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A review by jinny89
The 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch
4.0
Nick Quinn is absolutely devastated when he finds his wife Julia dead, shot in the face, in their home. Worse yet, he gets hauled away by the police because they found the murder weapon with his fingerprints on it! Nick loves Julia more than his own life, and would do anything if it only meant she can be alive. Enter a mysterious European stranger, who hands him an antique gold watch, telling him that it will give him the power to go back in time, allowing Nick to attempt to solve the mystery of who killed his wife and why, as well as attempting to prevent it.
Time travel isn’t ‘straight-forward’ in this novel (if time travel can ever be thought of as a straight forward matter). The watch only allows Nick to go back one hour in time, for one hour; then he will go two hours back in time, stay there for one hour; then three hours … etc. (For example, it is 6:00PM, he goes back in time to 5:00PM. When it reaches 6:00 again, he goes back to 4:00. When it reaches 5:00, he goes back to 3:00, and so on and so forth). There aren’t “multiple copies” of Nick in time; when he goes back in time, that becomes the present time (so he doesn’t have to worry about running into himself from the past or anything like that).
Anyway, I thought this was an interesting take on time travel, although at first I wondered how much of the mystery he can really solve if he only has an hour at a time. While at first Nick doesn’t get much accomplished because he’s no detective and has no clue where to start, as he travels back further and further in time, he uncovers some startling corruption. Once he got on the ball, he was on a roll, although his actions sometimes — or rather, often — have unintentional consequences and many a time, Nick becomes frustrated that he messed things up to become even worse than they were before (for example, he gets other people killed. Whoopsie, Nick?) Sometimes I got a little mad at Nick and wanted to yell at him through the pages, “Why would you do that?”, hahaha.
I truly enjoyed reading this novel. It is hard to put down because every time you flip the page, Nick discovers something new, or does something that makes you wonder how it can affect the future, so I just had to keep reading to find out what the effects are. I personally just love books that deal with time manipulation. It really has a way of keeping you in suspense. In many ways, I think of this book as a mystery as well. Nick starts off not knowing a thing about his wife’s murder, only that she was obviously targeted, and somehow, he unravels the truth which has its roots pretty far down and away from what this normal suburban couple could possibly be involved in. It is also a fast paced book, which I deeply appreciated because I really dislike slow-moving plots. Reading this novel was like a refreshing breeze.
Of course, nothing is perfect. I found the author’s writing to be a little “philosophical” at times. He runs off into small tangents about the morality of time manipulation, or love (but mostly about time manipulation). This occurred a little too frequently for my liking, but it is usually short. The characters are all flat, one dimensional characters, but that didn’t really bother me too much since this is more about the plot than it is about characters. Another thing (which I feel is always a very important part of any novel … for obvious reasons) is the ending. While I was not unsatisfied by it, it just seemed to lack a bit of oomph. We have this fast, intriguing, clever plot … then the end just seems a bit anticlimactic. I don’t think the ending sucks exactly, just that it could have been better.
But with all that said and done, I really did find this novel to be exciting and entertaining. I would definitely read other/future works by this author!
(This review is also posted at http://skyink.net).
Time travel isn’t ‘straight-forward’ in this novel (if time travel can ever be thought of as a straight forward matter). The watch only allows Nick to go back one hour in time, for one hour; then he will go two hours back in time, stay there for one hour; then three hours … etc. (For example, it is 6:00PM, he goes back in time to 5:00PM. When it reaches 6:00 again, he goes back to 4:00. When it reaches 5:00, he goes back to 3:00, and so on and so forth). There aren’t “multiple copies” of Nick in time; when he goes back in time, that becomes the present time (so he doesn’t have to worry about running into himself from the past or anything like that).
Anyway, I thought this was an interesting take on time travel, although at first I wondered how much of the mystery he can really solve if he only has an hour at a time. While at first Nick doesn’t get much accomplished because he’s no detective and has no clue where to start, as he travels back further and further in time, he uncovers some startling corruption. Once he got on the ball, he was on a roll, although his actions sometimes — or rather, often — have unintentional consequences and many a time, Nick becomes frustrated that he messed things up to become even worse than they were before (for example, he gets other people killed. Whoopsie, Nick?) Sometimes I got a little mad at Nick and wanted to yell at him through the pages, “Why would you do that?”, hahaha.
I truly enjoyed reading this novel. It is hard to put down because every time you flip the page, Nick discovers something new, or does something that makes you wonder how it can affect the future, so I just had to keep reading to find out what the effects are. I personally just love books that deal with time manipulation. It really has a way of keeping you in suspense. In many ways, I think of this book as a mystery as well. Nick starts off not knowing a thing about his wife’s murder, only that she was obviously targeted, and somehow, he unravels the truth which has its roots pretty far down and away from what this normal suburban couple could possibly be involved in. It is also a fast paced book, which I deeply appreciated because I really dislike slow-moving plots. Reading this novel was like a refreshing breeze.
Of course, nothing is perfect. I found the author’s writing to be a little “philosophical” at times. He runs off into small tangents about the morality of time manipulation, or love (but mostly about time manipulation). This occurred a little too frequently for my liking, but it is usually short. The characters are all flat, one dimensional characters, but that didn’t really bother me too much since this is more about the plot than it is about characters. Another thing (which I feel is always a very important part of any novel … for obvious reasons) is the ending. While I was not unsatisfied by it, it just seemed to lack a bit of oomph. We have this fast, intriguing, clever plot … then the end just seems a bit anticlimactic. I don’t think the ending sucks exactly, just that it could have been better.
But with all that said and done, I really did find this novel to be exciting and entertaining. I would definitely read other/future works by this author!
(This review is also posted at http://skyink.net).