Timelike Infinity

Timelike Infinity is a science fiction novel by Stephen Baxter.

Having read Baxter's The Timeships I had quite high expectations for this book, maybe too high, because I found Timelike Infinity to be rather disappointing. In the first two thirds of the book nothing really happens and when I finally got to the end of the book I didn't really care any more. I felt no sympathy for any of the characters and didn't care what happened to them.

I think that the problem is that Baxter keeps the main characters (and the reader) in the dark about what's going on - and this just goes on for too long. If there has some hints as to the nature of the secret, just once in a while, the book could probably have been a real page turner. It's a week since I finished reading it and I have already forgotten so much about it, that I think that it would be unwise to try and write a synopsis. I will quote some of the text from the backcover instead:

War between the ages

Once mankind reached glorious heights, even immortality. Now it is oppressed by the Qax - until the loose end of a time tunnel, long since set adrift, whips back through the solar system.

In one desperate leap, a band of rebels escape into the past in a makeshift craft Enraged, the Qax and their great, sentient ships, the Spline, set off in pursuit

While the rebels find allies living fifteen hundred years in the past and the Qax plot the destruction of the fugitives, a diplomat from earth must make a fatal choice... In the light of jupiter, in a vast spasm of violence, the battle for earth's future has begun. And to the victor goes Time itself.

Boring...