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Monday, October 03, 2011
The Houses of Time by Jamil Nasir
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Overall, an interesting book that purports to tackle the question of time travel. Sort of. It's more like The Elegant Universe take on time travel, speculating infinite realities and positing that there are some humans capable of shifting between the universes and into different parts of the time-space continuum, ergo time traveling within your own life like Dr. Sam Becket on Quantum Leap.
An easy read, too.
There's a lot left on the table with this given the secretive nature of the time travelers. And, there's no real sense of thrilling drama at work, pushing the story forward. The characters are all likable enough, even if most of them seem underwritten. You get no sense of "there" with most of them.
I thought Nasir should have made "the Church" aspect of the story more significant and detailed, since the idea of finding the parallel universe path to heaven and delivering an actual prayer to it is central to the story. Oddly, that crucial element of the story is really only hinted at, and you never get an idea of what the prayer is. And, by the novel's conclusion, it's a bit frustrating that you don't get to see what the "heaven" universe looks like (it's called something else in the book, like The Ultimate Source or whatever).
I mean, you write a book about preparing a guy to go to heaven and talk to God - and then find out he did it - you'd like to see at least a bit of that. That's the story, folks, the time travel practicing is just gravy.
All of that said, I picked it up for $1 at The Dollar Store, so it more than made up for the expense.
View all my reviewsLabels: Random Book Reviews
William Young 5:19 PM #0 comments
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