Overall, I thought this book was spectacular. This is a long, heavy book, not for light reading, but no less brilliant for its length. The one vice I found, was that the author takes time to speak to the reader. Although it isn't an unusual tactic, and in some books it is even necessary, in a book written with an omniscient narrator I don't feel the dialogue between narrator and reader added anything… Because he only interrupted the flow to remind the reader that he knew everything… Which the reader already knew due to the story being written in third person. Although I should note the interruptions were comical enough that they didn't detract anything either.
Book One was by far my favorite of the collection. It sucks you right into the story by introducing a main character who is determined to kill himself, but refuses to give up the answer to why he wants to die without any sort of brevity. Then the author begins to weave in his recurring themes, Time travel, the mysteries of the human brain and heart, Jack the ripper, and time as an ideology…
Book Two was probably my least favorite, simply because of the naivety Victorian Era women were taught to possess. The main heroine, Clair thinks she is least naïve of all but that belief turns false. I can't really relate to her -- I am by no means a feminist, but I think anyone can agree, that women have changed over the decades-- but I can understand her co-character Tom… Everyone at some point has a moment where they want something out of reach, where they dream to be better, to be loved…
Book Three made me smile despite the violent imagery. HG Wells, “the father of science fiction” who was merely a player in books 1 & 2 is cast in a leading role. And despite all the speculation of “guardian of time” between the three stories, I feel he is the only character who doesn't receive an epiphany, but the reader is allowed to feel what he cannot… That if there is a guardian of time, HG Wells may be that guardian…even if he’ll never know it. The one thing I didn't like about Book 3 was that character Gilliam Murray talks too much...In books 1 and 2 his narration is needed to explain things...and while I understand he is the villain recounting his master plan to his arch nemesis...it probably could have been shortened.
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Good Writing But Too Frequently a Glacial Pace
Andrew Harrington, spoilt little rich boy, well, he's 28 now, has stolen one of his father's pistols to kill himself on this, November 7, 1895, the 8th anniversary of his beloved's death at the hands of Jack the Ripper. He's stopped by his cousin Charles: "Don't do it, Andrew! I've found a way of saving Marie!"H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" has just been published, and people are rabid about the possibilities. A new company Murray's Time Travel, is capitalizing on that, promising time travel. That means, Charles assures Andrew, traveling back in time and saving Marie from the Ripper.Charles assures the skeptical Andrew that it will work, and offers one of the most cogent "explanation" of time travel yet. He picks up his hat and says, "in order for it to form part of this reality we find ourselves in, it needs duration in time as well as space. That is what enable us to see it, and prevents it from disappearing before our very eyes.... If we accept that time is another dimension, what is to stop us from moving through it? In fact, that is what we are doing. Just like our hats, you and I are moving forwards in time, albeit it in a tediously linear fashion, without leaving out a single second, towards our inexorable end. What Wells is asking in his novel is why we can't speed up this journey, or even turn around and journey backwards in time to that place we refer to as the past."Andrew's story is part 1, there's two other parts, which start out feeling separate, but they come together in unexpected ways.Another piece of good writing is when H. G. Wells explains that he doesn't think real time travel is good for humanity: "Have you ever wondered what makes men act responsibly? I'll tell you; they only have one go at things. If we had machines that allowed us to correct all our mistakes, even the most foolish ones, we would live in a world of irresponsible people."Though there's some good writing and some good plotting, "A Map of Time" is so leisurely in its pace that I started skipping pages of exposition, hoping something was going to happen. About 2/3 of the way through, I couldn't help it, I started paraphrasing the "The Princess Bride" in my mind and making myself giggle: "And time, twu time, will fowow you foweva..." Or maybe it just felt like it.However, the book still gets 4 stars from me, because it did have good writing, nice humor and I liked how the story arcs intersected eventually.Happy Reader
Top reviews from other countries
Chris
This is one of my all time favourite books that I bought to replace one I lent ...
Reviewed in Canada on March 26, 2018
