Review: Books One and Two better; Book Three, not so much
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 8, 2014
Alex Myers returns to his Butterfly Effect alternate universe of the 1800s in this installment of Time Change, but to a large extent, he's exhausted the plot and there isn't much left in the gas tank.This tome, even more than the first two, seem to have a sense that Myers paints himself in a corner and then simply writes a line or two of text to get him out of what should be a very complex situation involving time travel, alternate US history, and the consequences of wanting to "do the right thing." In many time travel books, the ultimate fantasy is preventing Kennedy's assassination; in Myers' series, the ultimate fantasy is preventing the Civil War and extending civil rights about 100 years earlier than actually happened. The result, in Myers' books? Um...presidential assassinations.Some of this could work if the main character was someone you could root for. Jack Riggs is simultaneously an extremely intelligent, prescient, and heart-of-gold time traveler, AND one of the most caricatured, adolescent "boys" when it comes to relationships that I've ever seen in print. Seriously, he comes across as a 14-year-old whenever he sees a woman.There is too much matter-of-fact explanation as to why things have changed in the alternate timeline of the 1800s, and Myers gets obsessed with obscure details. Example: He very carefully explains that the telephone (invented decades earlier than in "our" timeline thanks to Jack Riggs) has local and "long way" calling, takes quite a bit of keystrokes to get that little nuance perfectly clear...and then within a few paragraphs goes right back to referring to "long distance" calls. Weird.Even worse, there continues to be a drought of good editing in this series. Homonym errors are as ubiquitous as famous authors, politicians and inventors of the time. In Chapter One, within the first page we're confronted with an elixir contained in a "vile." This poor respect for the English language helps to undermine the writing style as much as the poor characterization and the too-coincidental assembly of all the country's most famous people under the same roof for yet another assassination attempt.Myers says he has a Book Four in the works. I might grab it out of curiosity, but not because the story is compelling or riveting.