Good thing I do not judge a book by its cover, especially when it’s on the Kindle and it does not have a cover. I looked it up on Amazon. I’d almost be embarrassed being caught reading a hardcopy of Timelines in public with this cover art.

I wonder who Kelsey Giosso is, who got credit for the cover art? It makes the book look cartoonish, childish and hokey.

Notwithstanding the awful cover art, this is hands down the best time travel book, alien book and science fiction book I have read in a very long time. It appears to be Bob Blink’s first novel (at least I can’t find much about him online – yet). That will change.

Blink is a first-rate story-teller, who captured me with the first sentence and didn’t let me go for 598 pages. Unlike in other first books and particularly first science fiction tomes, where the action often floods and ebbs between frantic movement and boredom, in Timelines, things move along at a steady and pace, consistent and almost with a cadence.

Jim Crampton, the main narrator, is a science type who discovers a mysterious cave entrance while hiking outside Seattle. The cave turns out to be the entry portal to a large and advanced complex that allows him to travel through time, as far back as 52,000 years ago, and as far into the future as the year 7100.  For a year or so, it remains his secret. Eventually, he brings in other people and develops a team of experts that includes scientists, historians, computer experts and physicists who help study the technology. It turns out the time complex was established by an alien race with a far advanced technology. They try to understand the motives of the aliens, and as the story progresses, it appears more and more sinister.

Eventually, they decide to bring in the U.S. government for help. As they suspected, however, the government starts messing things up.

Minor spoiler alert: It’s funny to see how the U.S. government (the action plays in 2006), the various branches of the military and the bureaucracy jostle to get control of the technology away from Crampton and his team. I was amused how the U.S. bungles things. When the team approaches the Israelis for help, they don’t fool around, they get the job done Israeli-style, and eventually come through. The U.S. is doing nothing but messing things up.

Timelines spurred my imagination. At times I would put the book down, stare into space and just marvel at the possibilities. There are aliens involved, and there is no question about what they look like and what they can do. The time travel concepts are solid and well explained. This book shows well what just might happen if humans stumbled upon advanced technology that they don’t understand but by some coincident got a hold of.

There are a very few things I would suggest the author should correct: He overuses two trite expressions. First, one character or another keeps bringing somebody “up to speed” when the need to inform arises. People are being “brought up to speed” at least thirty times in the book to the point where the reader is tired of the phrase. Second, characters always seems to “grab” their food. They grab sandwiches on the way out, they grab a burger and fries, they grab a quick dinner. Too much grabbing of food.  There are also the usual Kindle editing errors, with word endings wrong or dropped off, that I would expect an editor to find before the book is sold – my usual Kindle criticism.

This book is a well-woven tale of complex plot twists and new surprises every few pages. It is told at just the right pace, the right mix of dialog and narrative, and it is completely satisfying. Too many science fiction books leave things unanswered and open, angling for sequel opportunities or simply getting out easy by employing science dei-ex-machina. Blink writes a conclusion that makes sense, ties off all the subplots, accounts for all the characters and makes sure that the all lived happily ever after.

Timelines is a formidably satisfying science fiction time travel story.

Rating: ***

I think of Card as a science fiction writer primarily, but he writes fantasy stories very well. Pathfinder is listed as a Young Adults book. Three of the main protagonists are kids aged 13 to 16, and the writing reminded me of Stephen King.

There are many flaws with this book, but several overarching facts made me love and savor it. First, I can’t get enough time travel books (just check my blog category for that), and Pathfinder is, above all, a story where time travel contributes to the plot in a major way. Second, I really like “ark” stories, where humans leave Earth for whatever reason in a one-way spaceship on a mission to colonize another world. Most of such stories focus on the building of the ark, the departure, and sometimes the trip itself. I have found myself yearning for an ark story that continues when the ark actually arrives at its destination, be it after a few years of travel including hyperspace jumps, or after generations of ship-bound human evolution.

Pathfinder describes the journey of the ark, albeit in an abbreviated and not well-developed format, and also focuses on what happens when a ship arrives at a target planet and colonizes it.

I will be careful not to place spoilers into my discussion here, but Card describes a human society that has developed after an interstellar trip on an alien and terra-formed world over a period of 12,000 years. Of course, the people have no memory of where they came from. There are religions and legends that developed.

Human “modern” history starts about 5,000 years ago, when writing was first developed and the first permanent monuments were built. For us on Earth, 2,000 year old events , say the Roman times, seem truly ancient history. But then, the pyramids were already 2,500 years old when the A.D. calendar started, ancient even then. 12,000 years is truly a long time for human society development and history.

We meet the main characters dealing with complications in their society after 12,000 years of isolated human society on an alien planet. Card gets us into the heads of the kids and their adult companions. The kids have “gifts” which allow them to manipulate space-time in unexpected ways. This brings the fantasy part into the story.

Card is not a strong hard science fiction writer. He does some hard science fiction here, but he does not do it convincingly. He discusses issues of terraforming a planet, but he glosses over so many details that it does not seem credible. Similarly, he describes a hyper-space jump of the ship, touching on hard science fiction concepts, but leaving them unresolved. But neither bothered me much. I just wanted the story to move on, and I suspect that’s what Card had in mind. He wanted to move along the plot, give the reader just enough background to figure out what was going on, but he wanted to focus on the time travel aspects of the plot.

That, too, is acceptable. There was just one problem: In the acknowledgement section, which read like an afterword, he actually finds a need to describe the science once more to inform the reader of what actually happened.  This tells me that Card himself realized that he didn’t do an adequate job telling the story in the first place.

Finally, the ending was a non-ending. Card just stopped writing. Clearly there is a sequel coming, because otherwise there would be too many questions unresolved. Of course, Card makes this statement about Pathfinder in his blog:

It’s the first volume of a saga about a young man, Rigg, who discovers that he and his friend Umbo have the power to fiddle with time. He also learns that he’s a member of the royal family, carried off as a baby and raised in a remote forest.

Overall, Pathfinder was a gripping work. I would not classify it as a Young Adults book. It’s classic science fiction / fantasy. It’s classic Orson Scott Card.

Rating: ***