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    The Far Time Incident
    The Far Time Incident
    The Far Time Incident
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Far Time Incident

    Written by Neve Maslakovic

    Narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Thanks to the time travel lab at St. Sunniva University, history is no longer a mystery. But when the beloved co-inventor of the university’s time machine is inexplicably smeared across time, academic exploration and the future of St. Sunniva is thrown into doubt.

    As assistant to the dean of science, Julia Olsen is tasked with helping Campus Security Chief Nate Kirkland quietly examine this rare mishap…then, just as quietly, make it go away. But when the investigation indicates that the professor’s disappearance may have been a murder, those inspecting the incident unwittingly find themselves caught in a deadly cover-up—one in which history itself is the weapon.

    From the snow-blanketed walkways of St. Sunniva’s campus to the sun-bleached cobblestone of ancient Pompeii’s roads, The Far Time Incident is a lively romp through history, science, and the academic world in the wake of a crime.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 9, 2013
    ISBN9781469290485
    The Far Time Incident
    Author

    Neve Maslakovic

    Neve Maslakovic spent her early years speaking Serbian in Belgrade, in former communist Yugoslavia. After stops along the way in London, New York, and California, she has settled in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where she admits to enjoying the winters. She earned her Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University’s STARLab (Space, Telecommunications, and Radioscience Laboratory) and is a member of the Loft Literary Center. Regarding Ducks and Universes is her first novel, and she is hard at work on her second.

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    Reviews for The Far Time Incident

    3/5

    35 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Overall, I enjoyed this book. It wasn't quite as madcap as "Regarding Ducks and Universes." I felt that the story dragged in places, particularly when the characters indulged in speculation about who did it, or debated what to do next. Some of the minor characters (e.g., the grad students) could have been more developed. And it took far too long for the characters to figure out where they were in far time, and to figure out who trashed Secundus' shop. However, the author is clearly familiar with academia, she created some good characters in Julia, Nate, Xavier, and Helen, and I enjoyed reading about what far time was like (though even more details would have been welcome). I'll definitely be reading the sequels.
    • 3/5
      Kinda like magic tree tree house but with better gadgets and an opportunity to explore campus archetypes
    • 3/5
      I love a good time travel story. The Far Time Incident is told from the point of view of an administrator at a university. One of the professors apparently dies on a time traveling expedition, but there are suspicious circumstances around his disappearance, so the administrator, campus chief of security, and some students and professors investigate his death.Unfortunately, they take a trip in the time machine just to get the experience of time travel, and they get stuck in the past. That means that they are investigating a murder while they don't actually have any access to the crime scene or any witnesses or suspects. That means that they spend a lot of time sitting around talking about what they remember. This gets really tedious, and distracts from the fun part, which is the time travel. The time travel aspect of the story is fun, but there's nothing particularly new or interesting about the time travel.I don't regret reading this, but I don't have any interest in the rest of the series.
    • 2/5
      The basic plot of The Far Time Incident involves the mysterious disappearance of Professor Mooney from the Time Travel Lab at a Minnesota University while on a solo expedition. Foul play is suspected and Julia Olsen, assistant to the dean of science is assigned to help Campus Security Chief Nate Kirkland. The pair soon find themselves caught up in their own time-travel adventure, in ancient Pompei within sight of a rumbling Vesuvius.

      The premise of The Far Time Incident is hugely promising, and the ideas of history protecting itself and of ghost zones are well thought out, but the story is devoid of emotion and the plot is not at all thrilling. I liked that the first-person narrator, Julia Olsen, is an ordinary person who leads a normal, unexciting life. I felt that the writer was aiming for humour with her choice of main character but just did not commit to building on the subtle ironic tone she establishes at the start of the book.

      After waiting far too long for the action to start, I began to get the impression that the author was stalling, as if unsure of how to move the plot forward. That is the major problem with this novel. It never really gets going. Even when the action starts, it isn't that exiting — a definite prerequisite for a time travel novel I think. A second plot involving a family of former slaves who need help to find out who has ransacked their Garum store doesn't really work. Aside from not being very exciting, the reader already has a lot of characters to keep up with, all of whom are become increasingly sketchy and vague as the story progresses.

      There is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and a great deal of dull dialogue peppered with historical did-you-knows from the academic characters. Since this is a whodunnit, I understand the author felt she needed to include a wide cast of characters to keep the reader guessing as to who the culprit is. The problem is, Maslakovic is never able to explore a character in depth or build on the relationships between the main characters because she is too busy keeping the reader updated on each of their whereabouts. Instead, I would have liked to see the author build on the conflict existing between English Professor Helen Presnik and her ex-husband Dr. Mooney.

      I wanted to feel like I had been transported into the past but the author's sketchy descriptions of the pre-erruption Pompei were not convincing enough. More sensory detail and well-drawn descriptions of the local inhabitants going about their daily life were needed.

