Review: Chuck Dixon's Blood Red Tide

What does one do with a time machine? Look for buried treasure!

Upstream Reviews recently looked at Chuck Dixon's Cannibal Gold, book #1 of his Bad Times series. It was a little like Michael Crichton's Timeline, only with military operators as the leads.

In Blood Red Tide, Chuck Dixon continues his epic time traveling military saga. In fact, book #2 picks up the very next day after book #1. And it is a very logical step. Because after all, what does one do with a time machine? Murder Hitler? Better yet, murder Woodrow Wilson?

Nah.

How many of us would go out there and look for buried treasure?

he story

Obviously, some spoilers for Cannibal Gold., because the plot of this book involves blowback. Lots of blowback.

After the events of book #1, the survivors of the expedition 100,000 years in the past must now survive in the present. Blood Red Tide takes its time (no pun intended) filling in the backstory of Cannibal Gold, discussing the mysterious benefactor of the time tunnel project and how brother and sister Morris and Caroline Tauber were approached to build the Tauber tunnel.

Except their backer is a dangerous man, one of the richest on the planet, and our heroes have something he wants. This leads to our heroes being hunted through time and space, on multiple levels, in current day, in research, and… it’s complicated.

But being on the run requires money. And how best to make easy money than to find buried treasure— treasure that no one else has ever found? It's easy when you can go back in time and see the treasure being buried.

However, no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

And it builds up to a great twist ending that I didn't see coming... but probably should have.

Overall, even though this is only book #2, the Bad Times series feels like on long novel broken up into parts. And each part is a heck of a ride.

The characters

The characters are all fleshed out with vivid, distinct personalities. Some have full back stories and family who are mentioned or make an appearance. But this is an action novel, not a character study bogged down with complete biographies. (That's a compliment, trust me, I bog down people with complete biographies all the time. It can be a pain.)

At the end of the day, I can say for certain that no one is exactly as you expect them to be. They will almost certainly surprise you, especially at the end.

The world

This is one of those books where you appreciate where someone fills in details, and addresses ideas no one else will. In the previous book, it was preserving the ecology of time travel. In this book, it reflects on the consequences of time travel. And there are so many consequences, it's not even funny.

In Blood Red Tide a lot of it focuses on logistics. I know I made some comparisons to both Crichton and John Ringo in the previous review, but both comparisons match up better the further we go along...

Okay, we would need three more chapters of nerd speak and a dozen graphs before it matches up perfectly with the late Mister Crichton.

Chuck Dixon also manages to capture a sense of the brave old world they're dealing with in "The Then." This time, it's ancient Greece, and the result is a lot of "CS Forester, BC." The naval tactics felt very much like Horatio Hornblower, or Patrick O'Brian. It's so nice when someone gets history correct... for a change.

I love a lot of the little touches.  Like referring to the events of book 1 as "Operation Never Happened." Also lines like: "Just remember, we're not watching the history channel. We're ON the history channel. "

The politics

I don't see much in the way of politics here, unless you want to twist yourself into a pretzel that "we need money to survive being on the run" is an endorsement of capitalism. But that requires a brain hardwired to see everything as politics.

Content warning

There is sex, but it's very far off screen. Very far offscreen. Literally, if you blink, you might miss that it happened.

Implied and threatened rape, as well as mentioning the uses of cabin boys.

If you can't handle that slavery existed before Christ, you probably can't handle this book.

Who is it for?

Anyone who enjoys a good action adventure romp. Or for anyone who wants more to their time travel stories than Doctor Who will provide. This has enough science fiction for the SF fan, and more than enough action for the casual reader.

Why read it?

Because it's fun and because the story carries it, even if you think (for some reason) that the action may not.