I read this book and reviewed it almost 2 years ago, and today I finished it on audio book. So, here's my original review, and then I'll comment on the audio book:
from August 2008
Here's another of my subjective 4 star books - it's Linda Howard, it's an AAR Top 100 - I liked it ok, so maybe it should have been 3 stars but... I'm so wishy-washy because I liked it more than "average" or "mediocre"!
The story involves Grace St. John - an average woman with a good career, a loving husband, and a loyal brother, who loses it all in one evening when she realizes she is inadvertently caught up in the enormous power struggle between Good and Evil. She translates ancient documents for a living, for a Foundation that is Evil - "Lucifer thou Son of the Morning" is the quote from the Bible, I believe. The Foundation Director is the current embodiment of All Things Evil, and he is looking for documents Grace has in her possession that will help him locate the source of the power he seeks.
The documents in question were written by the Guardian in the 14th century - a Guardian who, while not the embodiment of All Things Good, is the person charged with protecting the Big Secret. Or Secrets. He's the last of the Knights Templar and he has the relics and the documents hidden in his Scottish castle. The Big Secret includes (or is?) the recipe for time travel, and once Grace starts working on translating it while on the lam from the Foundation Director, she begins to dream of the Guardian.
Grace is truly a wonderful heroine - she's really all things good, and normal, and average, until she witnesses the murder of her husband and brother by the Director. Then she is all things cunning and wary - she uses her considerable skills in reasoning and translation and problem-solving, and turns them into street-smarts to avoid being caught. For a year.
Several reviewers have remarked that the book really does have 2 heroes - one is her wonderful husband, who died lying to the Director, protecting her so that Grace wouldn't be caught. In all her thoughts and all the flashbacks, he is loyal, and loving, and her true soulmate. The other hero is the Guardian himself, Niall - who shares Grace's dreams. Literally.
When Grace finishes translating the documents, she decides that to avenge her brother's and husband's deaths, she must do whatever it takes to keep the Director from getting whatever it is Niall is guarding. The documents she has only point to where the Treasure is. Grace follows the recipe for Time Travel and shows up in Niall's world to move the Treasure so that the Director won't find it.
There was a lot of anguish and heartache in the story - the deaths at the beginning, her year of hiding from the police and the Director, having to use all her wiles to find underground employment, to remain disguised and hidden. The Director was truly a bad, bad man - evil in every possible way. Niall, the medieval Scots warrior, was also bigger than life - tall, big, possibly immortal - although he wasn't All Things Good or the least saintly, he was alpha to the max. I had a hard time buying the concept that Grace would be enough Woman for him after his exploits, I'm afraid - even if she was supposed to be his match. He just didn't strike me as true soulmate material.
But hey - another one on the AAR Top 100 checked off the list. I might manage it this year after all, if I can veer away from glomming more Linda Howard and Nora Roberts and - hey, I need to read more Jennifer Crusie, and I have a couple more Jo Goodmans to go, and...
Sooo many romances, so many bills to pay that require me to work instead of read 24/7...
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OK the audiobook. Well, while I still feel the book is around 4 stars, I think the audio is closer to 3 stars. The narrator is ok, but either she has an odd way of speaking or the audio itself is off. Every word, every sentence,there's a sort of mini-explosion or elevation of sound and then it backs off, like her opening consonant is loud but the rest of the word is soft. After a while, I got used to it, even though it did continue all the way through. Maybe the microphone was off, I dunno. Plus she had a sort of quaver in her voice when it was dramatic that I really found annoying. But her voices were good, and different, so she wasn't awful - just not great. Plus, after listening to Davina Porter narrating the Outlander series, while this narrator's Scots accent was pretty darn good, I cringed when she said pronounced plaid to rhyme with "add" instead of "aid" the way Porter says it.
Showing posts with label time travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time travel. Show all posts
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Beyond the Highland Mist by Karen Marie Moning ***
I was perusing All About Romance the other day, and read with interest a recent post about audiobooks. One of the ones mentioned was this book, read by narrator Phil Gigante. The posters (more than one) mentioned what a good narrator he was, and how his voice was so perfect*. I guess I set myself up for disappointment - at least I got this one free from the library.
It wasn't so much that his Hawk voice wasn't perfect - he does have a deep, rich voice for the hero. It was his other voices that weren't so great, including heroine Adrienne. He does a funny falsetto thing for the women's voices that made Adrienne and Lydia, Hawk's mother, sound odd. His Scots accent for Hawk was good, but for other characters his accents - including Scots - were not that good. Marie, the Cuban housekeeper - what was her accent (and since when is Marie a Cuban name?)
The story itself leaned toward Sandra Hill's type of prose - kind of funny, not taking the fantasy story of a Puck-like fairy throwing a 20th century women into 16th century Scotland too seriously most of the time. So Gigante's mostly serious reading sometimes came across as odd as well.
And every time he said Sam Hane for the feast day Samhain I cringed - how hard is it for the narrator or at least the producer to look up the proper pronunciation of a word this widely known? There are several accepted pronunciations - Sam Hane isn't one of them.
Adrienne is a modern (1990s) woman on the run from her ex-fiance - the bad bad Eberhard something or other from New Orleans. Since she doesn't reveal all the details of their relationship right away, I hesitate to include them - for a nanosecond. She was an orphan; he was a gangster, using her to traffic drugs across international borders. Go figure. She's hiding out in Seattle when we meet her - however, the fact that she had a housekeeper living in a garage apartment and a fairly intricate security system that included dogs told me she had some $$. She's bemoaning beautiful men who just use her when Adam aka Puck-ish Fairy decides to use her as revenge against Hawk - the most beautiful man in Scotland. He throws her into Hawk's path as his bride-to-be, the madwoman Janet Coman. His plan: to destroy Hawk by giving him a woman who actually says no to him.
See, the plot has room for some light humor - and Moning puts a fair amount in (not quite as much as Hill does in her books), even if Gigante reads it fairly straight. I still managed to laugh a number of times - it's not just the fish-out-of-water stuff either. Hawk does seem to be quite full of himself, even if later we're meant to feel sorry for him that he's had thousands of lovers... (yeah, too bad about that, huh?) I can picture a sort of Dudley Do-Right quality about him.
Of course, they actually want each other a lot, but Adrienne keeps remembering her vow to never fall for a beautiful man - plus she figures eventually she'll get back to the 1990s - and stops Hawk cold. He quotes Shakespearean-type language to her, and her knowledge of Shakespeare is good enough that she can finish the quotes. She speaks 3 languages. She can actually read and write - something rather unusual for anyone, much less a woman, in the 16th century.
