I have been really enjoying this series and it has become one of my fave. I like a really good time travel story and this is a good one; Nick Jones is a good writer and storyteller. This is the fourth installment and most likely the last. It’s been nearly three years since it was published and there is no word on a future installment.
Jones starts the story with a prologue that has me fearing for Joe as well as Alexia that there is something so nefarious happening but confused as to whether it’s a scene from an alternate reality from the future or the past. Definitely one way of grabbing my attention from the get-go. Anyway, the gangs all back for this one: Joe, his sister, Amy, fellow time traveler, Gabrielle, and his best mate, Vinny, who is not looking good these days since reuniting with baby mama, Cassandra, and his teenaged daughter, Charlie, or Charlotte, as Cassandra demands that Vinny refer to her as.
The book summary introduces the primary storyline where Joe finds himself at an exclusive auction that only extremely wealthy people are allowed to attend. The consortium developed just the perfect cover for him as a wealthy antiques collector so that he can purchase a very valuable focus item for the Consortium, which is an organization of time travelers. A focus item is something the Consortium uses and protects for their time traveling jumps through history. It’s at this auction that Joe basically steals the mission from the Extempero host, Zanak, and the auction winner, Kristen, and then proceeds to take them with him to 8th century China, where Joe fails his mission.
The rest of the story revolves how the Consortium discover that Joe’s failure created a quantum chain, which will allow Joe to have one chance of correcting time that was created when he failed the China mission. The new mission, 1989 San Francisco, will allow Joe and the Consortium to trap Scarlett from wasting another focus object thus allowing Joe and the Consortium to correct time. It’s deep into the second half that a whole other storyline is developed, but the ending was very satisfying.
The continuing character development of most of the MC’s was well done, especially Alexia and Scarlett. The pacing was steady to fast and the storyline really interesting. The writing was good, and by that, I mean, totally unbelievably crazy, sci-fi, techno-speak that sounds like something from a sci-fi movie. I’m looking at an overall rating of 4.1 that I will be rounding down to a 4star review.