The Third Rule of Time Travel

November 1, 2024

Scientist Beth Darlow doesn't physically travel in time; her body is still in her lab, strapped to the machine that sends her consciousness back to the most traumatic moments of her life. Moments she can only observe but not change--unless she already has, merely by observation. But Beth's project is about to be yanked out from under her, even though she's on the brink of a breakthrough. She's interested in research, but her shady funder's plans are as unscrupulous as his financial dealings. He wants to change history for profit, while she's convinced that she already has and it's breaking her, one altered memory at a time. The framework of this story is the race for research funding and the cost of academic rivalry as Beth and her assistant pursue science while her funder plots to eliminate them and steal their project. Beth's desperation to salvage her own ever-changing history makes her desperate, leading to a thrilling, high-stakes ending. VERDICT Fracassi (Boys in the Valley) turns from horror to sci-fi in his latest. Recommended for fans of technothrillers and those looking for a different take on time travel.--Marlene Harris

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 9, 2024
Corporate politics and experimental physics clash in this exciting sci-fi outing from Fracassi (A Child Alone with Strangers). Soon after quantum science researcher Colson and his brilliant wife, Beth, create a wormhole in their laboratory at Langan Corporation allowing them to time travel, Colson dies in a freak car accident, leaving Beth in charge of the laboratory. How the time machine works—beyond finagling with the neurophysics of human consciousness—is anyone’s guess, but sharp-tongued Beth is determined to continue the dangerous experiments that sent Colson, and now her, back in time for sessions that last only 90 seconds. When Langan’s unscrupulous CEO invites a journalist to witness the machine in action, Beth risks back-to-back journeys to save her position as project lead. Each journey forces her to relive her most painful memories, including the plane crash that killed her sister and parents. Meanwhile, during the downtime between voyages, strange things begin happening: she hallucinates Colson and discovers a ghost computer file written by him warning her of malicious glitches in the software. Underlying the brisk time-caper plot is Colson’s ominous warning that scientists should not play God. Sci-fi fans with a taste for noir will savor this one.

January 1, 2025
Time travel has been a popular subject of fantastic fiction since the dawn of the genre. Its tropes have become exceedingly familiar to modern sf audiences. One of the most basic of those tropes is that the author must first set out the rules for time travel that operate in their story. As the title suggests, these rules are important in Fracassi's (No One Is Safe! 2024) novel, and he lays them out at the very beginning. Beth is a scientist who, with her late husband, has invented a machine for time travel. However, there are certain mysteries to the process she cannot explain. Also, the corporate overlord financing Beth's work is a nefarious presence that provides the story's conflict. Fracassi's plot will be predictable to those well versed in time-travel stories, yet his focus on Beth's interior emotional life helps elevate the tale beyond a series of oh-so-familiar conventions, making readers care about our protagonist's troubles. The end result is a diverting, entertaining book.

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April 15, 2025
A pioneering scientist discovers that all she knows about her time-travel machine may be wrong. Beth Darlow's life is one tragedy after another. Following surviving the plane crash that killed her parents and older sister when she was only 12 years old, Beth lost her grandfather, who raised her after the accident, on prom night. Her beloved husband, Colson, died on her birthday one year ago. Now a single mother to 4-year-old Isabella, Beth continues the work she and Colson began: perfecting the art of time travel. The rules, as Beth knows them, are simple. She can travel only to points on her own timeline, reliving her memories in vivid Technicolor. She can stay for approximately 90 seconds and no more. Most importantly, she cannot change or influence the events she witnesses in the past. Time travel is something to be done sparingly, with months between jaunts into the past. So far, only Beth and Colson have taken the plunge. But all that could change when the project's financier, Jim Langan, decides to take the top-secret project public. Suddenly, necessity forces Beth to relive her most traumatic memories over and over again in quick succession. It soon becomes clear to the reader that time traveling is mucking up Beth's own timeline, as small changes begin to occur. But when tragedy strikes again and Beth loses everything, she finds herself making one last push into the past--this time to save what's most precious to her. Fracassi weaves a tightly plotted story here, tying up loose ends in nice, neat bows. Although some readers will undoubtedly find Beth's tale too tame to bear the thriller mantle, others will enjoy the coziness of this time-travel tale. A solid new entry in the time-travel genre that never gets too bogged down in the science of it all.

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