      Maslakovic's novel appears to be heavily influenced by the Nebula Award-winning Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Like Willis' sci-fi novel, this is a time-travel thriller that kicks off in a university setting, its troupe of characters all academics. The novel suffers greatly by being so easily compared to Doomsday Book, in that it lacks the excitement, tension and humour that Willis is so adept at conjuring in her book.
    • 1/5
      The story is set in the Time Travel Engineering (TTE) department of a fictional University in Minneapolis, and is an uneasy mix of whodunit, historical novel, and science fiction/fantasy.When one of the Professors takes off on a solo time travel run and disappears everyone assumes that he has been murdered and an investigation starts. As part of the investigation a small group of people set out on a time travel run, intending to visit the 1960’s, but ending up in ancient Pompeii. Who sent them there? And, more importantly, how will they get home?This book is highly derivative of Connie Willis (university department involved in time travel exploits), but without Willis’s skill in weaving a story. The basic idea is a good one, but Maslakovic hasn’t thought through the rules well enough (the whole idea of “History protecting itself” is just ridiculous – how could that work then?), and then breaks them when she can’t work out how to get the team home again.The writing is just terrible, there are pages of trivial and irrelevant detail which is tedious to read and doesn’t either take the story forward or paint the characters for us. And the characters themselves are stereotypical and shallow (although she is possibly leaving herself scope to develop them in subsequent novels).
    • 5/5
      The Far Time Incident is one of those books that does an excellent job of melding together several different genres and helping to take readers out of their "comfort zones" without them even realizing it. Maslakovic has really outdone herself blending history, science fiction, adventure and mystery into one compelling novel that I had a lot of trouble putting down and was very sad to see end.The Far Time Incident is set in a time contemporary to ours, but one in which Time Travel Engineering (TTE) exists and has been used many times by scientists and scholars to observe key events of our past. Most times these researchers are only able to observe, photograph, or record these events. Maslakovic has introduced the concept of History as an omnipotent force that will block modern researchers from interfering with its course, or even being seen by those in the past if their actions or appearance would somehow cause a disturbance. There is also the concept of a "ghost zone" in history, one where History will drop the researchers into a place where a disaster is imminent in an attempt to keep everything in balance. It is one of these "ghost zones" -- Pompeii on the eve of Vesuvius' eruption -- that the bulk of The Far Time Incident takes place.After scientist Xavier Mooney is apparently murdered by being scattered across time, Julia Olsen, the Assistant to the dean of science, and Nate Kirkland, chief of campus security, begin to investigate. To fully understand possible motives and effects, Kirkland suggests that they take a short trip back in time to test the equipment and understand its function. A small team of Olsen, Kirkland, two graduate students, and another professor are assembled and attempt to travel back to New York in 1964. They find themselves instead in Pompeii in 79 AD where they immediately begin to feel earthquakes, the precursors to an eruption. Faced with the possibility of being in a ghost zone with no idea how to get home or who placed them there sets the stage for this historical adventure/mystery.Interspersed with fantastic accounts of Pompeii, Maslakovic weaves a tale with a pair of mysteries -- first the team's investigation of the murder of Professor Mooney and their own entrapment in the past, as well as a local Pompeiian mystery that Kirkland takes it upon himself to solve. Racing against time (literally and figuratively in this case) Maslakovic also brings a fine tension and sense of suspense into this adventure as well. The characters and their reactions are very believable and Maslakovic stays true to her tenet that the past cannot be changed, keeping this concept believable and adding to the suspense as the team attempts to work within these constraints.The Far Time Incident is a first person narrative told from the point of view of Julia Olsen. As an administrative assistant to the dean of science at St. Sunniva University, she has as great deal of exposure to the science and scientists, but little working knowledge. This helps the story as it stays away from the highly technical side of things one might expect from a harder science fiction story, but at the same time is able to incorporate that science in a way that most readers will find easy to understand. The human element of the story is definitely helped in this way as well as we get to see Julia's struggles with having her neat and orderly life turned upside down in an instant.I highly recommend The Far Time Incident to any fan of science fiction, adventure/suspense, and mystery novels. This is slated to be the first in a series of time travel adventures, one that hopefully will continue in this same vein!Many thanks to 47 North, NetGalley, and Neve Maslakovic for the opportunity to read and review The Far Time Incident. My copy was listed as an "uncorrected proof", so aside from small grammatical errors I foresee no changes between my copy and the published one.Five out of five stars.
    • 5/5
      When a time travel mishap threatens big donor contributions and a possible Nobel Prize for two professors at a small college in Minnesota, diligent, list-loving Julia Olsen, the assistant to the dean, is told by her boss to assist in the investigation. Though time travel is possible there are some interesting limitations because History is like some kind of law of physics or force of nature, circumscribing the movements and actions of time travelers so no significant changes can be made to the past.There is a lot to enjoy in The Far Time Incident, including its pervasive but subtle humor, which enhances but doesn't dominate or overwhelm the story, and its academic setting, which peoples the book with idiosyncratic grad students and professors. This is the first in what promises to be a fun series of of time travel mysteries.