The Third Rule of Time Travel
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
Rule One: Travel can only occur to a point within your lifetime.
Rule Two: You can only travel for ninety seconds.
Rule Three: You can only observe.
The rules cannot be broken.
In this riveting science fiction novel from acclaimed author Philip Fracassi, a scientist has unlocked the mysteries of time travel. This is not the story you think you know. And the rules are only the beginning.
Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She's built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time—to any point in the traveler's lifetime—and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it's not the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.
After Beth's husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella—their only daughter—and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.
Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp.
As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.
Reviews with the most likes.
*3.75 on review sites that allow it*
I loved Philip Fracassi’s unique take on time travel in this book. I’ve always liked time travel stories and I think I’d take the chance to travel through time given the opportunity, but you’d never catch me using the machine Beth and her husband Colson created. That thing is genuinely scary.
This book definitely isn’t horror though - it’s a sci-fi/thriller, and since I’ve only read Fracassi’s Boys in the Valley (great book, A+) and he mostly writes horror, it was fun to read something of his from another genre. I think it’s a pretty solid entry, and it’s obvious he did his research when it comes to the science which I appreciate, as it takes place in the near future so it would make less sense for everything to be made up.
The story was put together really well, and I imagine that can be difficult when time travel is involved. I liked the way everything unfolded but there’s one big thing that bothered me. There’s absolutely no way to explain it without big fat spoilers but it’s something I think was unnecessary, that didn’t need to be there at all and made me feel disappointed when it happened.
This was a super fast-paced and very quick read for me, an absolute page-turner marred only by something I couldn’t let go of, but I sincerely hope it’s just a me thing and I hope Fracassi has something else in mind for this genre in the future!
I received an ARC of The Third Rule of Time Travel from Orbit Books via Netgalley.
