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    The Outcasts of Time
    The Outcasts of Time
    The Outcasts of Time
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Outcasts of Time

    Written by Ian Mortimer

    Narrated by James Cameron Stewart

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    December 1348. What if you had just six days to save your soul?

    With the country in the grip of the Black Death, brothers John and William fear that they will shortly die and suffer in the afterlife. But as the end draws near, they are given an unexpected choice: either to go home and spend their last six days in their familiar world, or to search for salvation across the forthcoming centuries-living each one of their remaining days ninety-nine years after the last.

    John and William choose the future and find themselves in 1447, ignorant of almost everything going on around them. The year 1546 brings no more comfort, and 1645 challenges them in further unexpected ways. It is not just that technology is changing: things they have taken for granted all their lives prove to be short-lived.

    As they find themselves in stranger and stranger times, the listener travels with them, seeing the world through their eyes as it shifts through disease, progress, enlightenment, and war. But their time is running out-can they do something to redeem themselves before the six days are up?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJan 2, 2018
    ISBN9781541479746
    Author

    Ian Mortimer

    Ian Mortimer is the author of the bestselling Time Traveller's Guide series. He is an experienced lecturer and public speaker and regularly appears at literary festivals around the country. He is also writes for the media.

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    Reviews for The Outcasts of Time

