Review: Some time slippages on an otherwise amusing tale
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 8, 2014
In some respects, this is a good read, but there were some serious inconsistencies and outright errors that marred the effect.  In the first place, 55 years is likely insufficient to clean up the air and water enough for a person in 2066 to be unable to stand the air in 2011, but I could live with that. Stench enough is insufficient to cause the problems used as the justification for reaching third-hand into the past.  A city without care as to its sanitation will reek, but in time you'd become used to it.  The only limiting factor would be oxygen levels.  The story claims that if you went to 2066, you'd be as if you were high on a mountain, the air thin.  That would be possible only if oxygen levels had been severely reduced, implying, incidentally, that 2066 had far, far worse problems than stinky old 2011, let alone reeky 1888.  The second problem was in an apparent ignorance of the basic biology of Theodore Roosevelt.  The premise is that he lost his nerve on San Juan Hill because he never met Bat Masterson, but Roosevelt was introduced to Bat Masterson only in 1902, during Teddy's first presidential term, so the inference makes no sense, any more than does having as powerful a personality as Lincoln be unable to deliver his Gettysburg address because he was in a funk.  That one I'll spot.  I would point out, however, that, were I the 2066 watchers, I would be far, far from delighted in Ted's performance, since he caused the problem he 'solved' at Ford's Theater by giving details of technical developments away, thereby causing as great or greater a problem than the one he was sent to solve by covering for a disabled Lincoln.  I can overlook minor discrepancies such as the Lincoln episode, but the total lack of research involved in misplacing Roosevelt's association with Bat Masterson, let alone a complete misreading of what made TR what he was, is less than acceptable.  Roosevelt's drive and dynamism was the product of how he grew up and what he was, not the result of a meeting with a bold gunfighter in his salad days in the Wild West.  It is okay to reinterpret history for an alternative slant, but one must not ignore the rather obvious facts to do so.  I think it unlikely that I will read further books in the series if this is the best he can do in the first one.