Just when she decides maybe she should just give in, the fairy king tells the Puck character to send her back - and whoosh, she goes back (and forth and back and forth). They manage to do that to her a couple more times - argue over which century to leave her in - and confuse the heck out of everyone around her.
Her wishing to stay in the 16th century was something I tried to comprehend - she didn't want to hear traffic sounds. I kept thinking, but don't you miss all the comforts? I mean, if one wanted to be isolated from noise, one could move to the country - it's real quiet.
Enough of my criticisms. I liked Gigante's voice for male characters but not much for female. I found his narration mostly good, but I wasn't completely satisfied with the story itself. I liked it - 3 stars - but didn't love it. As I said, it was FREE from the library, so I did get my money's worth, even if I did have to burn it to disk to get it on my iPhone.
It's a little frustrating that the library and OverDrive Media now have software to put the WMA audiobooks into iTunes for Windows but not for Mac! I have a Sansa Clip specifically for this reason (to get WMA audiobooks), but have become so enamored of my Halo bluetooth headset that I prefer to listen on the iPhone. Sorry, just a little rant.
*I re-read the column for Phil Gigante mentions, and it seems it's Dane from Linda Howard's Dream Man that the poster said was so good, not Hawk from this book. However, more than one person mentioned this series (Highlanders) as one of their favorite audio series.
It wasn't so much that his Hawk voice wasn't perfect - he does have a deep, rich voice for the hero. It was his other voices that weren't so great, including heroine Adrienne. He does a funny falsetto thing for the women's voices that made Adrienne and Lydia, Hawk's mother, sound odd. His Scots accent for Hawk was good, but for other characters his accents - including Scots - were not that good. Marie, the Cuban housekeeper - what was her accent (and since when is Marie a Cuban name?)
The story itself leaned toward Sandra Hill's type of prose - kind of funny, not taking the fantasy story of a Puck-like fairy throwing a 20th century women into 16th century Scotland too seriously most of the time. So Gigante's mostly serious reading sometimes came across as odd as well.
And every time he said Sam Hane for the feast day Samhain I cringed - how hard is it for the narrator or at least the producer to look up the proper pronunciation of a word this widely known? There are several accepted pronunciations - Sam Hane isn't one of them.
Adrienne is a modern (1990s) woman on the run from her ex-fiance - the bad bad Eberhard something or other from New Orleans. Since she doesn't reveal all the details of their relationship right away, I hesitate to include them - for a nanosecond. She was an orphan; he was a gangster, using her to traffic drugs across international borders. Go figure. She's hiding out in Seattle when we meet her - however, the fact that she had a housekeeper living in a garage apartment and a fairly intricate security system that included dogs told me she had some $$. She's bemoaning beautiful men who just use her when Adam aka Puck-ish Fairy decides to use her as revenge against Hawk - the most beautiful man in Scotland. He throws her into Hawk's path as his bride-to-be, the madwoman Janet Coman. His plan: to destroy Hawk by giving him a woman who actually says no to him.
See, the plot has room for some light humor - and Moning puts a fair amount in (not quite as much as Hill does in her books), even if Gigante reads it fairly straight. I still managed to laugh a number of times - it's not just the fish-out-of-water stuff either. Hawk does seem to be quite full of himself, even if later we're meant to feel sorry for him that he's had thousands of lovers... (yeah, too bad about that, huh?) I can picture a sort of Dudley Do-Right quality about him.
Of course, they actually want each other a lot, but Adrienne keeps remembering her vow to never fall for a beautiful man - plus she figures eventually she'll get back to the 1990s - and stops Hawk cold. He quotes Shakespearean-type language to her, and her knowledge of Shakespeare is good enough that she can finish the quotes. She speaks 3 languages. She can actually read and write - something rather unusual for anyone, much less a woman, in the 16th century.
Just when she decides maybe she should just give in, the fairy king tells the Puck character to send her back - and whoosh, she goes back (and forth and back and forth). They manage to do that to her a couple more times - argue over which century to leave her in - and confuse the heck out of everyone around her.
Her wishing to stay in the 16th century was something I tried to comprehend - she didn't want to hear traffic sounds. I kept thinking, but don't you miss all the comforts? I mean, if one wanted to be isolated from noise, one could move to the country - it's real quiet.
Enough of my criticisms. I liked Gigante's voice for male characters but not much for female. I found his narration mostly good, but I wasn't completely satisfied with the story itself. I liked it - 3 stars - but didn't love it. As I said, it was FREE from the library, so I did get my money's worth, even if I did have to burn it to disk to get it on my iPhone.
It's a little frustrating that the library and OverDrive Media now have software to put the WMA audiobooks into iTunes for Windows but not for Mac! I have a Sansa Clip specifically for this reason (to get WMA audiobooks), but have become so enamored of my Halo bluetooth headset that I prefer to listen on the iPhone. Sorry, just a little rant.
*I re-read the column for Phil Gigante mentions, and it seems it's Dane from Linda Howard's Dream Man that the poster said was so good, not Hawk from this book. However, more than one person mentioned this series (Highlanders) as one of their favorite audio series.
Friday, January 8, 2010
An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon *****
SPOILER ALERT if you don't want any details, don't read - and yes, I refer to some things that happen in my review, so there are spoilers.
This is the first Outlander book I listened to on audio first. Usually I read it first, then do the audio but the audio came out at the same time, so I just went ahead and listened. Davina Porter is such a wonderful narrator, that I didn't have any trouble following along. But now I'm having that THING you get with Outlander - you know, where you need to go back and really look again at something that happened earlier in the book. I really need to learn to use bookmarks on my ipod (is that possible? must google)
Of course, it was wonderful. A long, winding road of a story, going back and forth between times and dates and eras and countries. It's a story that keeps putting poor Claire and Jamie in danger's way - even when you know Jamie will find her and save her, or she him. Now we also have to worry about Roger and Bree - and Jem and Mandy! (and Ian and Rollo too) Lord John and Willie play big roles in this, and it will help a reader to have read all the Lord John books to keep up with various references.
Knowing a little American history would be helpful too - I grinned at Claire's trying to remember helping Bree with American history so she could remember when certain things happen. That would be me - shaking hands with Benedict Arnold and trying to remember exactly what he did when that makes him so infamous today!
The Revolutionary War is fully underway throughout the book, and Willie is an officer for the British side, making his Papa Lord John proud. He undergoes some harrowing experiences and gets in a scrape or 2 - he is only 19 or so at the time. Lord John is approached by a mysterious stranger - who is no stranger to him at all. There's a mystery, though. I cannot even recall if the mystery is fully resolved. It's almost a Lord John story-within-the-Claire/Jamie-story.
