Customer Reviews

Three Days to Never: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I find nothing quite so thought provoking as a good time-travel story and Three Days to Never ranks among the best I've encountered. It is presented in a mystery/thriller format but with the intriguing twist that paranormal phenomena have been as well developed as more recognizable physics; such as relativity. Instead of Men in Black running around hiding alien technology we have shadowy secret agents using psychics the way the NSA uses computers. A nice wrinkle.

My pet peeve with mysteries is that an author is often either so cryptic that you never really figure out what was going on or presents a story so transparent that you have it figured out half way through. Powers succeeds at bringing the reader forward at just the right pace and at building a solid and satisfying moral conclusion that makes you think after you have finished the story.

What happens when the past can be changed? Should the past be tampered with? This story presents a classic time-travel theme; a causality violation, which is the fancy term (I think) for what happens if you go back in time and shoot yourself or a direct ancestor--thereby making your own existence impossible. Powers takes an interesting angle on the problem; drawing from Einstein and following recent scientific speculation he simply adds a dimension to our current understanding.

But perhaps the best aspect of this story is its treatment of the question of free will--can we ever make up for poor choices? Ends justify the means? Is it ever possible to remove someone from the world completely? Do private choices have public effects? If you could go back and talk to your younger self and know that bad choices will have a terrible effect on a future you is it wise to try?

Having just finished this book, I'm still sorting out the ideas presented, but regardless--it was well written and I look forward to reading more of Mr. Powers work.

But in Three Days to Never, men will try. (Modest spoilers here.)

It is near lunacy, or at least a sure road to regret, to attempt to review a Tim Powers book too soon after reading it, but here goes anyway. Fortunately, with Amazon, one doesn't need a time machine -- just the edit button. I cannot quite say why I liked Declare and Last Call much more than I liked Earthquake Weather or Expiration Date. Nor can I exactly put my finger on why I thought Three Days is more like the latter and not like the former. I suppose it's the superficial similarities to the last two installments of the Last Call Trilogy -- freaky astral projecting weirdos with crazy artifacts and devices chasing the good guys through SoCal to capture the essence of long-dead luminaries.

Digging more deeply, I think what I loved about Declare was that Powers perfectly balanced his story with his attempt to fit historical events into a new puzzle. And similarly, the supernatural elements seemed in Declare (as in Last Call) to compliment the rest of the goings on, not overwhelm them. I think I think that neither is true in Three Days. The attempt to bend the story around the true details of Einstein's existence (and some unexplained Charlie Chaplin events) seems almost forced and not natural. And the supernatural crazies become overwhelming by the end.

I believe that those with a good working knowledge of Shakespear's the Tempest or the biographical details of Einstein's life will appreciate this novel a bit more than I did. Then again, I knew very little about the Wasteland or Kim Philby's life, but still adored, respectively, Last Call and Declare. The book also suffers from one of the problems that I think no time-travel novel can avoid. It either will generally have holes that don't make logical sense, or it will make logical sense but spend considerable effort on side-points explaining why the time travel scenarios are consistent with the framework the novel has constructed. Three Days suffers a bit from the latter problem.

So with some of that negativity out of the way, there are things in this book to celebrate. There are, as in most of Powers' works, moments of devastating revelation. If you're used to the rhythms of his novels and his compulsion to force you into active reading, you will not be disappointed. (As an aside, there is a nice moment in this book where one of the characters who herself must rely on the eyes of others to see has thoughts about what makes a good reader and what makes a bad -- it is an interesting little insight into Powers' story-telling style.) And his masterful manipulation of familiar themes is at times genius, as is his dialogue. There is one running gag throughout the book that is virtually worth the price of admission itself -- when two members of one of the weird factions have conversations over the radio, they give each other signals (code words based on popular music or children's cereals) when to turn the channel to avoid detection. Much hilarity ensues.

In any event, Powers fans will not be diappointed and likely will spend at least one morning with bloodshot eyes. Enjoy!

Tim Powers is the only living writer of speculative fiction who regularly excites my interest, so I had been eagerly anticipating reading his latest effort, `Three Days To Never'. While I agree with others who have stated that it is not among his strongest work, it still looms far above most of what currently passes for speculative fiction, and did not disappoint me. I consumed the book in a day, and it was a most satisfying experience.

