Customer Reviews

A Twist In Time

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am quite familiar with her work and I thought this was another great effort. I wanted to keep reading and not put it down until I was finished. I loved the fact that it was about regular people this time instead of vampires as she usually writes. I was pleased overall.

I came across the book by chance and was excited to discover that the hero is the second son of Epona and Valgar from her older book, 'Danegeld'. It is a tightly-written time-travel story with realistic interaction between a twenty-first century woman and a tenth-century Viking warrior as they battle villains who want to use the wonderful time-travel machine for their evil purposes.

As a first-time reader of Susan Squires, I was quite pleased with this book. I am now looking for the first book in the series and looking forward to the next book in the trilogy. I don't know what her vampire books are like (I am not a vampire-book lover) but I certainly enjoyed this genre. For readers who also enjoy Sandra Hill's Viking series, I think they would enjoy this one also.

The reviews for this book are not objective, so i chose to write my own. I picked up this book because i recently read Squires' "Danegeld". I liked it so much that i wrote a review for it. So when i saw this included timetravel i was more than excited about it. But boy it gets old pretty quick. Again, i am a bit of a snob when it comes to reading, why read mediocre writing when there are thousands of great book to be enjoyed? Okay, so back to the point.

The first thing that bothered me was not the writing in itself, but rather the lack of details. It was surprising because in "Danegeld" the details are vivid and realistic. In "Twist in time", not so much. Especially in the scene where the heroine lands in the other time. The author tells us about the warring hero and enemy and that there is blood on the ground, but she never mentions the landscape, what the heroine is seeing that is truly so terrifying that has her running back to her own time. The author tells us it's a battle but i wish she would've fleshed out such a great scene. Instead she tells us in maybe one paragrath and moves on to saying in 50 ways how the heroine is frightened. Show us Ms. Squires and trust us to feel fear. She could've explored the five minutes the heroine was in another time and that wouldve made me connect more with the heroine. It wouldve allowed me into the world of the book. On that note, the pace moves much to quick bc of the lack of details, the book starts and by 1/10th into it you already have the heroine entering a lab, meeting with her scientist friend and his colleague, the scene where she gets the DaVinci book, traveling back into time, meeting the hero, wounded hero falling into the time machine with her and it goes on and on. Such a great premise, but badly executed.

I am an English major and writer myself so i've been trained to notice strange breaks in writing, where sentences are awkwardly placed and the author deviates from the point of the story. I found this a few times and was very distracted by the breaks themselves. The breaks were so random that i ended up unable to block them out:

""You fill out the paperwork. Let them do the tough stuff," the other one said. They sat her down next to an asian girl behind a glass with a round hole for speaking. "We're outta here."

Good luck to you." They disappeared. Lucy was left staring at the expectant Asian girl.

Paperwork. On a time traveler.
Not good.

The girl's nameplate said: Bernice. Not exactly Asian, but in San Francisco she could be a fourth generation immigrant. Bernice pushed the clipboard..."

That was an extremely awkward clip about the girls nationality. I really disliked that the author made such a comment, it sounded ignorant. The line was so bothersome that i read it about ten times before moving on. Before that the narrator described a nurse as "The big black nurse" or some such a thing, one of the paramedics was "Big burly blonde", the waiting room was full of people from different nationalities and one of the cops was "hispanic". These descriptions, for a lack of better term, were empty, they lacked real substance, they made what the theatre calls "stock characters" and nothing more.

And not to mention the police was questioning the heroine for about two pages. Yes, the police is definitely going to breeze by and see how a guy who was wounded by gangs (YES THE HEROINE SAYS GANGS!! THAT WAS THE LAST STRAW) in a reenactment of a battle for three pages and then move on. I've seen the police ask me more questions when my wallet got stolen at a diner and it was caught on video.

Again, the premise is interesting but the author does a horrid job in fleshing out the story. I think the author has great potential, but the editor needs to get fired. If you want well written time travel romance, Outlander by Gabaldon is the only one ive ever read. This one left me extremely disappointed.

Absolutely fabulous, well written time travel romance that takes into account language barriers, cultural differences, magic, and turns an unlikely situation into an adventure to remember. Buy it, read it, love it.

This story absolutely charmed me from beginning to end. The relationship unfolds in a very believable way and Galen and Lucy interact just the way you think two people from such different worlds would. I really liked the characters individually, as well as together and by the time they got together I almost cheered.

Now this is how you write a real romance!

I really like Susan Squires' novels. She has a writing style that is detailed and gripping and her stories are always well plotted and engrossing. 'A Twist in Time' continues this, but also had its differences - for example, it didn't contain any vampires (her 'Companion' series) but instead involved time travelling.

When Lucy Rossano finds herself taken to see a time machine in the Super Collider Lab - a time machine apparently made by Leonardo da Vinci, which is detailed in an old book that she owns - she little realises that this is the start of a complete upheaval in her life. She is the one the test the machine, finds herself momentarily in England during the Dark Ages, and has an unexpected passenger on the way back to present-day America. Or is it present day?

Lucy arrives in a hospital car park with a severely injured barbarian who speaks something like German or Scandinavian. He is treated in the hospital but Lucy realises things aren't quite right - she didn't make it back to the same date, for a start, and she is aware that she might be in trouble for not returning immediately with the time machine.

Lucy escapes with her barbarian, getting help from a neighbour with his own secrets, and eventually instals herself on a sailing boat, trying to communicate with the man, Galen, a half Danish, half English man. Speaking a mixture of Latin and English, with some Germanic thrown in, they gradually being to understand each other. Galen is very quick to learn, and as he heals he begins to understand the situation that he is now in. But people are after Lucy for her knowledge of the time machine and she knows she can't 'disappear' forever. And Galen has his own regrets as he didn't achieve what his parents hoped for him. Can Lucy and Galen keep each other safe?

Parts of this book reminded me of one of Susan Squires' earliest books, Danegeld, and her knowledge of this period of history comes through well, particularly with regard to the language - I very much enjoyed reading the old English and Danish as Lucy and Galen try to communicate. There wasn't actually all that much action in this book - a large part is set on the sailing boat in close quarters where Lucy and Galen are hiding. I felt the end was perhaps a little facile, with Galen finding his place in the world, but the overall story was enjoyable. It had less of the blood and rape that some of her more recent books have contained and that, for me, was also a benefit.

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book © Helen Hancox 2010