Jamie and Claire are determined to get to Scotland, presumably for Jamie's printing press, but also to finally return young Ian to his parents, more than 10 years after he was abducted by pirates. He's so different now - part Mohawk, very independent. But Ian and Jamie are both pressed into service for the rebels, and Claire travels along as company surgeon until they can make their way to a ship headed east.
Bree has a new job as an engineer near their Lallybroch home, and Roger stays home with the kids, doing various ongoing restoration, studying local music and even getting involved in the community after the local kids hear Jem give a great Gaelic curse. Gaelic is a dying language, and most of them don't know it - so Roger starts a class. But there's another mysterious stranger in the book, this time in current day Scotland - and he's no stranger either!
The closer you get to the end of the book, the faster things start - well, falling apart. Yes, J&C make it to Scotland (surely every fan has already read the famous Laoghaire scene?), but then - oh no! Fergus' son needs surgery in America, and old Ian is dying in Scotland, and Jem goes to spend the night with a trusted friend but is his father really trustworthy, or... is Jem being forced by him to time travel?
For a while it seemed as if there were going to be this one particular huge cliffhanger with Jamie and Claire - I prepared myself for it, but while it was resolved, there were issues now that Jamie is going to have to really prepare himself for... Let's just say that old plotline, the hero misses the ship and the ship sinks, makes an entrance at some point... and what would you do if you were Claire. Except you are not Claire, you're Omnipotent and Know All. Ew. (Jamie's fine, don't worry. But will he bitch slap John for what happened while they all thought Jamie lost at sea?)
And yes, a cliffhanger or two are dangling at the end - did Roger go too close to the stones? Will they find Jem?
Once again Gabaldon and Porter take me on a fantastic adventure and I really loved every minute. 4 more years! but 5 stars
This is the first Outlander book I listened to on audio first. Usually I read it first, then do the audio but the audio came out at the same time, so I just went ahead and listened. Davina Porter is such a wonderful narrator, that I didn't have any trouble following along. But now I'm having that THING you get with Outlander - you know, where you need to go back and really look again at something that happened earlier in the book. I really need to learn to use bookmarks on my ipod (is that possible? must google)
Of course, it was wonderful. A long, winding road of a story, going back and forth between times and dates and eras and countries. It's a story that keeps putting poor Claire and Jamie in danger's way - even when you know Jamie will find her and save her, or she him. Now we also have to worry about Roger and Bree - and Jem and Mandy! (and Ian and Rollo too) Lord John and Willie play big roles in this, and it will help a reader to have read all the Lord John books to keep up with various references.
Knowing a little American history would be helpful too - I grinned at Claire's trying to remember helping Bree with American history so she could remember when certain things happen. That would be me - shaking hands with Benedict Arnold and trying to remember exactly what he did when that makes him so infamous today!
The Revolutionary War is fully underway throughout the book, and Willie is an officer for the British side, making his Papa Lord John proud. He undergoes some harrowing experiences and gets in a scrape or 2 - he is only 19 or so at the time. Lord John is approached by a mysterious stranger - who is no stranger to him at all. There's a mystery, though. I cannot even recall if the mystery is fully resolved. It's almost a Lord John story-within-the-Claire/Jamie-story.
Jamie and Claire are determined to get to Scotland, presumably for Jamie's printing press, but also to finally return young Ian to his parents, more than 10 years after he was abducted by pirates. He's so different now - part Mohawk, very independent. But Ian and Jamie are both pressed into service for the rebels, and Claire travels along as company surgeon until they can make their way to a ship headed east.
Bree has a new job as an engineer near their Lallybroch home, and Roger stays home with the kids, doing various ongoing restoration, studying local music and even getting involved in the community after the local kids hear Jem give a great Gaelic curse. Gaelic is a dying language, and most of them don't know it - so Roger starts a class. But there's another mysterious stranger in the book, this time in current day Scotland - and he's no stranger either!
The closer you get to the end of the book, the faster things start - well, falling apart. Yes, J&C make it to Scotland (surely every fan has already read the famous Laoghaire scene?), but then - oh no! Fergus' son needs surgery in America, and old Ian is dying in Scotland, and Jem goes to spend the night with a trusted friend but is his father really trustworthy, or... is Jem being forced by him to time travel?
For a while it seemed as if there were going to be this one particular huge cliffhanger with Jamie and Claire - I prepared myself for it, but while it was resolved, there were issues now that Jamie is going to have to really prepare himself for... Let's just say that old plotline, the hero misses the ship and the ship sinks, makes an entrance at some point... and what would you do if you were Claire. Except you are not Claire, you're Omnipotent and Know All. Ew. (Jamie's fine, don't worry. But will he bitch slap John for what happened while they all thought Jamie lost at sea?)
And yes, a cliffhanger or two are dangling at the end - did Roger go too close to the stones? Will they find Jem?
Once again Gabaldon and Porter take me on a fantastic adventure and I really loved every minute. 4 more years! but 5 stars
Sunday, August 30, 2009
The Time Traveler's Wife: The Movie
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is one of my all-time favorite books, and I have read it at least once and also listened to the unabridged audio book at least 2 times. This was a pivotal book for me, one that got me really reading a lot while I was out in the desert. I was like other die-hard fans, awaiting the movie with both excitement and dread. Movies can and usually do alter the storyline so much that it's almost unrecognizable.
I haven't read any other reactions to the movie - no reviews, no discussions online, so my opinion comes only from my personal reaction. I loved it - I really did, but I do wonder if it might have been a different movie if certain elements had been retained.
First, I think the gist of the story was truly encompassed in the movie. The story editor(s) did a wonderful job of keeping the central theme of Henry and Clare's love first and foremost, and how the two of them dealt with his time-travel was the driving factor. But almost all of Henry's non-Clare life was left out, obviously for time/movie length reasons. The movie is only 1 hour 45 minutes long, however, so maybe they could have touched a little bit (more) on his pre-Clare life - his cynicism that shows through his relationship to his co-workers, his relationship to his other girlfriend Ingrid, even his later life relationships with Gomez and his personal "drug dealer" whose character name I've forgotten. The result is that the movie is lush and romantic, a chick-flick through and through, and the special effects and consequences of his time travel don't really go into how he had to deal with the worlds he entered, naked and unprepared.
I felt the things that they did end up changing for the movie worked well to solve issues that arise from leaving out characters and scenes - how he convinces Dr Kendrick to work with him, for instance, is changed so that the characters of Kendrick's family are never even introduced (although they appear in the movie, you don't know it unless you read the book).
