Heather’s Bookshelf: Flash Back
Author: John Turiano
Released: 01/16/20
Genre: SciFi/Time Travel
“They all downed their scotch, Danielle and Sam followed theirs with a noticeable wince. After the cups were cleared, the rest of the team was called in. Rogers congratulated the entire team, this time without the scotch, and gave the floor to Sam. The room was silent, you could hear a mouse scamper along the floor. He described the experience as best he could, being the first man to travel back in time.”
“Flash Back” is the first in a trilogy: Project Eight Ball, but was reviewed as a stand alone story. The tale introduces Sam Reilly, a civilian security systems engineer who is transferred to work on a secret project after a flash drive mysteriously shows up in his house.
The project has an opening as Dr. Max Weyler, a physicist who had been working on it, suddenly goes missing. Frank Marino, an investigator for the US Army, soon finds a link between Weyler’s disappearance and other famous physicist’s deaths. As it turns out, the secret project is researching time travel and Sam volunteers to be the first human subject.
When it becomes a possibility that another country may have also discovered time travel and set in motion the current political situation, Sam travels back to 1942 Chicago, intent on finding the culprit. At the University of Chicago, Sam finds one of the scientists trying to harness the power of the atom. Unfortunately, the killer also knows he’s there and has other plans, as does the killer’s boss…
Will Sam and his associates be able to set everything right and avoid further tragedy, will everything get even worse, or will his secret agenda get in the way?
Trigger Warning: violence, infant death, adult language, alcoholism, explosives, cancer, murder, imprisonment
Overall, I enjoyed this story. As in every time travel book, the author spends a little time explaining this story’s time travel rules. The author makes reference to multiverses and the “grandfather paradox” in an attempt to explain the time travel theorem of the book. I was glad he decided to spend more time on the tech and research into things like the development of the atom bomb than on the “science” behind the time travel. The author also does a really nice job in giving background details into Sam through interactions with those around him, including his wife, and through his dreams. Some of the dream sequences at the beginning of chapters were very useful, like the aforementioned background explainers or through flashbacks to another timeline. while others dragged down the pacing a bit and seemed a little redundant with follow-up chapters. The pacing of the story was a little off for me. It starts off really strong and steady, then in the middle it gets dragged down a bit with a hacking issue and does not pick back up until the last 20 pages. The ending felt quite abrupt and finished with a cliffhanger. The author established this as the first in a trilogy, so the cliffhanger was not super surprising (though I’m still personally not a fan).
I received a copy of this story in exchange of a fair and honest review.
OVERALL REVIEW:
A time travel novel with an interesting setting/timeline and relatable protagonist. Pacing issues and an incomplete ending pull down the tale.
Want to learn more about the author?
Check out my interview with John Turiano
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Find it for purchase here or Kindle Unlimited
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