Powers does a couple of things better than anyone else I know of working in his genre. The first is to accurately portray human character across its full range of possibilities. His protagonists are almost always flawed, sometimes deeply, and his villains sometimes show discomforting traces of goodness. While he strongly hints that there are absolutes of good and evil in his universe, his human characters always have a certain amount of moral ambiguity, and you sense that his heroes are never too far from crossing the line and falling to the estate of his most monstrous bad guys. In `Three Days To Never', Powers illustrates this more starkly than ever before by using the possibilities of a time travel plot to double one of his characters and use him as both hero and villain - showing the extremes of both nobility and depravity that can exist in all of us.

The other feat at which Powers excels is in creating a fascinating and consistent universe that encompasses nearly all of his writing. The world he writes of is a world we recognize as our own, yet tilted oddly askew - refocused through an eldritch lens and given an arcane, funhouse feel. It little matters which of his books you first enter through into his universe, whether it be the siege of Vienna in `The Drawing of the Dark', cruising with Caribbean pirates in `On Stranger Tides', playing high stakes poker in Vegas in `Last Call', or navigating the deadly cloak and dagger games of the cold war in `Declare' - the crazy logic of his mystical universe remains remarkably consistent, from the monstrous, inhuman powers that lay just outside the spectrum of our daily lives that are summoned with Kabalistic magicks, to the madhouse, anti-logic of his ghosts who hover near us in an obscene caricature of the living world. It is the aura imparted by this peculiar universe which gives all of his work a unique stamp, much like Keith Richards' guitar work does for Rolling Stones songs. `Three Days To Never' is no exception to this rule. If entering the Powers universe sends chilling thrills through you as it does me, you will not be disappointed by this latest of his works.

This book does have its flaws. The connections to Einstein and Chaplin are more forced than are the historical allusions in his other works, and the details of his arcane science are sometimes, well, too detailed. The ending, also, is not as satisfying as it could have been (though consistent with his style), yet when the journey is as much fun as Powers makes it here, I wont quibble about the destination. This book should not be your introduction to Tim Powers (for that see `Last Call'), but if you are already a fan, it should not disappoint you.

Theo Logos

Tim Powers is a master of the 'Secret History' fantasy, a form where famous people have motivations, and famous events occur for reasons, having to do with magic and the occult instead of the normal, every-day reasons that we know of and believe. He researches these people and events meticulously, so that his secret history meshes seamlessly with actual events. Therefore, when Powers succeeds in snatching you into his "What-If" premise, our real history is never violated, and it is simply loads of great fun. His last five books have been set in the 20th Century. I found the first three to be sterile reads. A tsunami of magical events and effects, to be sure, but very cold stuff. With 'Declare' and even more so with this book 'Three Days To Never', Mr. Powers has weaved mysticism in with his magic, giving a sense of the religious to it all that is flatly missinig from all his prior books. In 'Three Days To Never', I think Mr. Powers also gives us main characters - teenager Daphne and her father, Frank - that we can finally CARE about deeply, and that is the topper.

I'm recommending both books highly, 'Declare' and 'Three Days To Never'. The magic in both books is not a tired old hashing of all his prior magical constructs, and that is greatly refreshing. There's new magic here in this time travel novel. What happens when you travel through time and arrive at your destination via a quantum mechanics-probability wave mechanism? It's VERY startling, even horrifying. Mr. Powers continues to develop concepts around 'ghosts' that can be disturbing and perhaps even terrifying.

The motivations of many characters develop throughout the book. I was quite often surprised! Surprised in ways that made sense for each character.

The secret history conceit of 'Three Days To Never' is primarily concerned with Albert Einstein. We all know about his brilliant discoveries concerning space and time, and quantum mechanics. In our normal history, Mr. Einstein burned out in the early 1920's and did not produce much of note thereafter. The conceit here is: What if he didn't burn out? What if he then made bold, stunning, later discoveries, but they were so dangerous and frightening that he hid them? And only now, in our modern day, has the mystery of these discoveries come to light. The protagonists, Daphne and Frank, have very compelling reasons for needing to solve the mystery; and there are other factions with very intense interest in wanting to solve the mystery themselves, and gain what fruit may be gained from the solution. It's a great thriller, a great ride.