The actors playing Clare (Rachel McAdams) and Henry (Eric Bana) were really, truly wonderful. Clare's obvious excitement at first meeting Henry in the library shone through her eyes - she was also wonderful in the movie The Notebook with these same expressions. She's a very fetching and engaging actor, almost as wonderful as Amy Adams, a real favorite of mine whose eyes are so expressive. I actually thought Eric Bana was almost too good looking to fit my vision of Henry, but he had me at the movie trailer. He never really got a chance to get into the cynical Henry in my mind, since that part of Henry's character isn't explored at all in the movie. The actor playing his mother was also wonderful - very warm.
I wasn't as enchanted with the little girls playing Alba, although using sisters that looked so much alike worked to show the slightly different ages. She had a very fetching look but her spoken dialogue seemed so stiff.
The storyline is that Henry has a gene that causes him to time travel without much warning and with no control. He travels both back and forward in time, but the rules of his time travel are that any amount of time can take place while he is gone and where he goes - for instance, he could only be gone 5 minutes in our present but might have been in the other time for 5 days. He goes only with his body - no clothes, not even fillings, so he arrives naked and penniless. He learns to pick locks and steal to find clothing and money to survive on in the other time, something his adult self teaches his child self early on - meaning he can be an existence of more than 1 when he travels. In fact, he watches his mother's death hundreds of times because he is a visitor there at several ages.
After his marriage to Clare, he travels back to her childhood and is an off-and-on presence in her life from her age 6 on, but when he meets her in real time - she's in her early 20s and he is 28, he has no idea who she is. It's a wonderful scene in the book and I thought it was also a wonderful movie scene as well.
I expected to cry in the movie, because in the book I cry for pages and pages every time I read it. Although I did feel fully engaged in their relationship during the movie, I wasn't moved to even tear up. I would say it was because I already knew what would happen, but I read the book/audio book 3 or 4 times, and cried every time! And in the movie, it's no secret that something is going to happen, but I just didn't get emotional about it.
So - I'm going with 5 stars - it was a wonderful movie, but with the caveat that it's a chick flick through and through, almost to the point of being sappy. The interesting time-travel aspects and the overriding negatives in Henry's life - his alcoholic father, his mother's death when he was 6, his inability to control his time travel, the horrors of his travels - how many times he was arrested, for instance, or the fact that he can't travel by airplane because it wouldn't be where he was when he left, so he would be killed in the fall on return - none of that is really brought out in the movie. Oh, yeah, sure, they show his father drinking, they show him being arrested once and then disappearing - but those are only seconds on screen, where in the book they are given much more weight.
If you're up for a chick flick, this is a wonderful fairy-tale romance - but if you're expecting a time-travel classic and special effects, stay home!
I haven't read any other reactions to the movie - no reviews, no discussions online, so my opinion comes only from my personal reaction. I loved it - I really did, but I do wonder if it might have been a different movie if certain elements had been retained.
First, I think the gist of the story was truly encompassed in the movie. The story editor(s) did a wonderful job of keeping the central theme of Henry and Clare's love first and foremost, and how the two of them dealt with his time-travel was the driving factor. But almost all of Henry's non-Clare life was left out, obviously for time/movie length reasons. The movie is only 1 hour 45 minutes long, however, so maybe they could have touched a little bit (more) on his pre-Clare life - his cynicism that shows through his relationship to his co-workers, his relationship to his other girlfriend Ingrid, even his later life relationships with Gomez and his personal "drug dealer" whose character name I've forgotten. The result is that the movie is lush and romantic, a chick-flick through and through, and the special effects and consequences of his time travel don't really go into how he had to deal with the worlds he entered, naked and unprepared.
I felt the things that they did end up changing for the movie worked well to solve issues that arise from leaving out characters and scenes - how he convinces Dr Kendrick to work with him, for instance, is changed so that the characters of Kendrick's family are never even introduced (although they appear in the movie, you don't know it unless you read the book).
The actors playing Clare (Rachel McAdams) and Henry (Eric Bana) were really, truly wonderful. Clare's obvious excitement at first meeting Henry in the library shone through her eyes - she was also wonderful in the movie The Notebook with these same expressions. She's a very fetching and engaging actor, almost as wonderful as Amy Adams, a real favorite of mine whose eyes are so expressive. I actually thought Eric Bana was almost too good looking to fit my vision of Henry, but he had me at the movie trailer. He never really got a chance to get into the cynical Henry in my mind, since that part of Henry's character isn't explored at all in the movie. The actor playing his mother was also wonderful - very warm.
I wasn't as enchanted with the little girls playing Alba, although using sisters that looked so much alike worked to show the slightly different ages. She had a very fetching look but her spoken dialogue seemed so stiff.
The storyline is that Henry has a gene that causes him to time travel without much warning and with no control. He travels both back and forward in time, but the rules of his time travel are that any amount of time can take place while he is gone and where he goes - for instance, he could only be gone 5 minutes in our present but might have been in the other time for 5 days. He goes only with his body - no clothes, not even fillings, so he arrives naked and penniless. He learns to pick locks and steal to find clothing and money to survive on in the other time, something his adult self teaches his child self early on - meaning he can be an existence of more than 1 when he travels. In fact, he watches his mother's death hundreds of times because he is a visitor there at several ages.
After his marriage to Clare, he travels back to her childhood and is an off-and-on presence in her life from her age 6 on, but when he meets her in real time - she's in her early 20s and he is 28, he has no idea who she is. It's a wonderful scene in the book and I thought it was also a wonderful movie scene as well.
I expected to cry in the movie, because in the book I cry for pages and pages every time I read it. Although I did feel fully engaged in their relationship during the movie, I wasn't moved to even tear up. I would say it was because I already knew what would happen, but I read the book/audio book 3 or 4 times, and cried every time! And in the movie, it's no secret that something is going to happen, but I just didn't get emotional about it.
So - I'm going with 5 stars - it was a wonderful movie, but with the caveat that it's a chick flick through and through, almost to the point of being sappy. The interesting time-travel aspects and the overriding negatives in Henry's life - his alcoholic father, his mother's death when he was 6, his inability to control his time travel, the horrors of his travels - how many times he was arrested, for instance, or the fact that he can't travel by airplane because it wouldn't be where he was when he left, so he would be killed in the fall on return - none of that is really brought out in the movie. Oh, yeah, sure, they show his father drinking, they show him being arrested once and then disappearing - but those are only seconds on screen, where in the book they are given much more weight.
