[ad#books]
[starreview]
Classification: Anthology
This is an anthology of short time travel stories. I’ve reviewed several such anthologies so far, and this one is the worst – it definitely did not live up to my expectations. For starters, most stories were either unoriginal, or had a promising start but the ending turned out to be completely predictable. An addition factor is the fact that most stories were inherently very boring.
One of the things I like about time travel stories is that the ending has the potential of being very surprising – very subtle. Stories that fall under this sub-genre often have so many ways to end up with an unpredictable punchline . Even after reading so many of these novels, still quite often I’m surprised; this tends to happen when the story is smart and well written. Therefore, when not a single story in a collection of time travel short stories manages to surprise me – well – I believe I can safely say the anthology is not one going to win any prizes soon.
There was only one story which was pretty decent. “Blood Trail”, introduces us to a police officer who is sent back in time in order to find the identity of a serial killer. The catch is that the officer is not allowed to change anything, but he can try and gather information about the killer which will enable catching him in the present. A secondary quirk in the story is that the officer has some psychological issues.. more specifically, he really can’t handle the sight of people being killed in front of his eyes. This was my favorite story in the anthology.
In summary:Â Mediocre and Below. If you have nothing else on your list, or if you absolutely must go for every time travel novel you can find, go for it.. However, come with low expectations: don’t expect anything above average, and most stories won’t even live up to that.
Link to the book’s details on Amazon.com
If you’ve read this book, please vote below: