This is a very long book and I was surprised by my willingness to stay with it. Of course, this means it is a very good story. Although they are somewhat entwined, there are three threads woven through this futuristic tale. Here futuristic doesn’t mean an earth beyond recognition, but it does mean time travel.
The first thread consists of six college students who want to be recognized for their talents, receive lucrative job offers, and a PhD. They have been selected to work on an upgraded security screening device for airports. Humans are known for a certain amount of clumsy stumbling and that is what happens here. Their wiring is somewhat fried and suddenly they’ve developed something out of this world: a time machine. After a suitcase is sent out and returned, the cat goes next, and the next logical step is a human. If one gets to go, why not all of them? In their excitement, they are unable to keep their secret for long and, although they continue to fine tune their machine, they are forbidden to time travel again.
The second thread is the military grab for the machine involving power plays, the occasional threat, and who has the best financing. During this time two students, Phil and Yeti, are the most involved with the time machine. The others have pretty much moved on to other things.
The third thread is the most powerful part of the book. This is the telling of what it takes to prepare a military team to be prepped for time travel. One of the interesting parts is that the time machine will only travel one thousand years back in time and then it will return back to home base on command. It’s very attention grabbing when the reader is led through the training required to prepare the team for old England and the Saxons. Who knew they might one day need to be able to skewer everybody and everything with a sword, knife, or even a stick?
My question is, and always has been, at which point is the timeline of history compromised? Is it when someone stays in the past, dies in the past, or someone comes to the future? Also, how can one travel completely without the doo-dads of their time, such as aspirin, shampoo, and ,obviously, deodorant? There is some mention of how important it is to keep one’s loin cloth clean. Yuck. The last third of the book is where the story really takes off and I couldn’t put it down. I was drawn into the need to help some people, but always remembering the native population is to lead their lives as they normally would. That’s a tough one when you remember you have an aspirin in your fanny pack!
I believe most readers will find the author has laid out a well-done story that draws you simply because it’s easy to place yourself in this tale of the past, when it was a tale of the future.
Now for the rating:
- Genre and general reading age – This is a futuristic fantasy for older teens and adults, just because there is a lot of story.
- Level of sexuality – Low.
- Is there graphic language? Low, if any.
- Did I cry? No.
- Did I laugh? No.
- Level of character development – These characters were set at a high level of development and, thankfully, had nowhere else to go.
- Is this part of a series? No.
I don’t think I will ever look at time traveling as a ‘well, what are you going to do’ type of story ever again. Anyone who is interested in a ‘what if’ will be totally engrossed and that is why I give this book ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ stars!
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