David Gittlin’s TIME TERMINUS (Expect the Unexpected) is a novella with a clever premise, with time travel used for nefarious purposes and a daring race to stop a criminal. Both hero and villain are well-developed and contain multiple dimensions, and their true characters emerge naturally as the story goes on. The plot is surprisingly twisty for such a short book, with dark backstories and hidden talents coming to light. The love affair between the middle-aged lawyer Issac and his artist girlfriend Anna is sweet, complex, and very human, and the reader can’t help rooting for them. The final resolution between them is gently bittersweet but hopeful at the same time, not a perfect happy ending but with substantial promise for a good future.
The plot raises some interesting questions with respect to time travel and its paradoxes and conflicts, not all of which the story has time to answer. In fact, the book’s main flaw is that it is too short to for Gittlin to really explore the intriguing ideas it raises thoroughly enough (most obviously, the question of how, after time has been altered, one person in the timeline can remember the past timeline and its events). The author, to his credit, does manage to answer some important questions, though, in ways that make reasonable sense given the premise of the book, and from the perspective of an intelligent layperson, the science seems to be plausible with only a small amount of hand-waving. More problematically, though, the novella also lacks space to build enough suspense and danger to make the action sequences truly exciting, or to raise any reasonable doubt that our heroes will succeed in their rescue attempt.
Most of the book is devoted to buildup of the plot’s key revelation, and everything after that feels almost anticlimactic. The heroes plan too well, in a sense, when a truly suspenseful novel requires them to overlook some things, make a few errors, give the villain a chance for a creative and dramatic reaction that can only be overcome at the last minute. It’s certainly believable, given that they are two men of quite high intelligence and good common sense, but it makes for a less suspenseful story. Still, it’s a clever little book that is certainly worth the short time investment needed to read and enjoy it.
David Gittlin’s TIME TERMINUS (Expect the Unexpected) offers a clever twist on time travel stories and murder mysteries alike, and adds a sweet and poignant love story to boot.
~Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader