Reviews

Branch Point by Mona Clee

sonofthunder's review against another edition

3.0

This book was a good read. Not great (which I'll get to), but enjoyable - a solid, time-travel romp! Time travel is always fun and always a bit wonky, and in this book, at least in the first part, was very well executed. A bit of spoilers! People from a nuclear-fallout survival bunker in the far future create a time machine and decide to send a team back to "fix things" so that the nuclear apocalypse never occurs. I quite enjoyed the first part of the book...set in the early 60s, we have a team from the future dealing with America and Russia (and JFK!) and trying to figure out how to properly adjust things so that apocalypse never happens. Fun stuff. All the conversations with JFK were fantastic and I also really enjoyed Jeffrey and Anna's experiences in early 60s Moscow. One thing I give the author props for, they never make the Russians (or the Americans for that matter!) the "bad guys". You can tell there is great respect for the Russian culture and Russian people, and that made me all the more eager to enjoy this book! Again, the first half of the book is fantastic. Where it unfortunately begins to go off the rails is the second half of the book, where it appears that the author has decided the plot needs to be sped up and so...things just kind of happen as necessary for the plot. There is less detail and less subtlety. Years are just sped by and even the death of one of the main characters is barely given space for mourning. The ending - while a bit shocking - is not entirely surprising as it is sign-posted in the first few pages of the book. I admire this book for the fact that all the main characters appearing on the page are shown as full, well-rounded characters who have capacity to change and grow. But unfortunately, this means all the power figures off the page are air-brushed as villains, unredeemable, warmongers. I also may be a tad biased though, because I noticed and rolled my eyes over the biases of the author. I chuckled over the obvious biases of the author and they probably put me off this book a bit. The author loves JFK, Bill Clinton and San Francisco. Texas and Oklahoma, the author makes sure to show disdain for. I do appreciate the craft in making all the time-travel pieces fit together, but a bit saddened that this book ended up being a bit more flat and colorless than I was hoping for. Ah well, still a fun read and I'm probably being too harsh! Worth reading at least once, but I probably won't read this again.