Rating: 3 Stars
Author: Jim Lion
Genre: Historical Fiction
Subgenre: Time Travel
Length: 84 pages
What if your only future is in the past?
The day John Salmon graduates from college, he thinks his turn has come to go out and conquer the world, but instead the world comes to conquer him. At the campus chapel, he encounters an attractive young woman named Jill. She warns him to walk away from a mysterious stranger who will soon arrive offering adventure and world travel. But why would he listen to her, a complete stranger herself? She exits in a hurry, frightened even, but leaves behind a curious device resembling a wristwatch.
John finds he can’t walk away from Cyrus, the mysterious stranger, and this decision casts him into the dark places of history, racing against a clock that isn't even a clock...
Worst of all, he has no idea why.
Time travel mechanism: Some undefined electrical phenomena and an associated watch like device that indicates time remaining before another time jump is to occur.
Review:
This is a time travel story that takes us back to, you guessed it, 70 AD and Jerusalem to experience the siege of the city by Roman soldiers and the sacking of the temple. The story has a creative beginning which I found original and entertaining which immediately moves into the time travel episode. At first I thought the time travel mechanism was the watch like device given to the main character. As the story progressed however, it became apparent that the watch was more of a communication and monitoring device and not the actual cause of the time travel. While some of the phenomena associated with the time travel event are described, it never became clear what was causing the time travel. As the story progressed the main character joins up with half a dozen or so other time travels who, like himself, have entered into a deal with a white haired stranger who promises to resolve some crisis or rectify a tragic event in the person's life. The back story for each of these supporting characters provides a brief diversion from the ongoing description of the struggles of the group in the middle of a besieged city. There is some historical information regarding the siege events but I have no idea how accurate it is or isn't. The writing does convey the horrors of the situation. Beyond surviving, each of the characters needs to achieve some self realization, which by the end of the book they do, but I found this part confusing and unclear. Toward the end of the book the pace picks up as the story moves to a conclusion. However most of the big questions are never answers. Such as, who is the white haired stranger and why did he send everyone back to 70 AD? As a result, I found the ending disappointing. I dislike cliffhanger ending. While not quite a cliffhanger, as the final climatic event is resolved, the ending does set up the continuation of the story for book 2. The title on my kindle copy gives no indication that this was part of a series but looking on Amazon, I see the title has been adjusted to say, in small print, part one. A necessary improvement. Amazon says the book is 84 pages but it seemed much longer to me. That may have been because the plot does not really progress much as the siege goes on and on. To his credit, there were no technical, formatting, or spelling errors that I noticed. I did find it interesting that the author seems to have an aversion to adverbs. For example, "They had to move slow and single file up the stairs...". I am not a grammar expect but shouldn't that be "slowly"? I could provide a half dozen similar examples. It's no big deal but it did seemed strange. If there had been more resolution of the big questions raised by the plot I would have given it 4 stars. As it is, I would rate it 3 stars for the creative beginning and portrayal of living through a siege.
I received a free kindle copy from the author in exchange for a honest review.
