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Book Summary and Reviews of City at the End of Time by Greg Bear

City at the End of Time by Greg Bear

City at the End of Time

by Greg Bear

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  • Aug 2008, 496 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Do you dream of a city at the end of time?

In a time like the present, in a world that may or may not be our own, three young people–Ginny, Jack, and Daniel–dream of a doomed, decadent city of the distant future: the Kalpa. Ginny’s and Jack’s dreams overtake them without warning, leaving their bodies behind while carrying their consciousnesses forward, into the minds of two inhabitants of the Kalpa–a would-be warrior, Jebrassy, and an inquisitive explorer, Tiadba–who have been genetically retro-engineered to possess qualities of ancient humanity. As for Daniel: He dreams of an empty darkness–all that his future holds.

But more than dreams link Ginny, Jack, and Daniel. They are fate-shifters, born with the ability to skip like stones across the surface of the fifth dimension, inhabiting alternate versions of themselves. And each guards an object whose origin and purpose are unknown: gnarled, stony artifacts called sum-runners that persist unchanged through all versions of time.

Hunted by others with similar powers who seek the sum-runners on behalf of a terrifying, goddess-like entity known as the Chalk Princess, Ginny, Jack, and Daniel are drawn, despite themselves, into an all but hopeless mission to rescue the future–and complete the greatest achievement in human history.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. [T]his complex, difficult and beautifully written tale will appeal to sophisticated readers who prefer thorny conundrums to fast-paced action." - Publishers Weekly.

"Recommended for public and academic libraries where intelligent speculative fiction circulates." - Library Journal.

"Yes, it really is that affectless and unintelligible. Somehow, all this will save the universe, or maybe start a new one, but trillions of-no, wait-hundreds of pages later, you still won't care." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about City at the End of Time was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Ava

City at the End of Time
This book was amazingly well written yet the plot leads to absolutely nothing and the amount of unimportant details thrown in is nauseating

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Author Information

Greg Bear Author Biography

Greg Bear was born in San Diego, California, on August 20th, 1951, to Wilma M. and Dale F. Bear. His father was in the navy so as a child he had traveled extensively to Japan, the Philippines and Alaska, as well as touring various parts of the United States.

He completed his first short story at the age of 10 while living in Alaska. At age thirteen or fourteen he began to submit stories to magazines, and at fifteen he sold his first short short to Robert Lowndes' Famous Science Fiction magazine, but it didn't appear in print until he was sixteen years old. It took five years to sell his next story, but by the time he was twenty-three he was selling regularly. He completed his first novel when he was nineteen but it was not published until 13 years later (having been...

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