The time-travel theme and elegant prose of Sea of Tranquility caught my attention, and I enjoyed the opening sequence featuring the utterly lost Edwin who showed both comic and growth potential. But my enthusiasm lagged because the story shifted to several other characters who failed to capture my interest. Much of the book follows Gaspery, […]
You need to be logged in to view this content. Please Log In. Not a Member? Join Us
You need to be logged in to view this content. Please Log In. Not a Member? Join Us
Pros: Fantastic world building. Interesting Dominican Republican setting complete with sea anemones and pirates. Rich prose. Excellent portrayals of unpleasant people in desperate circumstances. Cons: Interesting and well-crafted but unlikeable characters who don’t grow. Disappointing ending. Time travel by sea anemone powered by Olokun, the great spirit who knows what lies on the ocean floor:
Experts claim that time travel into the past defies the universal laws of physics. But there’s no reason to allow pesky reality to interfere with good fiction. So fictional travel back in time occurs rather frequently. And whether transported by a machine, magic objects, reincarnation or dream, characters find themselves back in time. Some times,
Humorous and philosophical species-jumping time-travel. Cubical dwelling everyman, Tom Robinson, has a problem. He’s been hit by a bus, but fortunately a crystal shop purveyor has just provided him with the secret to remembering past lives. Now Tom will wake into a new life with the memory of his old life intact. Sounds great! Doesn’t
Bayou time travel adventure. Time travel fiction encompasses many subcategories, and Them Bones by Howard Waldrop fits into a couple. The novel has an anthropological survival angle and an archaeological subplot, but also falls into the hail-Mary-backward-pass-last-ditch attempt to fix an untenable present. The author presents three story threads; the most fleshed out relays the
If light science fiction/fantasy with a dash of humor and romance is “your thing,” you might enjoy Harmony Lost.
A successful character reads like a complete person with particular thought patterns and reactions, habits and tics. The best characters are consistent and believable, a person one might encounter in real life, for better or worse. How does an author fashion the mental world of diverse but credible characters?
Pros: Clever set up, interesting characters, timely topicsPossible Cons: Video game style climax and villain-tells-all scene. Roving point of view and a fair bit of “tell.” The Echo Chamber is in part a tale of tech-corporate malfeasance, involving a rogue AI, a blender and ruthless Silicon Valley executives who build a social media “echo chamber.”
