publisher's fault: Nowhere on the cover or the introduction there's any indication to be found that there's bloody ten books with these characters before this one.And, therefore, the way all the characters are so madly in love with each other just annoyed the piss out of me; Maybe if I'd read the books before, and seen these relationships develop, and learned to love the characters myself as they love each other, I would have felt differently. But, as it was, I found myself making disgusted noises whenever the narrator went off on a tangent about how amazing this or that friend was.One more note: Having a character tell a joke, and then describing the other characters laughing riotously, only works if I'm laughing as well. And, well, I wasn't.All in all, I think I will give the first book in the series a try, seeing as I saw stuff I liked here, and I've enjoyed other Spider Robinson books in the past.
Do You like book Callahan's Con (The Place, #2) (2004)?
I've seen a few reviews that note this is more of the same of the Callahan books, but I've only read one before now, a collection of very early short stories, maybe the first of the Cross-Time Saloon stories, and that was several years ago. So this was all new to me. I was able to follow it all, even though I've obviously missed a lot of the history of the characters. It was a fun read for me, though sometimes I felt like an outsider looking in, wondering about the books I've missed. This isn't a deep book, just a fun read about a tight group of interesting characters.
—pophyn
There is no such thing as a bad Callahan's book, but this one was less fun than the others.Spider just isn't very good at writing bad guys, so whenever he introduces a villain into a story it always tends to drag the story down.Then you add in the fact that whenever he forces the Callahan's crew to go out and interact with the real world they tend to come across as way out of their depth and a bit feeble. The constant mentions of if anyone knew what really happened at Callahans they'd all be dragged away to some lab at Langly feels really weak and whiny when there's never been any hint that anyone knows about them at all, despite the poor job they do of keeping anything a secret, and most people who go to see them end up drunk and their best friend.Though, despite my complaints, I still love these characters and there was more than enough humor, fun and nice bits of Callahan history to get me through and forgive Spider for the parts that didn't work.
—Travis
BIG FAT SPOILER WARNINGThis might be the one and only book of the series I had issues with. No really. I get it; the series had to end, Spider had to move on, shit was hitting the fan in his life and he wanted to put these folks to bed. But DAMNIT, WHY THE FUCK DID HE KILL DOC? And WHY **that** way. I mean, he twisted himself into pretzel shaped assholes to save Jake’s wife when logically SHE died, but then to off the one character I loved so deeply that when I read the end of this book I sobbed
—Nytetyger
