Well, this is a crazy one. The US navy have spent years investigating Deep Space and Deep Time, with a space programme that has both explored other galaxies and used what it found there to catapult its astronauts forward in time. These trips revealed a hideous future, with humanity wiped out by the Terminus, the end of all life on Earth.
Shannon Moss is one of those astronauts, until her own encounter with the Terminus takes her leg and leaves her unfit for service. She takes a position with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (basically the Navy FBI), and tries to go on with her life. Which is fine, until she is brought in to investigate the murder of a SEAL, thought to be lost in space, but now found in 1997.
And so begins probably the most convoluted thriller plot I've ever encountered. Shannon's investigation spreads across multiple timelines, with both her direct work in 1997, and a few trips ahead to the future in order to read her case files and try and get ahead of the curve.
Those futures are always only "possible" futures, that wink out of existence the moment the observer returns to the past. This leads into confusion and complications as the echoes of the future bleed into the past, and time loops abound.
The thriller aspects are great, with a plot that races along, and a great sense of danger throughout. The concept of multiple timelines and evidence being pulled through them is a clever one, and the far future is a delightfully weird place, with alien horrors and terrible threats.
Unfortunately, the action gets a little confused as all the timelines crash together, and the various versions of the large cast tend to run into each other. The first half of the book is excellent, with some impressive world-building that gives an unexpectedly convincing scenario, no matter how crazy. It's only when those threads begin to tie together that the story begins to fall apart. It's just a bit too busy, and leaves the end result as a little disappointing.
It's a great idea, but it falters a bit in the execution.
Tagged: Book Science fiction Time travel Novel Print