Rating: ✪✪✪✪✪ out of 5 Stars
Release Date: November 2014
Publisher's Website: Random
House
Having
read a couple of Ben Elton’s previous books, I knew I would enjoy Time and Time Again. What I didn’t
realize was just how much. Elton has really honed his story-telling skills, and
based on his latest novel, he is now arguably one of the most readable and entertaining authors writing popular fiction today.
Ben Elton
is one of Britain's most provocative and entertaining writers. From celebrity
to climate change, from the First World War to the end of the world, his books
give his unique perspective on some of the most controversial topics of our
time.
My thoughts:

Time
travel and alternate reality are complex plots to tackle, but Elton masterfully
steers his book, from the first page to the end, without any dragging or
info-dumping on us like so many other authors find necessary when dealing with the time travel meme.
Hugh
Stanton, an ex-soldier, recently bereaved of his wife and children is summoned
to his old professor of Cambridge’s chambers where he is told a fanciful story
of a secret portal that will open shortly, and once only, between the present and 1914. The
members of an elite society who have guarded this secret for hundreds of years,
ever since Isaac Newton first predicted the portal, suggest Stanton has the
perfect skills and lack of attachment to return to 1914 and prevent WW1 — the
worst event they've decided, of the previous 110 years — by assassinating figures that Stanton
had only previously studied in history.
Of
course, when he does return, Stanton discovers it is not so easy to carry out
his mission when every interaction and move he makes has the potential to alter
the immediate and distant future. At the same time, he struggles with the
concept that his children might never be born and that, if he fails, millions
will die.
Elton
really takes the reader on a wonderful and unique ride. This is not the same
old time travel trope; there are unpredictable twists and turns right up until
the last page. Time and Time Again is
absolutely one of the best time travel books of its genre.
I
received a copy of this book from http://www.randomhouse.com.au/ for an honest review. Thank you,
wonderful people there. More
about this book at: Time and Time Again
BOOK
BLURB
It's the 1st of June 1914 and Hugh Stanton, ex-soldier and
celebrated adventurer is quite literally the loneliest man on earth. No one he
has ever known or loved has been born yet. Perhaps now they never will be.
Stanton
knows that a great and terrible war is coming. A collective suicidal madness
that will destroy European civilization and bring misery to millions in the
century to come. He knows this because, for him, that century is already
history.
Somehow
he must change that history. He must prevent the war. A war that will begin
with a single bullet. But can a single bullet truly corrupt an entire century?
And, if so, could
another single bullet save it?
About
the author:

He has
written fourteen major bestsellers, including Stark, Popcorn, Inconceivable,
Dead Famous, High Society, The First Casualty and Two Brothers. He has
also written some of television's most popular and incisive comedy, including
The Young Ones and Blackadder.
He is
married with three children and lives in Western Australia.