The Planters

A Ripple in Time, Book 2

By: Victor Zugg

Narrated by: Sean William Doyle

Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's Summary

A continuing struggle for survival in a time long past.  

Former Federal Air Marshal Stephen Mason has again done the impossible. He has passed back through an unexplainable time portal and reunited with the three people he cares about most.  

It's 1720, Charles Town, Carolina Colony, a time and place fraught with hardships and hazards. Carving out a life here will be challenging, especially for these modern-day transplants. There are few people they can trust, none in whom they can confide. But they have each other. And they have a rice plantation.  

With no apparent way home, the plan is simple: grow, harvest, sell, and make life as comfortable as possible, without getting too far ahead of history. But with a million ways things can go wrong, the execution may prove considerably more complicated. New to a new world, can Mason, Karen, Jeremy, and Lisa navigate the hard realities they are only beginning to understand?

©2020 Victor Zugg (P)2020 Tantor

A Ripple in Time, Series

Plot. A Ripple in Time starts with a fairly routine passenger plane flight from Miami to Charlotte. Soon, the airplane enters a dark, lightning-filled storm. Upon entering smooth air again, the landscape has completely changed. No cities, no airports, a dead radio. The plane crash-lands in the Atlantic off the coast of Myrtle Beach and only about 30 passengers survive.

The main protagonist is Federal Air Marshal Stephen Mason. He and the survivors are in the early 1700s. Selfish and opportunistic passengers, friendly natives, evil pirates, and decent people aware of the future traverse the pages and carry the reader through the trials and desperate efforts to adapt to this new life ... or get home.

Written by Victor Zugg, nicely narrated by Sean Doyle, all voices male and female are well done, no problem discerning who's talking to who. Bumped the speed up to 1.3, but no real issues with production.

A Ripple in Time series consists of three novels, each in the area of 7 hours of listening. First novel was released in December 2019, The Planters, book 2 in May 2020, and finally The Punishers, book 3 in December 2020 - all by Tantor Audio which, I believe, is owned by Recorded Books.

Early American history and SciFi buffs should enjoy. Recommended.

Irrational characters

The story overall is decent as are the characters. I have two main problems though with the plot. The first is that the characters behave utterly irrationally when it serves to further the plot. The second is the lack of use of future knowledge/technology - something which is even worse in book 3.

Spoiler alert.

Problem 1. The main bad guy is Nathan, the jerk from book 1. Only this time he escalates. He is responsible for kidnapping, attemptive murder, etc. And not just once. But every time they just manage to survive his latest evil plot, the characters welcome him back in with a conversation that is something like:

One of the main characters: "Nathan, how could you? You almost had us all killed and left one of the women to be raped and murdered by pirates."

Nathan: "But I didnt get away with it, did I? And I am one of you since I was in the plane."

One of the main characters: "That's true. You didnt actually get away with it. And you are one of us. Welcome back. But we'll be watching you!"

Rinse and repeat after each evil scheme.

I literally had to shut down the story while I face palmed and only barely managed to get myself to finish it. Its hard to look at the main character, Steven Mason, seriously after this sort of thing. Particularly since he is otherwise so competent and hard to fool.

Time travel story with no time travel...story.

I really don’t know why the author wrote this book. When you read a story about people traveling back in time you’re hoping to see some consequences of these people traveling back in time. The story had almost none of it. This was a story of a group of people traveling back to 1720, buying a rice farm in farming it. This book should have been called “farming a rice farm“. They didn’t take advantage of any future knowledge of the past and only had a very small piece of future technology. Time travel really had almost nothing to do with the story. Just don’t get it I guess.

Great Book

Not sure what some of the other reviews are about, while not Shakespeare I really liked this book and the reader did a good job. The story was captivating and easy to follow and the reader made it easy to distinguish between characters. Over all I thoroughly enjoyed all three books in this series and look forward to more stories by this author. I love a good time travel story and this fit the bill.

Just as wonderful as part 1!

I'm was so amazed at the first book! When I found out that there were more books, I purchased immediately! This is a wonderful addition to part 1 and is written and read wonderfully!

Where's an editor when you need one?

Between the routinely butchered grammar and a narrator tone that had no relationship to what he was reading about 30 percent of the time, the first book was hard to listen to, but the story was good, so I bought the next in the series. This one is worse. I'm glad it's over, and I'll be avoiding this author and narrator in the future.

Well Performed Sequel to 1st Book

I was hoping that the author would write a sequel to A Ripple in Time, and this was a welcome addition, if a bit too brief. It still leaves me wanting more. Fortunately, there seems to be a 3rd installment.

Can't stop

This is a book ripe for a time travel tv mini series.
Starting the next book right away.

Much better!

This second book of the trilogy is a great improvement over the first book. The writing and the voice performance really made an entertaining book. The storyline keeps me going. I look forward to the next book in this series.

More fun time travel

Good Book 2 of this time travel series. It was another easy listen with good narration. I enjoyed it but found the overly descriptive scene describing the aftermath of a pirate attack to be unnecessary, I also thought it was an easy way to not have to deal with BIPOC in the 1700's. What would've happened if the black and Asian survivors also came to live on the plantation? Probably only terrible things and the author didn't want to deal with it. Again the writing isn't great but it's decent and it kept my attention, even throughout cringy or uncomfortable scenes.