A well-executed time-travel tale.
A sci-fi novel tells the story of a pilot sent back to 1939 on a very special mission.
Christoph Wilder is an amazing pilot, as he proves during an emergency landing after losing two engines of his trans-Atlantic passenger jet. Christoph should be a hero, but instead he’s blamed for the death of an elderly passenger, just like his son continues to hold him responsible for the death of his wife in a car accident. When his airline grounds him for good, Christoph takes a vague job with the German Aerospace Center. He learns that his new bosses have developed time-travel technology and plan to try it out in small increments—going back no more than 24 hours in the past. But during the first test run, the plane is hijacked by Christoph’s co-pilot, who has other plans for how to use the breakthrough: “Our destination is November 7, 1939….We will kill Adolf Hitler!” The temptation to avert the worst war in human history may be strong, but what will the effect be on the present? How does this scheme relate to a simultaneous narrative about a man named Herbert Steinmann living in a bunker on some alternative, nuclear-ravaged Earth? And, if he survives all of this, can Christoph harness the technology to reverse the worst event of his own timeline, the accident that killed his wife? Peterson (Paradox 2, 2018, etc.) writes in a polished, muscular prose that replicates the calm, pragmatic voice of his pilot protagonist: “Christoph knew that with the waves of the North Atlantic, they had no chance of landing the huge aircraft….The wings would be torn off, the cabin would overturn and the wreckage, with the passengers still strapped in their seats, would sink like a stone.” The author takes a while getting to the novel’s main action, though this gives him time to assemble the backstories of Christoph and the other characters. The book is more thoughtful than its simple premise suggests, and while the plot follows the typical time-travel narrative arc, Peterson does a good enough job hiding the ball that the twists feel satisfying.
A well-executed time-travel tale.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-987580-76-1
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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