The Time Contessa is an adventure to Siena, Italy, 500 years into the past and 100 years into the future. Something has gone wrong with an historical timeline, causing a famous painting to disappear from the world’s conscious memory, surfacing only in people’s dreams. Two members of MIT’s Chronology team, Dr. Cassandra Reilly and her colleague Jake, must go to Renaissance Siena to repair the timeline so the artist who painted the portrait of a beautiful woman known as Giuliana will ultimately live to complete it. However, the past holds many pitfalls, both dangerous and romantic, that Cassandra must stay clear of, while trying to prevent Jake falling prey to them as well. The time-travelers’ problems follow them to the future, where love takes such a strong hold it becomes impossible to resist, and past adversaries resurface to create new threats.
The Time Contessa is the best of this series to date. The storyline has complexity and somewhat more depth and nuance than the earlier Time Mistress books. There was clearly a great deal of research into Sienna, Italy history - art, science, culture, politics and society. The author's debt to her influences is also apparent in the elements of this book that call out an echo to a variety of other time-travel novels and yet, this is no copycat book. These other elements are woven into a unique and 'novel' (I couldn't resist!!) offering.
And yet, the storytelling art is imperfect. Overly critical readers with a demand that all books they read be of the utmost in literary standards....ugh! well, they probably don't read time travel books so never mind that. My main complaint is that the dialogue has room for improvement, but that's isn't to say I could write it better. Worth the 4 stars from me on this one.
This book was probably my favorite yet in the series! The ending was very sweet, and without giving away spoilers I really liked the plot with Lauro, and also love this time period in general so it was a very quick and easy read for me!
The only negative thing I can say is that Cassandra comes across as kind of loose at this point in the series, though it is described as "the spell" of time travel. Not sure about the part with her and Francesco and her sudden interest in jumping his bones when he is painting her, the romance she has with Lauro is very sweet and was more than enough to keep readers happy imo.
This is a very fun series and I really hope the author writes more! She does a good job with describing the future, and an excellent job at making the past come to life as though you were there. Perhaps we'll even see some of James' time travel adventures? ;)