Review: Time traveling mystery, ahoy!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 27, 2014
SUMMARYThe story revolves around Akalya the Harekaiian, a calculating woman who belongs to a group of people that possesses the inexplicable ability to bend space and time. One day, living unobtrusively among us ordinary and unknowing muggles, Akalya witnesses some of her own people being kidnapped by mysterious men dressed in black. Upon discovering that these kidnappers have found a way to stop her people from escaping using their powers, Akalya takes it upon herself to rescue the captives, using her own abilities to warp space and time. This takes the reader on a dizzying and delightful quest not just from place to place, but also from year to year, date to date, and mystery to mystery, all as Akalya races to discover and stop who is targeting her people--before they can turn their sights on her.THE GOOD...1) Quality writingThis deserves first mention because, boy, this writer is truly a writer. Flowing words, well-honed and interesting description, perfect spelling and grammar. The words in this novel flow superbly, with little nuances on every page, but it also manages to never feel cluttered or confusing to the reader.  The author’s ability to delight with language was surpassed only by her subject matter and execution of the plot. That’s why we are only briefly mentioning her writing here: as awesome as it is, this is a book that deserves even more praise elsewhere, which is where we will turn our attention in this review.2) Time and space “shifting”The problem with time travelers is powers like these can often lead to complicated messes of stories. When the character can move to yesterday or tomorrow with ease, the danger is that the author can easily write himself into a corner. And paradoxes are only fun with they are intentional on the writer’s part.However, we’ve happy to report that this story escapes most or all of these pitfalls. This alone makes it worth the read, because the difficulty of pulling this off must have been high. We particularly loved the way that the powers in this story were described. Akalya and her people possess the ability to both time travel and teleport--but the caveat is that they cannot do both at the same time. This, combined with the other limits of their abilities, made for a really fun set of rules to follow. As the story carried on, we began to understand their abilities more and even to anticipate their actions, almost as if we were given the chance to have their powers too, even if only in this fictional story.3) Great protagonistThe main character felt like a real person, with a real history, a real life, real ambitions, and real plans for the future. We felt as though we got to know her really well and could see her alive in our head. “Old soul in a young body” seems an apt description of her. She’s thoughtful and very calculating (she’d have to be, to navigate space/time as she does), but she also has a nurturing and seemingly whimsical side. She is given to heroics, taking it upon herself to rescue her people, but only once she’s scoped out most of the risks, being a cautious person. Despite her powers, she doesn’t seem to have an overly large sense of pride, nor does she look down on us ordinary mortals. She has a definite propensity toward nostalgia, which added an extra level of complexity when we slide back into the past. With her complexity, combined with the other characters, we would call this a “character driven” novella.4) Action, action, action!In keeping with its “shifter” theme, there is a lot of jumping around. If this wasn’t enough for the reader to keep up with, there’s also tons of action. Characters fight and struggle and get kidnapped and escape by the skin of their teeth. They appear in midair and almost die and get dissected. (Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about! Good ol’ Action!) All the same, the action does not overwhelm. The pacing and ratio of action to downtime was very well orchestrated. Downtime let us get to know the characters more, so we cared when they were in danger. Downtime also gave the reader some breathing room before the next fight.THE BAD....1) Surprise! RomanceThere is the sudden appearance of a romantic interest about 3/4 of the way in. It totally threw us for a loop, which we imagine was actually what it was meant to do. Whether it was intentional on the writer’s part to be jarring or not, we thought that it was perhaps a little overdone. Still, by that time we were so invested in the characters that we were willing to let it slide, and the ending’s depiction of the relationship felt much more realistic and less rushed to us.2) Why not call the police?The main character takes it upon herself to rescue her fellow travelers from their kidnappers, who have locked them in a room and prevented them from using their magic to escape. Why did she not just call the police? Instead, she comes up with this extremely long and complicated plan involving time travel. It’s super interesting to watch, but still--Why did she not call the police?3) Unnecessary POV shiftThere’s a scene which is written entirely from the POV of a side character. While it was interesting to see the heroine from another person’s perspective, we again found this jarring. The side character isn’t really that important to the plot--he was a nice guy, but to the plot he was almost a nobody--and so it didn’t feel worth it to be so invested into his character and his world when we cared a lot more about Akalya and what she was doing. But hey--it’s not that big of a deal, it’s just one scene. We can forgive that.THE BIZARRE...1) Weird words: “memelelellekin” and “hawanaiian”...It is introduced early in the story that there are two special words used to distinguish the time/space travelers from ordinary people like us: travelers are called "Harekaiians," while muggles are referred to as "Memlekel." This leads to a number of questions from the reader, such as: Where do these terms come from? Why do the travelers still use them? They obviously aren’t English words, and they seem difficult for native English speakers to pronounce. Are we to believe that these magical time-traveling Hawaiians (or whatever they’re called) never once decided that they were tired of calling other people “Memelikells”? Why did not one of them just say, “To heck with this, from now on we’re the Magicks and they’re the Mundanes, yeah?”For that matter, when the character first introduced herself, we thought she was an alien. Seriously. Her name is "Akalya of the Hawaiians"... er, we mean "Harekaiians", and she further admits to having superpowers and hiding among normal people in LA. How could she not be an alien? Imagine our surprise when we learned that she was just some kind of mutant. Who was born in Los Angeles. So we looked up the name “Akalya” on Google, and it turns out that it has Hindi origins and means “wish” (that is, if the baby name website we found is to be believed). We have no idea whether any of this was intentional or not. The character doesn’t seem to be described as someone with Indian heritage. If she is Indian-American, then it would have been nice to know this upfront so we didn’t think of her as an alien at first.3) Fun solution to the “Grandfather Paradox”This is the nemesis of all time travelers everywhere. For anyone who doesn’t know, the Grandfather Paradox goes like this: “If a time traveler went back in time to kill his grandfather, would he still exist?” The question essentially sets up a time loop that cannot be solved: darn you, paradoxes! Most fiction only uses one of two options to solve this problem about time travel; but what really caught our attention is that this book HAS A DIFFERENT ANSWER to the Grandfather Paradox. It was so unexpected and when we saw it, we jumped up and danced around the room, we were so delighted. We won’t spoil it for everyone--and we think that some people will not like the answer, depending on their own tastes--but suffice to say it is very similar to the cutting edge of current Quantum Theory, in which experiments proved that, in some way, human observation affected the nature of reality (if you’re interested, then google “Double Slit Experiment” and prepare to have your mind blown). All in all, awesomeness abounds.AND THE VERDICT:This book is GOOD.Some slight warnings: there is some brief nudity and sexual implications, but there are no actual sex scenes.The most fortunate part about this little gem (we mean, aside from all the good stuff up there) is that it is only the first installment. We demand more! More, we say! We’re happy that this is only Episode One, because now we know for sure that there will doubtless be more to come, and boy, are we looking forward to it.Buy it already. You know you want to.