I have 2 time travel reviews for you today. The Book of Lost Hours is recommended by Net-galley and the publishers for lovers of The Ministry of Time and the Midnight Library, among others. Hmm, that sounds like me then. It was published on Thursday. Thank you for the ARC.
The Frozen People is the first of a new series by Elly Griffiths, focussing on an investigator in her fifties, Ali Dawson, who aims to solve cold cases. In her case, frozen in time. The second in the series in scheduled for next February.
The Book of Lost Hours
by Hayley Gelfuso
A sweeping, cinematic love story about memory and community for fans of The Ministry of Time, The Midnight Library and The Book Thief.
Nuremberg, 1938. Lisavet Levy’s watchmaker father saves her from the Nazis by pushing her through a mysterious doorway. There, she discovers the Time Space – a vast, magical library where the memories of everyone who has ever lived are stored in books. Her father promises to follow, but he never comes.
Trapped in the library, she encounters timekeepers, who decide whose memories survive and whose are destroyed.
Lisavet tries to save as many memories as she can, but when she falls in love with a timekeeper, the whole course of history could be at stake… [goodreads]
My Review
It has a library stuck in time (Midnight Library); it has ministry and government interference with time (Ministry of Time), and it has World War 2 and books (the Book Thief). And it’s not like any of them
We follow two young people who are destined to become timekeepers, but who have very different backgrounds and reasons for being involved. It’s a game of espionage and intrigue, and finding oneself amid the dark corridors of timespace. And it’s very hard to put down.
It’s a different type of time travel related story, with more in common with J K Rowling’s storage of memories for the pensieve than anything else I can think of, yet throws in a some theoretical aspects of time as a real place (somewhat like Interstellar) . This makes it original, and well worth anyone exploring, even if they don’t actually time travel in the usual sense. Think more of how crossing historical boundaries would be if you could actually see Einstein’s thoughts as he developed relativity.
Beautifully written, pacey, with vivid characters, this one is well worth a read – or as a gift to your favourite person who enjoys mystery, history or immersion in questions of ‘what if?’ and their consequences. Definitely a 5 star read.
The Book of Lost Hours Launch special!
Independent bookshops have their own special signed edition, complete with sprayed edges and ribbon. Find your local independent bookshop here.
The Frozen People (Ali Dawson #1)
by Elly Griffiths
Cold cases are a lot easier to solve when you can travel back in time to find new evidence—unless, that is, you get stuck in the nineteenth century.
Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old they’re frozen—or so their inside joke goes. Ali’s work seems like a safe desk job, but what her friends—and even her beloved son—don’t know is that her team has a secret: They can travel back in time to look for evidence.
So far Ali has made trips only to the recent past, so she’s surprised when she’s asked to investigate a murder that took place in 1850. The killing has been pinned on an aristocratic patron of the arts and antiquities, a member of a sinister group called “The Collectors.” She arrives in the Victorian era during a mini ice age to find another dead woman at her feet and far too many unanswered questions. But when her son is arrested, Ali attempts to return home only to find herself trapped in 1850.[goodreads]
My Review
Elly Griffiths embarks on a new mystery series, with a group of people with police or science backgrounds investigating cold cases. The blurb explains the set-up. What it doesn’t reveal is how much crossing over of the crime element happens between the Victorian era and the present day.
It’s an intriguing set-up, although the initial scene-setting is somewhat tortuous, and the detail confusing, for the first quarter of the book. I suppose it’s reassuring to know that even an author with Ms Griffiths’ experience can have trouble with opening chapters, but it did make me wonder whether to continue at one point.
And fortunately that was the exact point where it all started to flow, mysteries twisted yet became clearer at the same time. Characters took a less amorphous shape, people began to find meaning, and that essential thing arrived — caring for the characters. A key part of this was the trouble that Ali and her son separately found themselves in, both powerless to help the other. The setting of London in both the present and the Victorian era was a beautiful character.
The time travel element is interestingly conceived. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention, but maybe the actual mechanism was made deliberately vague. I think that there is an alternative mechanism in play: the sequel, due out in Feb 26, may make more of this. Is it a cliff-hanger? Well, maybe… the case is only half-solved, in my view. And I did think the perpetrator had made a remarkably complicated on-the-spot decision to cover their tracks. So I can’t give it five stars on either count, but it’s definitely worth a read for time travel fans as well as crime enthusiasts.
I think I might have to check out Lost Hours. The Frozen People, not so much, I think. I’m having enough trouble getting past openings (my own and other writers’) to take on one that might be challenging.