This follow-up to Steven Bereznai’s Generation Manifestation quickly dispatches the protagonist of the first book, Caitlin, by the hand of one of her former classmates, Doctor BetterThan (a.k.a. Dr. N, Mister Know, Herr Intellekt) and continues his amusing story of time travel and world domination. Happily certain that he’s destroyed all life on the planet, including the DNA regulars and Supergenic elite detailed in Book One, the good doctor settles down to write his memoir only to find that something—or someone—has eluded his brilliantly villainous grasp. A new fight to the death ensues, but the increasingly techno-marvelous battles reveal what Doctor BetterThan has feared all along: he may not really want to be the only human left on Earth.
For any reader with a sense of humor and an appreciation for the glories of bone-deep geekiness, THE TIMEMATICIAN is your book. From the first few paragraphs, the transparency of Doctor BT’s bravado is both laugh out loud funny and exquisitely painful; we are dying to know the backstory of a protagonist who demands the pronunciation of his laboratory be “la’bore-ah:tore-ee” because “What are we, Neanderthals? Respect the middle O!” The doctor’s motivations and desires are spun out slowly over the arc of a story packed with action, reversals, and descriptions of technology so carefully and deliciously crafted, one could make a meal out of a single page. THE TIMEMATICIAN begins with a dizzyingly fun play-and-replay of a single scene that appears to conclude with Doctor BetterThan’s airtight utter world destruction, if it weren’t for that one pesky reference to a mysterious “she” and that “you’ll meet her in the Asylum”. The reader is captivated by the specter of a rogue entity in a location that the very mention of makes Doctor BT quiver, and not all the self-aggrandizing rhetoric and gluttonous Twinkie feasts in his new world can shake the sense that it’s all about to go terribly wrong.
Enter the nemesis: Mairi Lin Monroe, a metallic pink robot with an hourglass figure and blond wig. Tempting as it is to explain how she fits into the story, there will be no spoilers here; suffice it to say that Mairi Lin is not just a robot and she’s not the only one. But her wit and brains are an undeniable match for the good doctor and their escalating battles threaten everything he believes about himself and the world he’s created. The cultural references to “Some Like it Hot” and “Lost in Space” are pitch-perfect; will a technological bombshell and present-day Dr. Smith destroy one another or fall in love and somehow make hybrid babies? This is the question that Steven Bereznai appears to answer repeatedly, but every time the reader is certain the story is going one way, it veers off in a new, mind-bending direction.
Wildly entertaining, THE TIMEMATICIAN lives up to its title; time, mathematics, and magic, with a healthy dose of hilarity and a vulnerable soul.
~Shari Simpson for IndieReader