One of Powers' better books. As is typical of Powers' works, reality is underpinned by the supernatural and many apparently mundane events are actually manifestations of important supernatural events. As is usual, the heroes are ordinary, decent people propelled into bizarre events unwittingly and opposed by corrupt seekers after immortality or ultimate power. The plot of this book concerns ghosts, time travel, and efforts to control the future by manipulating the past. Characters include Albert Einstein and his illegitimate daughter, Charlie Chaplin, and agents of the Mossad. Like all of Powers' books, the basic plot is ingenious and echoes Shakespeare, in this case, The Tempest. The quality of writing and characterization is good. Enjoyable reading.

In 1987 Frank Marrity's grandma dies suddenly during the New Age Harmonic Convergence. The family comes to the deceased's home in Pasadena where Frank's twelve years old daughter Daphne takes a videotape to watch. The flick is a lost Chaplin classic, but it does not leave the preadolescent watching it laughing. Instead some subliminal compelling symbols awaken a dormant fire starter-kinetic skill inside of Daphne; to her trepidation her new talent leads to the burning of the tape.

Not long afterward, Frank going through his grandmother's documents uncovers a shocking find that she was Albert Einstein's illegitimate daughter. Though he tries to keep this quiet until he can figure out what this means, two dangerous groups learn of his connection to the late great scientist. The Kabbalah cell of the Mossad and a Gnostic sect want Frank, Daphne and the documents; both sides will do whatever to take what they covet as each believes that Einstein discovered a weapon more powerful than the atom bomb, but so fearful of its potential pandemic devastation, he refused to give this weapon of ultra mass destruction to even President Roosevelt.

THREE DAYS TO NEVER is a superb science fiction espionage thriller that proves that Tim Powers (apropos name for this novel) writes tales faster than the speed of light. The action-packed story line is fast-paced yet never loses focus of the two Einstein offspring being in jeopardy with no one but themselves to trust. Readers will root for the precocious Daphne and her dad to defeat their adversaries, but the odds are overwhelming as the enemy comes from two sides and each moment a new one seems to arise. If relativity is genuine, this one sitting tale will receive several award nominations as one of the year's best thrillers.

Harriet Klausner

Powers is one of a small group of authors of whom I keep careful track; I want to be sure I know as quickly as possible when he has a new book coming out. Powers is the modern master of the "secret history" novel -- in which you discover the unknown truth behind the historical people and facts you thought you knew, whether Keats and Shelley, or Edison and Edward Teach, or (in this case) Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. You'll also learn about the occult activities of Mossad and its search for workable time travel, and its competition with the descendants of the Albigensians -- all in Los Angeles in 1987 during the Harmonic Convergence. The author is also very skilled at painting characters and settings by means of small, telling details; Charlotte, the blind woman who sees through the eyes of others, is a masterful creation -- and there aren't many middle-aged male novelists who could invent such a convincing and appealing twelve-year-old as Daphne. Finally, the climactic scene is a doozy!

There are few, if any, writers quite like Tim Powers. He cannot properly be categorized with anything as limiting as science-fiction or fantasy. A writer of speculative fiction comes closest. Or perhaps a creator of new mythologies, where he takes our known world and peels back the skin a bit to show us an underlying cosmology that we were not aware of.

Three Days To Never is not, in my opinion, about time travel. The time travel is merely the device by which certain people suddenly discover that they have choices open to them. The story, for me, is about the characters and what goes on with them as they face the possibilities suddenly available to them. For, as the book makes clear, no choice comes without a price. What would you be willing to do if you could remake your life, or even history, the way you wanted it? Would you kill to prevent a past accident that left you handicapped? Would you erase an innocent girl from existence if it meant you would could exchange a bitter, failed life for a happy, successful one? Would you risk erasing a child you loved if it meant you could guarantee your country's security in return? And all with the knowledge that only you would ever know that you'd done these things or made these choices?

