Unambitious time-travel SF that doesn’t push many boundaries—except those of the Macedonian Empire.
A student and his professor stumble across the secret of time travel and journey back to the era of Alexander the Great to try to rewrite history.
In 2026, American college student Derek assists professor Kibble with a high-speed spinning gizmo for processing honey and inadvertently discovers the secret to moving backward in time. Soon the pair have a unit that’s large enough to accommodate passengers and can be carried on a helicopter. Things are looking dire on the geopolitical scene, as a nuclear war looms involving Iran, Russia, China, and Western democracies. Derek and Kibble decide to rewrite history and create a unified, pro-freedom European superpower in the past to align with the United States. The key, determines Kibble, is Alexander the Great, who died at the age of 32 of a fluke illness in 323 B.C.E. after conquering and uniting much of the known world—which all came undone without him. Along with researcher Lex, the team travels to ancient Macedonia and explains everything to a sympathetic Alexander (who improbably takes the existence of time travelers in stride). He minds his health and uses the helicopter and guns imported from 2026 to firm up his empire and survive. But when the Americans return to the future, they find a dystopian police state. With more trips, including one back to the North American continent of 60,000 B.C.E., can the heroes do a reset good enough to make truth, justice, and the American way prevail? In Ray Bradbury’s 1952 story “A Sound of Thunder,” a careless time traveler steps on a butterfly eons ago and completely changes Earth’s history; Busby, who previously wrote Lost in Time: Trapped in a Prehistoric World (2019), has his characters in this SF adventure practically stomp metaphorical butterflies beneath their feet. For a while, it seems as if readers will get a darker tale akin to Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1971 novel The Lathe of Heaven, in which repeated godlike meddling makes reality more twisted and worse, but ultimately this is a utopian fantasy. However, it’s one that’s hampered by simplistic language and dialogue (“What I say around here goes. My word is the law!”), broad-brush characterizations, and naïve science.
Unambitious time-travel SF that doesn’t push many boundaries—except those of the Macedonian Empire.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79605-754-6
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Xlibris Corp
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Buckle up—fans of page-turning SF may find themselves binge-reading this novel in one butt-numbing marathon session.
Like a truck with no brakes speeding down a steep mountain road, Islington’s latest is an adrenaline-fueled SF thrill ride that follows a biomechanically enhanced assassin as he tries to understand his mysterious origins.
The chaotic opening scene gives readers a clear indication of what they’re in for: Contract killer Azure, attempting to complete a mission, is involved in a life-or-death battle with a multieyed biomachine called an Argos. “The thing’s bipedal but has six gorilla-like arms that end in half-metre-long claws,” he complains. After Azure barely dispatches the monster and kills his target, his AI assistant, Atti, informs him of his next job: protecting an elderly—and incredibly rich—woman living in a sprawling underground bunker in the middle of nowhere. “Old Woman,” as Azure calls her, isn’t forthcoming with personal details; all Azure can suss out is that she may be the target of a powerful organized crime syndicate—the same organization that employs him! Is Azure’s ultimate goal to save her or kill her? Although the worldbuilding could’ve been more comprehensive, Islington’s editing choices are brilliant—he strips away the insignificant narrative content to create a streamlined, action-packed adventure with seemingly one goal: to keep the reader furiously turning pages. The various mysteries—Azure’s murky beginnings, the tragic death of his best friend years earlier, Old Woman’s true identity, etc.—maintain the momentum and intensity. The takeaway here is the narrative potential of the characters as well as the plethora of subjects that could be explored more deeply, like immortality for the rich, cloning, and the potential to create bioengineered nightmares for “security.” Islington leaves the conclusion tantalizingly ambiguous. This novel could be the jumping-off point for a memorable series.
Buckle up—fans of page-turning SF may find themselves binge-reading this novel in one butt-numbing marathon session.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781668239247
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
