I recently finished the last book in S.M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time trilogy. I was loaned the series by a buddy of mine at work and read the books off and on over the last six months.

From the Amazon summary:

A cosmic disturbance transports the island of Nantucket and its inhabitants over three thousand years back in time to the shores of a Stone Age America. In addition to coping with the day-to-day problems of survival and the trauma of losing all connection with the modern world, the residents of the time-stranded island find their lives complicated by the presence of native tribes across the water.

The three books (Island in the Sea of Time, Against the Tide of Years, and On the Oceans of Eternity) cover about a decade or so after "the Event" that throws them back in time. Although they were not the best books I have ever read, they were definitely worth the time spent reading them. Stirling put an incredible amount of time researching almost everything that goes into the book, and it shows. It could almost be considered a pseudo-history book. Unfortunately, all that detail does tend to get in the way of the story, and I found myself skimming sometimes when I thought he was just describing for the sake of describing rather than furthering the story. As a side note, although it seems I was probably reading a first edition, I found the third volume needed a serious amount of proof-reading - there were typos and spelling mistakes all over the place. Bad editor!

There is an enormous amount of circa-18th century naval warfare in the book, which I found very interesting and made Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World an even better movie for me, since it's pretty much the same level of technology as in the books.

The one thing that was so very American about the novel (and by extension, the author) was the way their post-Event society was set up. If the movie had been set in Saskatchewan (or Canada, for that matter), you would have ended up with a ton of government departments controlling every aspect of the transplanted island, but in this novel there is very little government. Instead, the Islanders started hundreds of companies to deal with their problems. "Sea Haven Engineering" handles most of the Island's machining needs, another company handles most of the production of clothing, and so on. I found it very interesting that they wouldn't just band together and have everyone collectively own everything, especially since it was really them against the world from the beginning. It was striking that not only did they not take that approach, but that (in the novel, at least) their system served them very well. The approach didn't seem either right or wrong, but it did bleed red, white, and blue!

Of course, any book of this nature really illustrates the age of excess that we currently live in and how we could not only survive, but thrive with so very much less. After reading this story you'll probably feel even worse than usual about the pervasive consumerism that dominates our lives today - I know I do.

Also, the book has sword-wielding lesbians.