    3.5/5

    84 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I love the concept of this novel, but unfortunately found the execution a bit lacking. Two men from 1348 find themselves escaping their plague-ridden time on a journey through every century up until the 20th. The men are very much products of their time and marvel at all the little and large changes they see in each century. This gives Mortimer the opportunity to add lots of historical details, but sometimes it's overdone and leaves you impatient for the actual story to develop.There's also a big focus on spirituality, which I can understand considering the time the travellers are from, but again, there's a bit too much for me.Still, I enjoyed travelling through time with the characters. I just think this novel shows that you need to be just as masterful at storytelling as at historical research to write a truly great historical novel!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      In which a thirteenth-century stonemason who is afflicted with the Black Death is offered, and accepts, a supernatural opportunity to spend his six remaining days in being resurrected, one day at a time, in each of the succeeding six centuries. This premise is bold and intriguing and is often carried through inventively. Overall, though, I wished that the author had done a little more with it. Our hero is a typical man of his time, illiterate, pious, albeit with some rather tetched attitudes toward the divine and the afterlife, and with something of an aptitude toward poor decision-making. In his time travels, he is sometimes accompanied by his even more hapless brother, and, less often, by his wife, who doesn't recognize him. The protagonist does get into a few scrapes as he moves through the centuries, but for the most part he isn't very inquisitive, contenting himself with observations on the everyday items which he finds himself among. Sometimes this works pretty well, e.g., with foods and technology; sometimes it takes the book disastrously off the rails, as when he recounts in minute detail sixteenth-century tin-smelting techniques, which may be the single worst chapter of fiction I've ever read in my life. The book takes a good while to read and makes considerable vocabulary demands.
    • 4/5
      This is an episodic novel in that there’s no definitive plot, but each section is connected by a consistent thread. I liked it in the most part, but feel it would’ve benefited from stronger characterisation, and not so much explicit detail.I get that the author is showing how the main character deals with the immense changes he faces after each 99-year leap forward, but the amount of intricate description slows the narrative pace and doesn't move the story along.As other reviewers have remarked, it’s too philosophical whilst lacking in those elements that drive a good plot.Still, I’ve rated in 4 stars because I really liked it, despite the above criticisms.
    • 5/5
      Such an original novel. Two brothers amidst the 14th Century plague are given the choice of spending their remaining few days at home, or travelling into the future by nearly a century each day.A time-travel book that, because of its unusual direction, really brings social history alive as John tries to make sense of the changes. Reflection that will stick in my head - home is a time not a place.John becomes increasingly confused as he tries to do good & fails, but comes across a few kind, caring people amongst the horrors of each age. And a moving, satisfying last chapter where it is revealed to him the importance of his actions.
    • 3/5
      Ian Mortimer tries to do too much in this book. Using two fictional brothers to skip through time, touching down once a century, is a clever idea to highlight the changes that England undergoes as time goes by – political, social, physical and intellectual. But his microscopic attention to living conditions, theology, architecture, and technology get in the way of any sort of cohesive plot. The characters observe what's physical and discuss what's not, and in a fashion that is rather far-fetched considering their education. This was a slog for me, neither fiction nor non-.
    • 3/5
      I wasn't quite sure what to make of this book at first. It's a cross between a work of historic fiction and a season of Quantum Leap. John (the narrator) and his brother William are exposed to the plague in England in the Middle Ages, but are offered the chance to achieve salvation by returning to spend one day every 99 years. They continue to be baffled by the leaps in technology and the changes in culture as each day begins. The real story is their realization of how human nature does and doesn't change as everything else about society changes. The book makes many important points, such as about the divide between rich and poor throughout the centuries, and what is needed for true happiness. Stylistically, it sometimes read like an owner's manual as John tries to explain the new machinery he encounters in each century. And there were a few instances of John using anachronistic language. Overall, I enjoyed this book, and indeed I liked it more and more as the centuries went on. **I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**
    • 4/5
      An unusual twist on the historical fiction/time travel genre. Two brothers traveling across 1348 Britain who develop symptoms of the Black Plague are presented with an unusual choice: they can spend their last six days in familiar surroundings, or search for salvation in the future -- jumping 99 years into the future for each day they live.While the concept is a little hard to grasp in the beginning, the audiobook was a fascinating, if at times grisly, listen. The narrator effectively conveys the characters' thoughts and observations about how people and places change over the centuries. While the protagonist at times waxes philosophical, it does not seem out of character for him. Overall, an enjoyable audiobook that kept my attention throughout.
    • 4/5
      I received the audiobook through LibraryThing Early Reviewers in exchange for an honest review. I don’t often do audiobooks, so I’m not sure if I was the problem or not, but I had trouble trying to download the files to my phone, and also found the narrator’s voice really distracting. I was very intrigued by the book’s premise though, so I ended up buying a kindle copy to read, after multiple attempts with the audiobook left me frustrated. (Like I said, honest review.)So, the book itself I liked, all in all. Two brothers are traveling home in the midst of the plague in 1348, and are offered a choice of going home to die or trying to find salvation by living out the next six days 99 years (per day) in the future. The characters are grounded in the beliefs of their time, with some attitudes toward women and religion that may be offensive, though each has “redeeming” qualities too. The “surprise” ending is fairly easy to guess as the book progresses, and I felt the ending was a bit rushed, and it didn’t fully live up to the promise of the premise, but I still found it a worthwhile read. I did enjoy the atypical approach to time travel.
    • 3/5
      John and William are brothers, one a stone mason and the other is a cloth merchant. They are returning from Exeter to their small village in the fourteenth century in the midst of a plague epidemic. They are both infected, but an unknown being offers them the chance to live for six more days, but ninety-nine years apart. Thus, they end up traveling through time.I've really enjoyed Mr. Mortimer's biographies of Roger Mortimer, Henry V, and Edward III. He's an esteemed historian who writes well and fluidly about his subjects. This book read more like a social history with a chapter for each century as the men move forward in time. Each time period is a separate and detailed vignette that covers the history and social mores of the Exeter area during that time period. I found them interesting, but the overall premise of the book was a trifle disappointing. John wants to do good works to escape the plague, a form of penance common in medieval religion. For me, the story didn't meld well, and I guessed the ending by the second chapter, especially as John's good works continued to go awry. I pretty much skimmed the last part of the book. As I said before, I really enjoy some of his other works, but this one was not for me.
    • 1/5
      There are certainly people out there who will like this book. Alas, I was not one of them.Audiobook qua audiobook: the narrator is okay. He does a poor job at differentiating the voices of different characters, so dialogue is confusing. He does a laughably terrible job at female voices - to the point where it is, frankly, insulting. And he does the worst American accent I've ever heard a British person attempt. But it's fine.The book itself has a really interesting premise but a really poor execution. If you care about the minutiae of what people wore in each century from 1300-1800, this book is for you. If you care about any other ramifications of someone from the 1300s time-traveling through later centuries, then you will be disappointed - it's rarely discussed. This book would have been more interesting if it had a sci-fi angle, focusing on the future instead of the past. As it is, the main characters jump from century to century and learn surprisingly little about what life is like in their future, instead just wandering around refusing to adapt and making a real big deal out of their own ignorance.This book was written by a white man for other white men. If you're a woman, be prepared for a LOT of misogyny. There are basically no female characters in this book, and the ones that are there are only there so that the main male character can talk about their breasts. Oh, and then there's the part where the main character actively lusts after a 14-year-old.This book could have further benefited from some good editing - I was surprised to learn that this is an S&S book because the editing was so poor I just assumed it was self-published. Plot holes (the main character doesn't know what bricks are but then magically starts calling them bricks?), inaccurate historical references (every mention of the calendar made me grit my teeth), and a weird spiritual/ethical thread that runs through the whole work only to culminate in a lesson at the end that falls flat and doesn't make a lot of sense.Like I said, there's an audience for this sort of thing. But it wasn't for me. Reader, exercise caution.
    • 3/5
      This audio book was a slow starter for me, but I think it was the reader as opposed to the writing. The conversations were stilted at the beginning. Once it became that the main character was just telling things from his point of view rather than through conversation, things improved greatly. Definitely a meaningful ending and thought provoking book about how one views themselves and others until their circumstances are changed.