The Empire of Time by David Wingrove

The Empire of Time by David Wingrove
Buy The Empire of Time by David Wingrove at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Science Fiction
Reviewer: Luke Marlowe
Summary: A gripping tale that throws the reader across nations, times and realities. David Wingrove has created a Sci Fi world that is clever, inventive, and hugely enjoyable.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 496	Date: April 2014
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 978-0091956158
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Otto Behr is a German agent, fighting his Russian counterparts across three millennia of history. With only remnants of the two nations remaining, Otto is forced to travel through time - changing brief moments in order to alter history forever. As the stakes grow ever higher - what will Otto be forced to do in order to end this war?

Firstly - this book is exhausting. Reading on a quiet weekend away, I had initially hoped this would be a trashy thriller, not a complex, mind bending twister of a Science Fiction tale. However, I am extremely glad I persevered, as this is a fascinating and worthwhile tale.

Time Travel has been a popular component of fiction books for years upon years - HG Wells The Time Machine,Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and even Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol all toyed with time travel as a main theme and/or plot device well over a hundred years ago, and books featuring time travel are still hugely popular today - Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife and the Outlander series by Diana Gabbaldon are recent examples that have been massively well received.

Books that actually focus on the mechanics and troubles surrounding time travel however, have not been quite as common - and with various theories, paradoxes and dilemmas that arise from time travel, it's extremely fertile ground for a novel. The Empire of Time takes the time travel idea and runs with it - it is not just a plot device here, but it is the plot - and everything in this book stems from and revolves around time travel, and the huge shifts that occur when time is disturbed.

With huge and complicated concepts to get your head around, along with a massive cast of characters, this could have been a chore to read, but the writing is so excellent that things become clearer as one goes on - and the plot grips so well that it is impossible not to keep turning the pages. Everything races to a genuinely explosive climax that really paves the way for other books in this series - and I imagine that this is a story that will only improve and expand in terms of content and ideas as it spreads over books.

A thrilling, if sometime confusing read, The Empire of Time will have you scratching your head and turning the page at the same time.

Many thanks to the publishers for the copy.

If The Empire of Time gets you interested in Time Travel, then The Time Traveller's Almanac by Anne VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer is a weighty anthology that features an array of short stories exploring all avenues of time travel. With a wonderful prequel to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and a fantastic tale by Isaac Asimov, the highlight here is, without a doubt, "The Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury - a story that was, rather fittingly, very much ahead of its time.

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