cover image Eocene Station

Eocene Station

Dave Duncan. Five Rivers (IPS, dist.), $31.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-988274-05-8

Duncan's clumsy and inexplicably archaic science fiction novel transports an investigator from the future into prehistory. Not a man to do things by half measures, auditor Kyle "Cannon" Ball issues a scandalous report in 2084 that leaves governments crumbling and the world economy faltering. But Ball has underestimated his new enemies, who are wealthy, powerful, and willing to commandeer weapons of mass destruction to prevent him from testifying in court. No place is safe, or at least no place on Earth in the present. But Eocene Station, a research station located 50 million years in the past, needs a man with Ball's skills; it has scandals of its own. Unfortunately, when Ball goes to the station, he discovers he has only traded one set of deadly predators for another. Though reminiscent of Robert Silverberg's 1967 classic Hawksbill Station, Duncan's novel fails to live up to its predecessor. Chase scenes, tedious sexual intrigue, gratuitous rape, and interminable attacks by apparently chronically underfed Eocene fauna are matched by unsympathetic protagonists and the lack of an engaging plot. This is no thriller, merely an undercooked mess more suited to the oversexed, sexist 1970s than the modern day. (July)