Lost: Somewhere in Time

by J.C. Gunn

James Robert Scott was 13 when his parents died in an aircar crash and two years later his last remaining immediate family member, his grandfather a Nobel prize-winning physicist disappeared without a trace.On the day of his 19th birthday, a man with a stainless steel briefcase cabled to his wrist waited outside his classroom door. The letter contained in the case was addressed to James and was postmarked March of 1888, 157 years in the past. The letter indicated that the elder Scott was lost somewhere in time and contained the location of the Time Machine and access codes to the Artificial Intelligence which controlled it. The machine and AI were in a secret complex under his grandfather's old Victorian mansion in the hills above Cleveland.James would not be alone in his quest to locate his grandfather somewhen in time. His longtime girlfriend, Hiroko McAdams and their two closest friends, language expert Angelina Lincoln and math genius Michael Watson would be part of the grand adventure. Somewhere in Time is a novel in the Earthrise series.

Genres: Science Fiction

352 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 13, 2021

About the author

J.C. Gunn writes Science Fiction, Romantic Comedy, Mystery/Thriller, New Adult, Historic Fiction, and screenplays based on his original works. In order to prepare for his career as a writer, he received degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Physics and then spent 24 years flying fighter jets for the USAF. He and his wife live in the mountains of North America almost exactly halfway from the Equator to the North Pole.

Reviews

[Timothy Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my second and LAST book by this author. The concepts and plot are OK. Character development is OK. Dialog is on the stiff side. But worst of all is the CONSTANT references to the how the four main characters are "beautiful", "intelligent", "handsome", etc. And always saying "friend", "best friend", "friend and lover", etc.

The author can establish how a character looks and/or their relationship with another character without beating us over the head with it continuously throughout the book.

If you look at my dates read, it took me a long time. The book wasn't that long. It was that bad. It's so bad that I can't chance reading any more of his books.

[Judi Christopher]

Young adult

I am sure this would be an interesting book for my 13 year old grand daughter, but it's not for me.

[Guy Marsden · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story moves along fairly nicely, but he tends to over explain things that most science fiction authors and readers take for granted. There were a couple of cute Easter eggs in there that I appreciated including that the advanced HAL 9000 computer (an obvious reference to 2001) had a serial number of 1138. This is a rather obscure reference to George Lucas's first film titled THX 1138.

But the thing that really drove me nuts was how he constantly referred to one of the adult female college age protagonists as a "cute girl". It just felt kind of sexist. All four of the main characters are always described as being unbelievably smart, attractive, and over sexed. So in this sense the whole book felt like some kind of romance novel science fiction book, especially with the frequent sex happening between the two main couples.

[Robert A Geloran · Rating 3 out of 5]

good premise, annoying prose

I appreciated the subject matter, and the complications and complexity of time travel presented in the story. This is one of a couple of stories that dealt with time travel that included consideration for the position of the earth in 3-dimensional space at a previous point in time.
However, I found the manner of dialogue between characters unnatural and the attempts by the author to use different verbiage to indicate which character was speaking or was the subject of the current point were cumbersome and annoying. I almost quit the story halfway through. I’m not likely to continue the series.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly unnecessary

It's pretty generic as far as time travel goes. The only thing it does is to explain a single sentence from the first book, i.e. they've seen artificial gravity in action so they know it's possible.

The characters did feel a bit stiff like there wasn't enough character development. Romance was acceptable. Overall, left me feeling it was an OK story at best.