If you're up for a chick flick, this is a wonderful fairy-tale romance - but if you're expecting a time-travel classic and special effects, stay home!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Reluctant Viking by Sandra Hill ****
Hill's writing and humor is something that takes a little bit of getting used to and a certain mood to be in - it's pretty outrageous and over-the-top. As long as I'm in that mood, I find I can enjoy the craziness of the plot and fun of the story.
This one is sort of a cross between time travel and dream fantasy. Ruby and her husband Jack have lost that loving feeling in the 20th century - and Jack has had enough and moves out. On that day, Ruby, exhausted emotionally, decides to listen to one of Jack's motivational tapes. While she is being told she can do anything she wants, live anyway she wants, she goes to sleep - and wakes up in the 10th century, in Jorvik/York England, on a Viking ship, in her 20th century t-shirt, jeans and running shoes (and 20 years younger). Once on land, the ship's owner - Thork - turns out to be the spitting image of Jack. Several of the other characters also look like her modern day neighbors and co-workers, which helps give the story it's dream fantasy characteristics.
Hill just writes away the language differences by having her understand everything they say - no trying to have it be something complicated, after all, since it's humor. But the clothing and lifestyle differences are there in spades. And Thork, her Viking hero, doesn't buy her time-travel story at all. It seems she is taken for a spy, and is headed for torture or death if she can't prove her innocence.
In her time in the pre-medieval world, she tries to get Thork to marry her - but he's sworn never to marry. He has a half-brother that is always trying to kill him, so he keeps his 2 bastard sons a secret, to protect them. He has a mistress, Linette, and eventually agrees to a political betrothal - meanwhile, while he's attracted to Ruby, he's determined not to marry her.
She soon decides/realizes she's been sent back to learn a lesson, and does whatever she can to woo Thork. She doesn't seem to know when to keep her mouth shut - she's constantly trying to modernize the locals, with talk of birth control, sexy lingerie, jogging. Stuff that in a more serious time travel novel, you'd be aiming the book at the wall, but in her humorous style you just shake your head and keep reading. She knows a little bit about the era, and has done a genealogy that includes Hrolf, a Norman royal, as an ancestor (yeah, as if) so she claims him as family for protection purposes. When she does finally meet him, she can name his children and grandchildren since they're in her genealogy chart.
She's conflicted about whether she's committing adultery to sleep with Thork while still married to Jack, but goes with the theory that Jack and Thork are one and the same. In fact, if it's just a dream, where's the adultery, right? So hers is a quest for getting back her husband - getting back that loving feeling. OK, she's pretty flighty - one minute she's telling him he is her husband, the next she's insisting they get married - one minute she's teasing and laughing, the next she's angry or crying. Lightning quick mood changes all around - it's pretty standard Hill stuff.
I think this was somewhere in the 3.5-3.75 star range for me - I liked it ok, didn't find myself laughing out loud but I was amused by the story, as outrageous as it was. It's a Viking book for the Winter 2008 challenge, and a series book for the Serial Readers Challenge. It also fits my A To Z Challenge.
This one is sort of a cross between time travel and dream fantasy. Ruby and her husband Jack have lost that loving feeling in the 20th century - and Jack has had enough and moves out. On that day, Ruby, exhausted emotionally, decides to listen to one of Jack's motivational tapes. While she is being told she can do anything she wants, live anyway she wants, she goes to sleep - and wakes up in the 10th century, in Jorvik/York England, on a Viking ship, in her 20th century t-shirt, jeans and running shoes (and 20 years younger). Once on land, the ship's owner - Thork - turns out to be the spitting image of Jack. Several of the other characters also look like her modern day neighbors and co-workers, which helps give the story it's dream fantasy characteristics.
Hill just writes away the language differences by having her understand everything they say - no trying to have it be something complicated, after all, since it's humor. But the clothing and lifestyle differences are there in spades. And Thork, her Viking hero, doesn't buy her time-travel story at all. It seems she is taken for a spy, and is headed for torture or death if she can't prove her innocence.
In her time in the pre-medieval world, she tries to get Thork to marry her - but he's sworn never to marry. He has a half-brother that is always trying to kill him, so he keeps his 2 bastard sons a secret, to protect them. He has a mistress, Linette, and eventually agrees to a political betrothal - meanwhile, while he's attracted to Ruby, he's determined not to marry her.
She soon decides/realizes she's been sent back to learn a lesson, and does whatever she can to woo Thork. She doesn't seem to know when to keep her mouth shut - she's constantly trying to modernize the locals, with talk of birth control, sexy lingerie, jogging. Stuff that in a more serious time travel novel, you'd be aiming the book at the wall, but in her humorous style you just shake your head and keep reading. She knows a little bit about the era, and has done a genealogy that includes Hrolf, a Norman royal, as an ancestor (yeah, as if) so she claims him as family for protection purposes. When she does finally meet him, she can name his children and grandchildren since they're in her genealogy chart.
She's conflicted about whether she's committing adultery to sleep with Thork while still married to Jack, but goes with the theory that Jack and Thork are one and the same. In fact, if it's just a dream, where's the adultery, right? So hers is a quest for getting back her husband - getting back that loving feeling. OK, she's pretty flighty - one minute she's telling him he is her husband, the next she's insisting they get married - one minute she's teasing and laughing, the next she's angry or crying. Lightning quick mood changes all around - it's pretty standard Hill stuff.
I think this was somewhere in the 3.5-3.75 star range for me - I liked it ok, didn't find myself laughing out loud but I was amused by the story, as outrageous as it was. It's a Viking book for the Winter 2008 challenge, and a series book for the Serial Readers Challenge. It also fits my A To Z Challenge.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Killing Time by Linda Howard ****
I listened to Killing Time on audio as I drove from my... former home... to Kerrville, Texas, where I'm in a Best Western, halfway on my trip to the next part of my life. So I used Killing Time to kill time while I drove.
This is a time-travel/suspense with a dash of romance. I haven't read any of the other reviews, but I'm guessing LH romance fans were not happy with waiting so late in the story for any romance to come about. The time travel - from the future to 2005 - isn't the usual time travel conceit (which seems to be a contemporary woman going back in time to some guy, often a Scot - am I wrong?). I didn't even know it was time travel when I started listening, so the clues, which are released slowly, had me guessing. Was she from another country? Outer space alien? I enjoyed how it came about, that speech was so different in addition to other issues like paper being precious and digital data being lost because we in 2005 thought it would last forever.
