A Shortcut in Time
|
|
|
A Shortcut in Time
by Authors:
Charles Dickinson
Released: 01 January, 2004
ISBN: 0765306395
Paperback
Sales Rank: 83607
|
List price:
$14.95
Our price:
$10.17
(You save: $4.78)
|
|
|
|
| Book > A Shortcut in Time > Customer Reviews: |
|
|
|
|
Average Customer Rating: 
A Shortcut in Time >
Customer Review #1:
 Be careful where you run in the rain . . .
There are basically two kinds of time travel stories. Theres the Sprague DeCamp/Robert Silverberg kind of story, full of large, historymaking events, and the Time Patrol to protect the continuum, and knowledgeable time travelers making things happen. And theres the Jack Finney kind of story, about ordinary people dealing with small-scale events in out-of-the-way towns and trying hard simply to cope with things that happen to them willy-nilly. Dickinson has written a warm, funny, affecting example of the second kind of story. Josh Winkler is a somewhat feckless artist living in Euclid Heights, Illinois, where crosswise shortcut paths known as "perp walks" disturb the towns gridded layout. Hes married to a doctor, the sister of his brother Kurts best friend when they were kids, before her brother drowned in the town pool and Kurt suffered permanent brain damage. Their fifteen-year-old daughter, Penny -- the best-drawn character in the book, I think -- is about all thats still keeping them together. Then Josh gets caught riding his bike in a storm on one of the perp walks and is tossed fifteen minutes into the past. But young Constance, who appears soon after, has a worse time of it, dragged into our own era from 1908. Can she get back? Can she adapt to our world? And what happens if someone else becomes an unintentional time traveler? Dickinsons style is quiet and thoughtful; he almost lets the story tell itself. An excellent piece of work.
A Shortcut in Time >
Customer Review #2:
 A shortcut in plot?
The author definitely had some fun with the concept of time travel and created a fast-paced and entertaining story, which didnt get bogged down in concerns over the intracacies of time travel and its paradoxes or explanations as to how the the characters were able to skip so freely through time. However, I agree with many of the other reviewers that the ending was absolutely inexcusable. Ive never encountered such a sudden and abrupt ending. I had to track down another copy of the book to ensure that I wasnt just missing pages. I can only assume that the author simply fell through a time hole himself and wasnt around the finish the book. The characters are left hanging without any resolution or explanation. While I appreciate that not every story has a happy ending, at a minimum, I expected an ending of some sort. Readers of this book will definitely feel cheated at the "conclusion".
A Shortcut in Time >
Customer Review #3:
 Nothing Like Killing a Decent Conceit with a Terrible Ending
I am really intrigued by this concept, and I must say that after the midpoint of the book, I was taking longer lunch breaks just to finish it.But. The first half really dragged for having such an interesting idea, they never REALLY explain how they are sometimes able to directly influence what time they end up in, and it just seemed like a lot of slogging. Worse still, the ending is both disappointingly grim AND decidedly abrupt. I kept thinking that perhaps some pages were missng form the book becuase it just ended. I wanted to like this book. I know the suburbs he talks about and lives in, and I enjoy a good time travel book. But the ending was inexcusable. Ive never been more upset after finishing a novel.
|
|
A Shortcut in Time >
Related Products
|
The Man Who Folded Himself
|
The Mirror
|
Time Stand Still: A Darren Camponi Novel
|
Replay
|
Past Imperfect (Daw Book Collectors)
|
TIME AND AGAIN
|
Twilight
|
Timecrossd: A Love Story Out of Time
|
About Time: 12 Short Stories
|
FROM TIME TO TIME
|
|
|
|
|