TUESDAY TEASER

This meme, originally hosted by The Purple Booker asks that readers copy a sentence or two at random from a current read that might tease readers into choosing their book for their TBR list. Here is my Tuesday Teaser (8/13/19) from Amy Harmon’s What the Wind Knows:

“The wind and the water already know…The wind you hear is the same that has always blown. The rain is the same rain that falls. Over and over, round and round, like a great circle. The wind and the waves have been present since time began.”

What better way to express how a character travels back in time by setting out in a boat, coming up upon men from another time who shoot her, and nearly drowns before she is rescued and wakes up when her grandfather is a young boy in Ireland. This is definitely a “darned good read.”

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THE TIME TRAVELERS WIFE: A Short Review

This novel by Audrey Niffeneger, published in 2003, has become a frequent choice of book clubs since its publication. It was the author’s debut novel, and a fine one at that.

First Thoughts:  Judging from the cover and the thought of “time travel,” I expected a story of how a person, or a team of persons, travelled back or forward in time, experienced adventures and perhaps had to accept consequences for inadvertently causing changes in history or the future of the earth.  Was I ever wrong!  In the first place, Henry De Table, the time traveler of the title traveled involuntarily, spontaneously, and ended up naked, somewhere in time. It caused many misadventures often leaving him beat up, bruised, and sometimes badly injured. This “twist” to time travel made for a complicated, complex non-traditional love story.

Characters: Henry’s soul mate, Claire Abshire, meets him first as a young girl; she around six or eight; he a middle-aged man. Her choice to marry Henry, accepting the strangeness of their marriage, where he might suddenly disappear, was a life-altering one.

Style: Flashbacks, obviously, and jumping around in time are the structure of this novel.  However, the reader is never confused as to when and where the characters are because the author has provided at the head of each section, the character speaking and his/her age at the time of the scene. Surprisingly, with all the jumping around in time, the novel is never disjointed or confusing.

Overall Impressions: This was a darned good read which plumbed the depths of the reader’s emotions: incredible joy, aching sorrow, frightening uncertainty, and many more emotions. I would definitely give this novel five points out of five points and would recommend it to every reader.

ACCEPTABLE TIME by Madeline L’Engle: A Review

Polly, daughter of Meg Murry of A Wrinkle in Time, and neice of Sandy and Denys Murray of Many Waters, is spending time with her mother’s parents in New England. A neighbor, “Bishop Nase” manages to open a Time Gate which transports individuals back in time.  Both the Star Gazing Stone and the Old Wall act as portals for Polly on several occasions.  Meeting Anaral, a Druid who travels back and forth, and other characters from the time period, Polly and her cowardly friend Zak manage to become stuck 3,000 years before the present.

Back in time, Polly finds herself with The People of the Wind, and later captured by their enemies The People Across the Lake. They are besieged with drought and believe that a blood sacrifice is necessary to bring rain to their land and tribe.

Although the novel is not traditionally religious, it is spiritual and offers something for both believers and non-believers.

 

Just One Damned Thing After Another: A Review

The title comes from the quote (source unknown) “Love is just one damned thing after another,” and Jodi Taylor, the author adapts the quote at the front to, “History is just one damned thing after another” in her first book in the “Chronicles of St. Mary’s” series dealing with romance and time travel. My first note I wrote about this novel is “I want to read the sequel”, which I knew had been published summer of 2016.

The cover of One Damned Thing …describes it as “A carnival ride through laughter and tears, with a bit of time travel thrown in for spice” (Publishers Weekly), an accurate description. St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research has an unassuming exterior, but inside, the researchers, historians, and technicians don’t time travel but “investigate major historical events in contemporary time.”

Max, Madeline Maxwell, PhD is the main character, best described as “a disaster magnet.”and her team go here and there in time, first on training missions, then back to the time of the dinosaurs, where the action really gets hairy as the team encounters other time travelers, not all of them good guys.   All of the characters are well drawn, and the twists of plot satisfy even this reader who is so fond of them. There is plenty of action as witnessed in this quote from the book describing a raptor attack on some time travelers:

“I watched as the first two (raptors) leaped in a pincer movement… and it’s true, they don’t wait until their prey  is dead before eating.  I watched them rip and tear…I watched them snarl and growl and gobble.” This is the most violent and most graphic scene, I have read, fully worthy of any Jurassic Park movie.

The book series, “St. Mary’s,” would make a great TV series.