I like reading about time travel, but this one turned out to be a poorly written book that was British in a bad way.
There are some pretty interesting things in this book, however. Written in 2011, they portray Britain in 2050, and it is well used to dealing with pandemics. They describe a global pandemic that happened in their past, and how 30 million Americans died because they weren’t willing to give up their civil liberties… it was remarkably prophetic.
It was a little strange to hear how in this futuristic world dealing with a pandemic was no big deal – only mildly inconvenient. But the British characters in this book spend most of their time dealing with the most mundane tasks: doing historical research, communicating with their staff about visitors, making tea, and taking messages and returning phone calls.
It was hard to believe that nobody carried a smartphone anymore – and no joke, it felt like 30-40% of the book was people calling back other people and getting messages delivered by their staff while they were away.
There is a good story here, but the author takes their time to get to it, and putters about with minutiae that do nothing to contribute. I thought it was a great example of editor malpractice.
Take a similar idea in Michael Crichton’s Timeline – it was almost the same story but stripped down to the basics and moving fast. Crichton’s book was like riding in a race car, while this book was like hearing about a car race from your great grandmother second hand.
This is a big book, and I found myself skimming the text after the halfway point, and I twice considered giving up on it. It seems like there is a whole series of books now – but I don’t think I could bear to subject myself to more.
Next I am reading The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry.