The prologue sets up the original issue: 15-year-old Knox and his dad watch the small town governors bury a time capsule in 1985 to be opened in 2085. But thirteen items are put in, not 12 as noted in the newspaper, and Knox worries and wonders about it.
Now it's 2005, 20 years later, and someone digs it up - but the 2 video tapes detective Knox looks at only show a bright light then a hole, with a second or two between. Then some weird things start happening, and people start dying, and a female FBI agent named Nikita shows up, thinking the first murder might be related to a case she's working on... in 2205. After a phone call to the agency proves she isn't an FBI agent (in 2005), Knox cuffs Nikita to a chair in advance of locking her up. She manages to get him curious about her story that she's from the future, and after a couple of tricks of 23rd century technology, he reluctantly agrees to help her.
She's here chasing an unknown time-travel bandit that she suspects might be one of her colleagues. But how does his/her appearance in 2005 relate to the disappearance of the time capsule, slashed tractor tires and three murders - as well as a suicide in 1985?
Here's the one thing about this audio: I find Joyce Bean's narration to be slightly stilted and that bothers me. I don't mean just her Nikita voice, for whom 21st century English is not her native language - I mean her narration of the POV voice too. As the book goes on, it gets less noticeable. I felt the same way about Death Angel but I loved Death Angel so much I overlooked this issue after the first several minutes. This story wasn't quite as engaging, so the over-pronunciation of consonants, and slight pauses between some words seemed more pronounced. I see that she has narrated a lot of LH books - I guess it's lucky for me I have been reading them rather than getting the audio. I do have one more to keep me company on the final leg of my trip, so we shall see.
This is a time-travel/suspense with a dash of romance. I haven't read any of the other reviews, but I'm guessing LH romance fans were not happy with waiting so late in the story for any romance to come about. The time travel - from the future to 2005 - isn't the usual time travel conceit (which seems to be a contemporary woman going back in time to some guy, often a Scot - am I wrong?). I didn't even know it was time travel when I started listening, so the clues, which are released slowly, had me guessing. Was she from another country? Outer space alien? I enjoyed how it came about, that speech was so different in addition to other issues like paper being precious and digital data being lost because we in 2005 thought it would last forever.
The prologue sets up the original issue: 15-year-old Knox and his dad watch the small town governors bury a time capsule in 1985 to be opened in 2085. But thirteen items are put in, not 12 as noted in the newspaper, and Knox worries and wonders about it.
Now it's 2005, 20 years later, and someone digs it up - but the 2 video tapes detective Knox looks at only show a bright light then a hole, with a second or two between. Then some weird things start happening, and people start dying, and a female FBI agent named Nikita shows up, thinking the first murder might be related to a case she's working on... in 2205. After a phone call to the agency proves she isn't an FBI agent (in 2005), Knox cuffs Nikita to a chair in advance of locking her up. She manages to get him curious about her story that she's from the future, and after a couple of tricks of 23rd century technology, he reluctantly agrees to help her.
She's here chasing an unknown time-travel bandit that she suspects might be one of her colleagues. But how does his/her appearance in 2005 relate to the disappearance of the time capsule, slashed tractor tires and three murders - as well as a suicide in 1985?
Here's the one thing about this audio: I find Joyce Bean's narration to be slightly stilted and that bothers me. I don't mean just her Nikita voice, for whom 21st century English is not her native language - I mean her narration of the POV voice too. As the book goes on, it gets less noticeable. I felt the same way about Death Angel but I loved Death Angel so much I overlooked this issue after the first several minutes. This story wasn't quite as engaging, so the over-pronunciation of consonants, and slight pauses between some words seemed more pronounced. I see that she has narrated a lot of LH books - I guess it's lucky for me I have been reading them rather than getting the audio. I do have one more to keep me company on the final leg of my trip, so we shall see.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Desperado by Sandra Hill ****
This is my first Sandra Hill - but not my last! Well, I glommed her in a big way with at lot from eBay, so it's a good thing I enjoyed this book.
I'd been reading that her books were funny, so I'd been looking forward to reading them one day, but had so many others in my TBR pile that I hadn't started on her yet. Then I got an offer from a PBS member to take a freebie, and the only thing I found I might want was a Sandra Hill, and of course it was the 3rd in a series, so I had to get more, and then on eBay... You get the picture? ("yes, we see" "that's when I found him, the Leader of the Pack vrrooom")
This one, by the way, is a stand alone time-travel romance. The heroine is Helen Prescott, Major Helen Prescott that is, career military. Helen is the daughter of General Prescott and engaged to be married to Elliott, also career military. Helen is the senior officer on a training mission for National Guard members fulfilling their annual 2-week obligation, and she has a group going out for a parachute drop.
In the group is Rafael Santiago. Rafe was a classmate of Helen's at military school 12 years before, but is now just keeping his National Guard status to pay back his college loans. In real life, he's an L.A. lawyer, looking to get the debts paid and live the high life. He hasn't forgotten his crush on "Prissy" Prescott - or the matching butterfly tattoos they each sport as the result of a drunken escapade in school. He pushes all her buttons when they meet again, and she (trying to forget the major crush she had on him) is all rules-and-regulations, straight backed and, well, prissy.
Then something goes wrong on their jump, and they fall out of the plane, together, with only 1 working parachute... into California 1850! Because of his resemblance to a Mexican bandito "Angel", they are picked up and dragged off to town for the reward. And because she's with him, they assume she is Angel's whore, Elena.
Ms. Hill does write hysterically funny prose - there are some real laugh-out-loud moments on every page. It isn't funny in the style of Julia Quinn or Susan Andersen, with witty dialogue and amusing situations, it's more Three Stooges/slapstick stuff - outrageous pranks and over-the-top lines. She also pulls a little on the heartstrings, and she writes smokin' hot sex too.
Rafe and Helen manage to bumble their way through life in the past, where they meet a gold prospector and hide out in his cabin. In all, they spend 3 months in 1850. Hill interjects an interesting time travel twist - apparently, the operations and subsequent scars they bore in 1997 are gone because they would have been anachronistic - and this includes Rafe's vasectomy he had because he does not want to have children. Since he only had 3 condoms in his wallet (notice his wallet, as anachronistic as that might be, managed to make the time leap...) he decides they must remain celibate in spite of their raging chemistry because he cannot risk getting her pregnant. He wants to save the condoms for their last night in 1850...
They do manage to wait for several days, but then use all 3 condoms in one memorable night. Of course, that just stirs the fires in Prissy/Helen - she never felt this way about Elliott, I can tell you that! So she decides to work on Rafe - to get him both to end the celibacy and also give up his pledge never to have children, since her greatest wish is to have children. In fact, that's why she was going to get married even though she didn't love Elliott. (I'm actually slightly uncomfortable with a heroine's nagging the hero to change his mind about having children, but it's a minor quibble in an uproariously funny book that is so unrealistic anyway.)
