TIME SIEGE

Second installment of a series (Time Salvager, 2015) in which time travelers salvage what they can from the past to help sustain a solar system ravaged by corporate wars.

Time traveler James Griffin-Mars, formerly of ChronoCom, rescued scientist Elise Kim from certain death in the past and thereby broke all the laws of time travel. He also rescued his young sister, Sasha, and brought her into the present. However, 26th-century Earth is polluted, plague-ridden, and depopulated. Now fugitives, the three, along with Grace Priestly, the inventor of time travel, have joined with the Elfreth, one of the few bands of hardy survivors that remain. But because he can no longer obtain the essential drug that protects against time travel’s effects, James’ jaunting days are nearly over. Worse, Kuo Masaki-Europa of Valta Corporation, the most powerful of the corporations that battle to control the solar system, knows about Elise (Valta needs her for their own purposes) and relentlessly harries the Elfreth from their Boston home all the way to Manhattan, a mist-shrouded, electromagnetically shielded refuge. To help out, James busts his former mentor and one-time nemesis, Levin Javier-Oberon, out of jail; and, with his last time-traveling gasp, he grabs irascible old know-it-all Doctor Titus 2.3 to treat the ailing Sasha. Chu hasn't developed much of a philosophical base to support his time-travel shenanigans—in fact, there’s no real scientific basis for anything that goes on here. What readers are signing up for are the thrills and spills, spectacular battles, relentless chases, cliffhanging rescues, and pounding excitement.

Computer-game style: formulaic but exhilarating.