![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Audiobook narrated by Ray Porter.
This is the last (for now) Bridgeman book and this one enters a somewhat convoluted wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. Joe is sent to retrieve a focus object which has been inveigled form it’s owner and is in danger of being lost from history. It turns out that there’s an organisation called Extempero which consists of a bunch of billionaires using focus objects for time-tourism. Joe makes a hasty jump to save the day, but it doesn’t turn out well. He has to make another jump to ameliorate the situation, but that one has an even worse outcome, and then he gets the opportunity to change his own timeline again. We go from ancient China to an earthquake in San Francisco – twice. Once again Scarlet makes an appearance to complicate things.
Audiobook narrated by Ray Porter
Joseph Bridgeman is drawn back into time travel via the Continuum, together with time-traveller Gabrielle, American, punky acerbic – and she hates Joe’s guts. They travel back to Paris 1873, the burning of the Opera House (a real event) in order to save a talented musician from life-changing injury, and to rescue another time-traveller, Nils, who is stuck in a kind of time-traveller-limbo courtesy of Scarlet (the mysterious antagonist from the second book in the series). Joe is still trying to fit into his new life and regain the trust of Alexia (his love in the first book) but he readily accepts the role of observer on Gabrielle’s mission to Paris and gets drawn into subsequent jumps. One thing leads to another as the pair acclimate to each other and work out how they can succeed. There are hair-raising moments of intrigue and danger. The burning opera house sequence is tense and exciting. Ray Porter does his usual good job of narration, and after three books I’ve stopped asking why an American narrator was chosen to read an English protagonist. It works. Happy to move on to the next book.
Narrated by Ray Porter
Having started (accidentally) with the second book in the series, and enjoyed it tremendously, I immediately went back to the first in which Joe discovers he can time travel and uses his new ability to save his sister, Amy, who disappeared when she was a child, partly due to his 14-year-old self’s moment of inattention. Joe struggles to master his talents, calling on two old friends and one new one to help him figure it out – in the process falling in love. The plot races along and comes to an excellent conclusion. The question of whether Joe is supposed to be British or American (which I brought up in my review of Book #2) is answered definitively in Book #1 – he’s British, and he’s based in Cheltenham – which is a quintessentially British place. It makes the choice of American Ray Porter to narrate these books somewhat puzzling, especially since the author is British, too. Blackstone, the publisher of the wider series, is American, however, which maybe also explains some of the minor Americanisms which might have been inserted to make it more America-friendly. To be honest, Ray Porter is a great narrator who reads this very well, but I do feel as though a British-accented narrator would have made more sense. (Maybe Matt Addis, or Stephen Pacey.) It won’t stop me listening to the others, however. I'm lready lining up Book #3.
I started listening to this second book in the series, only to realise part way through that I also had the first one in my library, so I listened to this without any foreknowledge of the first book, except what was dripfed in as backstory. Despite that, I caught up pretty quickly. Joe Bridgeman is a time traveller who managed to go back in time in the first book and save his baby sister, Amy. Arriving back in the present he discovers that ,due to the fact Amy is still alive and well, his whole life has changed. He's still the same, but he's not the Joe Bridgeman from this timeline. Somehow he has planted himself into a different Joe Bridgeman's life, the life that his would have been. This means the Joe Bridgeman who lived the new life has suddenly popped out of existence, which is worrying, and now this Joe has to pick up the threads of a life he might have lived, but didn't. A bike accident and amnesia is the excuse he uses, though Amy knows (and helps) and he has to confess to his best friend, who takes it remarkably well. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of the woman he loves, as in this life they seem to be at loggerheads. He's kind of getting to grips with it all when suddenly he's whisked back to London, 1963, in his pyjamas, where he witnesses, and is arrested for, a shocking murder. Time pops him back home after an uncomfortable night in a police cell, but a mysterious stranger (Bill Brown) shows up and tells him there is a time-travel society, and since Joe owes time a debt for the life of his sister, he has to travel again and rescue the murdered woman. If he doesn't Amy's timeline will be re-set. Not having read the first book yet, I'm not sure whether Joe is supposed to be British or American. His antique shop is in Cheltenham, and his sister and parents are in the UK, but Ray Porter reads it in his usual American accent. Sounding pretty much like he does in Dennis E Taylor's Bobiverse books. It still works. The narration helps move the story along, however. Ind I enjoyed this enough to immediately go to the first book in the series. Recommended.
Narrated by Ray Porter
The Bobs are all computer replicants of original human Bob. They are spreading throughout the galaxy. We follow Original Bob and some of his first generation clones, Bill, Howard, Will (originally Ryker) as they neet new societies and have a bit of trouble with younger clones (24th generation) due to replicative drift. In the aftermath of the Starfleet War there's anti-Bob sentiment and the Skippies are playing with dangerous AI that's not a Bob. Daedelus and Icarus are heading for the centre of our universe, a journey of thousands of years, but they want to see what's there. On the way they find a wormhole network and many abandoned planets which have obviously housed advanced civilisations. But at this point they are too far away to report back to the rest of the Bobs. In the meantime, Howard and Bridget have discovered a squirrel like race of people and are trying to help them, with mixed success. Bill is working on trying to create and develop wormhole travel, and the Bobs are trying to evacuate their descendants from a planet which has become hidebound by the rule of Faith, who want nothing to do with Bobs. This all gels when Daedelus and Icarus find a way to report back. What they have to tell galvanises the Bobs for what will become (I'm sure) the next Bobiverse book. Even though we leap from one Bob to another as viewpoint characters, the whole thing knits together beautifully. I love the Bobiverse. As usual Ray Porter's Narration is spot-on.