I sorta missed how they decided that if they could recover the parachute and jump off the cliff under which they originally landed, they would be back in 1997. But every time travel book has to have the way to get in and out of the past, so that was their way. Unfortunately, one of the original banditos ran off with it, so their quest in 1850 (besides boinking like bunnies) is to get the parachute. And while they are at it, Rafe wants to get enough gold to get him out of debt. His motivation is to be worthy of Helen - he figures she won't be interested in a poor Mexican-American lawyer, but if he was rich...
There's a strong thread in the story of the class and ethnic divides - he is painted as a kid who grew up poor, in L.A. gangs, not worthy of her upper middle class background. In 1850, it's even worse - the prejudice against him as a "greaser" is widespread. Hill pulls no punches on this - while she doesn't exactly moralize, it's blatant and it's a major part of the story.
The real story, in my mind, is the last few chapters after they get back to the future. Helen is whisked away by her father and fiancé, and Rafe is taken back to the base and grilled for hours about his involvement in their disappearance. In 1997, they were only gone 24 hours, and each of them remembers the time travel past slowly. Rafe tries to contact her, but cannot find any phone numbers for her. Then he goes to Mexico to help his younger brother who is in prison, and ends up imprisoned alongside him. A photo in the paper of Rafe and his sister going to Mexico is shown to Helen, who jumps to the conclusion that his sister is instead his girlfriend, and when she doesn't hear from him, she agrees to go ahead and marry Elliott (after breaking off their engagement right after her return from 1850).
Well, any more details about this part gets me into major spoiler terroritory. I was really enjoying this book as a 5 star read until this part and then Helen stepped slightly into Too Annoying and Almost Too Stupid To Live Land. While I still really liked it, after that it dipped into 4 stars for me. But I'm going to keep reading because I know I'll probably live a little longer on the belly laughs this book gave me.
I'd been reading that her books were funny, so I'd been looking forward to reading them one day, but had so many others in my TBR pile that I hadn't started on her yet. Then I got an offer from a PBS member to take a freebie, and the only thing I found I might want was a Sandra Hill, and of course it was the 3rd in a series, so I had to get more, and then on eBay... You get the picture? ("yes, we see" "that's when I found him, the Leader of the Pack vrrooom")
This one, by the way, is a stand alone time-travel romance. The heroine is Helen Prescott, Major Helen Prescott that is, career military. Helen is the daughter of General Prescott and engaged to be married to Elliott, also career military. Helen is the senior officer on a training mission for National Guard members fulfilling their annual 2-week obligation, and she has a group going out for a parachute drop.
In the group is Rafael Santiago. Rafe was a classmate of Helen's at military school 12 years before, but is now just keeping his National Guard status to pay back his college loans. In real life, he's an L.A. lawyer, looking to get the debts paid and live the high life. He hasn't forgotten his crush on "Prissy" Prescott - or the matching butterfly tattoos they each sport as the result of a drunken escapade in school. He pushes all her buttons when they meet again, and she (trying to forget the major crush she had on him) is all rules-and-regulations, straight backed and, well, prissy.
Then something goes wrong on their jump, and they fall out of the plane, together, with only 1 working parachute... into California 1850! Because of his resemblance to a Mexican bandito "Angel", they are picked up and dragged off to town for the reward. And because she's with him, they assume she is Angel's whore, Elena.
Ms. Hill does write hysterically funny prose - there are some real laugh-out-loud moments on every page. It isn't funny in the style of Julia Quinn or Susan Andersen, with witty dialogue and amusing situations, it's more Three Stooges/slapstick stuff - outrageous pranks and over-the-top lines. She also pulls a little on the heartstrings, and she writes smokin' hot sex too.
Rafe and Helen manage to bumble their way through life in the past, where they meet a gold prospector and hide out in his cabin. In all, they spend 3 months in 1850. Hill interjects an interesting time travel twist - apparently, the operations and subsequent scars they bore in 1997 are gone because they would have been anachronistic - and this includes Rafe's vasectomy he had because he does not want to have children. Since he only had 3 condoms in his wallet (notice his wallet, as anachronistic as that might be, managed to make the time leap...) he decides they must remain celibate in spite of their raging chemistry because he cannot risk getting her pregnant. He wants to save the condoms for their last night in 1850...
They do manage to wait for several days, but then use all 3 condoms in one memorable night. Of course, that just stirs the fires in Prissy/Helen - she never felt this way about Elliott, I can tell you that! So she decides to work on Rafe - to get him both to end the celibacy and also give up his pledge never to have children, since her greatest wish is to have children. In fact, that's why she was going to get married even though she didn't love Elliott. (I'm actually slightly uncomfortable with a heroine's nagging the hero to change his mind about having children, but it's a minor quibble in an uproariously funny book that is so unrealistic anyway.)
I sorta missed how they decided that if they could recover the parachute and jump off the cliff under which they originally landed, they would be back in 1997. But every time travel book has to have the way to get in and out of the past, so that was their way. Unfortunately, one of the original banditos ran off with it, so their quest in 1850 (besides boinking like bunnies) is to get the parachute. And while they are at it, Rafe wants to get enough gold to get him out of debt. His motivation is to be worthy of Helen - he figures she won't be interested in a poor Mexican-American lawyer, but if he was rich...
There's a strong thread in the story of the class and ethnic divides - he is painted as a kid who grew up poor, in L.A. gangs, not worthy of her upper middle class background. In 1850, it's even worse - the prejudice against him as a "greaser" is widespread. Hill pulls no punches on this - while she doesn't exactly moralize, it's blatant and it's a major part of the story.
The real story, in my mind, is the last few chapters after they get back to the future. Helen is whisked away by her father and fiancé, and Rafe is taken back to the base and grilled for hours about his involvement in their disappearance. In 1997, they were only gone 24 hours, and each of them remembers the time travel past slowly. Rafe tries to contact her, but cannot find any phone numbers for her. Then he goes to Mexico to help his younger brother who is in prison, and ends up imprisoned alongside him. A photo in the paper of Rafe and his sister going to Mexico is shown to Helen, who jumps to the conclusion that his sister is instead his girlfriend, and when she doesn't hear from him, she agrees to go ahead and marry Elliott (after breaking off their engagement right after her return from 1850).