The story threads run through all manner of seemingly improbable connections, from Einstein's illegitimate daughter to the Israeli Mossad and the Yom Kippur War, from a New Age gathering for the Harmonic Convergence to a lost film of Charlie Chaplin's and a stolen concrete slab with his hand-and-foot prints imprinted in it. And as always, Powers' imagination strews gems throughout, my favorites in this novel being the way in which ghosts only communicate through backwards-threaded conversations, giving responses in reverse order to things you haven't said or asked yet. And the blind assassin, Charlotte, who has the psychic ability to see through other people's eyes, a nice twist of the classical Medusa -- the only way she can kill is if someone is looking at her. Oh, and one other nice touch, given that this is a time travel story: one of the main characters is named Lepidopt. Either you'll get it or you won't.

Recommended.

Tim Powers is a master of taking historical and biographical facts and overlaying them with a supernatural construct that is entirely plausible in its consistency. One reason the supernatural elements work is that the facts themselves are so damn *weird*. Einstein went to a seance with Charlie Chaplin and had a daughter about whom almost nothing is known? Intelligence agencies actually relied on psychic espionage by "remote viewers"? The supernatural effects in _Three Days to Never_ are dazzling yet seem entirely appropriate in a novel that takes place during the Harmonic Convergence in 1987.

Twelve-year old Daphne Marrity's great-grandmother dies in mysterious circumstances on Mt. Shasta during the Harmonic Convergence. Meanwhile, Daphne and her father Frank find an odd collection of mysterious things in her great-grandmother's "Kaleidoscope Shed": letters from Einstein, a concrete slab that seems to be Charlie Chaplin's handprint slab from Graumann's Chinese Theater, and a videotape labeled "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure," which turns out to be a movie which terrifies Daphne so much she mentally starts two fires, discovering that she is a poltergeist.

These elements as well as other objects in the Kaleidoscope Shed are part of a time machine that Einstein had created, and Daphne and Frank soon find themselves entangled in life-threatening events involving the Mossad, the Kabbalah, other dimensions, a mysterious group called the Vespers, and a man who purports to be Frank's long-missing father. All these people are looking for the time machine, and they each have agendas regarding changing the past. The story is absolutely gripping, of the can't-put-it-down variety, and it is interwoven with parallels and references to Shakespeare's _The Tempest_. Powers thoroughly develops such characters as an ambivalent Mossad officer and a blind assassin, but the heart of the novel is in the emotional and psychic bond between Daphne and her father. Daphne's character is a marvelous portrayal of a highly intelligent and sensitive twelve-year old girl coping with multiple dangers that include attempts on her father's life, and a series of bizarre events that include the discovery of her own telekinetic power.

I thoroughly enjoyed _Three Days to Never_ with its engaging characters, the melange of espionage and the occult, and the riffs Powers plays on the theme of time travel. My only regret is that now I have to wait for his next novel.

Tim Powers is the right age to have experimented with that most venerable and forgotten of mind altering drugs, LSD. "Three Days to Never" reads like an acid trip, as if Powers and Phillip K. Dick got together back when, dropped a couple tabs of purple microdot, and compared notes. It's not that "Three Days to Never" is not an interesting story composed of brilliant concepts, just that there are too many concepts for a conventional, four-dimensional storytelling device to convey with any sincerity.

This book is all over the place; it is a mystery novel, a horror novel, a fantasy novel, a science fiction novel, an espionage novel, and a thought experiment in multi-dimensional physics. The characters are too stiff for such mind-bending concepts, and so do not help interpret the story for the reader. It is very difficult to follow the action, and plot lines are left incomplete. The moment the reader realizes that this is a time-travel story, and prepares his mind for the circumlocutions of causality and paradox, Powers introduces a horror element: a ghost, a poltergeist, or something called a dybbuk. The science collapses into fantasy then, as does the suspension of disbelief.

I would be giving up the story if I criticized particular events in the book, so I can only advise this: Read "Three Days to Never" for some mind-expanding concepts and some causality devices that are really quite interesting, but do not expect any emotional satisfaction or closure.