Rebecca Ore, Time's Child

Time's Child

Rebecca Ore

Eos, Feb 2007, $14.95

ISBN: 0380792524

By 2308, plagues swept across the earth killing most people and leaving many of the survivors sterile. People from the future send a time machine to the Philadelphia National Archive to gather humans near death from the past and bring them to the present as a library of human learning.

Benedetta, who knew Da Vinci, was one of those scooped away just prior to the French soldiers killing her. Not content to remain a prisoner in a gilded cage, she escapes, abetted by Jonah, another incarcerated soul. They free the other time travelers and along with Ivar the Viking steal the time machine. Once they have more machines they plan to scoop people out from different eras and places but there are many people with their own agendas who have plans to manipulate the original people from down-time.

The premise of this paradoxical tale will fascinate readers as people from different times and cultures must overcome their Tower of Babel differences in order to save mankind. The twists are terrific, reminiscent of a classic EC comic (no more or the plot will be given away). The characters, especially the heroine and her closest allies, seem real as their dissimilarities are greater than their similarities except for core values. Rebecca Ore provides an exhilarating, science-fiction, brave-new-world thriller.

Harriet Klausner