Well, any more details about this part gets me into major spoiler terroritory. I was really enjoying this book as a 5 star read until this part and then Helen stepped slightly into Too Annoying and Almost Too Stupid To Live Land. While I still really liked it, after that it dipped into 4 stars for me. But I'm going to keep reading because I know I'll probably live a little longer on the belly laughs this book gave me.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Time Enough For Love by Suzanne Brockmann ***
This is the 2nd story in the 2fer with Stand-in Groom. I got this book for this story, a time-travel novella I read for the Read Around the Genre challenge. It's not like I haven't read (and loved!) lots of time-travel before, like Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series (several times, in hard copy and audio), Audrey Nifenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife (another favorite), and a some Jude Deveraux time-travel stories.
The theories authors develop for time travel are truly fascinating and I like thinking and pondering how time travel would actually impact us. Is it the infinite paths theory? Will the person travel with or without clothes? Is it genetic, or will it require a machine, a drug, a lightning strike, an alignment of the planets? Will you remember both the past and the current time? Will your body still be in the current time? Is there only 1 body, so you could never go into a time where you already existed? Could there be multiple instances of the traveler in one timeframe? Outlander and Time Traveler's Wife had it be a genetic trait, but one took the path of a disease or syndrome that took the traveler unawares (TTW), while the other required outside events, like time/place/gems (Outlander). Would the traveler be able to impact the future and change history or would events always happen the same way - the traveler always did go back in time, there was never a past without the traveler in it?
In this story, the hero comes back from 7 years in the future - and he missed his target time by a few years. His past self, 7 years younger, hasn't yet solved the time travel equations, and the woman that just died in his arms in his present hasn't even met him yet. This theory involves a machine, one that is funded and then manipulated by a nefarious organization that plans to use it to overthrow the US government. Chuck (future guy) has to convince Maggie that he's not crazy and that she must find his present self, Charles, and convince Charles not to go forward with his time travel work. But in the meantime, he's just as in love with her as he was in his own time - a time where she had met him, but broken up with him and married someone else. In his own time, he was too wrapped up in his goal - to create the time machine - to open up emotionally to her, and that wasn't enough for a relationship for her.
But this Maggie doesn't know that - and she falls in love with him, as Chuck, his future self. Unfortunately, Chuck was followed into the past by members of the Bad Guys group and they now have about 72 hours to convince Charles to change the future by giving up on developing his time travel machine. And changing the future means Chuck, the one who came to the past to save them, and the one Maggie's in love with, will not exist.
Brockmann does come up with a new twist in time travel she calls Double Memories - the person will remember both how it happened the first time as well as how it's happening now. This includes Chuck being able to remember as a memory things that are happening to Charles as they happen - a method Maggie uses to communicate to Chuck when she's alone with Charles.
The one thing that bothers Charles the most is knowing that Maggie loves Chuck and not him - he can't seem to reconcile that he is Chuck as well. Maggie also struggles with this until she does realize it's Charles, not Chuck, that finally opens up to her and tells her things he has never revealed to anyone else.
The whole double memories thing, however, is confounding - it has to assume only 1 person has access to time travel, because if several people did, then we are talking about multiple memories for everyone on earth. If what Charles did changes everything - time travel no longer exists, there is no bomb in the future, then basically every person alive on earth now has double memories. So if someone else develops time travel in the second timeline, then everyone will have as many memories as there are changes in the future. Theoretically, you could say there was a timeline where time travel did exist and everyone went forward from there for millenia, then a timeline where it didn't exist plus any other timelines from the first timeline since time travel still existed in that one... Mindboggling.
It was a light read, nothing too deep and unfortunately not that moving either. I guess I need more than 175 pages to get emotionally involved myself. 3 stars.
The theories authors develop for time travel are truly fascinating and I like thinking and pondering how time travel would actually impact us. Is it the infinite paths theory? Will the person travel with or without clothes? Is it genetic, or will it require a machine, a drug, a lightning strike, an alignment of the planets? Will you remember both the past and the current time? Will your body still be in the current time? Is there only 1 body, so you could never go into a time where you already existed? Could there be multiple instances of the traveler in one timeframe? Outlander and Time Traveler's Wife had it be a genetic trait, but one took the path of a disease or syndrome that took the traveler unawares (TTW), while the other required outside events, like time/place/gems (Outlander). Would the traveler be able to impact the future and change history or would events always happen the same way - the traveler always did go back in time, there was never a past without the traveler in it?
In this story, the hero comes back from 7 years in the future - and he missed his target time by a few years. His past self, 7 years younger, hasn't yet solved the time travel equations, and the woman that just died in his arms in his present hasn't even met him yet. This theory involves a machine, one that is funded and then manipulated by a nefarious organization that plans to use it to overthrow the US government. Chuck (future guy) has to convince Maggie that he's not crazy and that she must find his present self, Charles, and convince Charles not to go forward with his time travel work. But in the meantime, he's just as in love with her as he was in his own time - a time where she had met him, but broken up with him and married someone else. In his own time, he was too wrapped up in his goal - to create the time machine - to open up emotionally to her, and that wasn't enough for a relationship for her.
But this Maggie doesn't know that - and she falls in love with him, as Chuck, his future self. Unfortunately, Chuck was followed into the past by members of the Bad Guys group and they now have about 72 hours to convince Charles to change the future by giving up on developing his time travel machine. And changing the future means Chuck, the one who came to the past to save them, and the one Maggie's in love with, will not exist.
Brockmann does come up with a new twist in time travel she calls Double Memories - the person will remember both how it happened the first time as well as how it's happening now. This includes Chuck being able to remember as a memory things that are happening to Charles as they happen - a method Maggie uses to communicate to Chuck when she's alone with Charles.
The one thing that bothers Charles the most is knowing that Maggie loves Chuck and not him - he can't seem to reconcile that he is Chuck as well. Maggie also struggles with this until she does realize it's Charles, not Chuck, that finally opens up to her and tells her things he has never revealed to anyone else.
The whole double memories thing, however, is confounding - it has to assume only 1 person has access to time travel, because if several people did, then we are talking about multiple memories for everyone on earth. If what Charles did changes everything - time travel no longer exists, there is no bomb in the future, then basically every person alive on earth now has double memories. So if someone else develops time travel in the second timeline, then everyone will have as many memories as there are changes in the future. Theoretically, you could say there was a timeline where time travel did exist and everyone went forward from there for millenia, then a timeline where it didn't exist plus any other timelines from the first timeline since time travel still existed in that one... Mindboggling.
It was a light read, nothing too deep and unfortunately not that moving either. I guess I need more than 175 pages to get emotionally involved myself. 3 stars.
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