This Christmas break I was given an unexpected (and cherished) experience. In mid December author Lise Breakey gave me an early release of her book, and for two weeks I stole away in the early mornings when the rest of the house had not yet awakened, and immerse myself in the knots of time travel and the characters of Timewalkers. With a cup of coffee, the glow of a kindled fire, and a warm cozy chair, I rooted for Nikki against the Vindihari clan.
Breakey’s easy style quickly liberated my suspension of reality, and for a score of quiet mornings I explored the splintered and fragmented world of of Nikkole Varian. Her words consumed my attention for hours each morning. Only when the morning rays of the sun reminding me I had responsibilities in the real world did I begrudgingly pause. I began to really dislike the sun.
I have naught but praise for Lise’s work. All to many novels use time travel in a single instance to abrasively combine stereotyped elements (like dragging a medieval knight into the 20th century). Refreshingly, Timewalkers makes time travel integral to the plot and addresses the impact of time travel head-on to great success. Woven more intricately are other exceptional clans whose supernatural abilities are not carelessly draped across the storyline, but rather find limitation and constraint within the weave. Kudos to Breakey for believably using time travel to satisfy at least one cantankerous physicist.
My reading contained an additional serendipity; one with an extra dimension that only comes from shared time. An occasional chance phrase would take me to memories of decades ago whose origin was pegged to campfire lit tellings of simple tales with a handful of friends amongst the stones and cactus of desert mountains or gallivants around the vineyards of southern California. She would paint brief scenes and fill them with short vignettes with none but the stones and trees themselves to record her creations. The voice of the storyteller from my youth has now birthed a novel. The reading would at times leave me superimposed within two universes: one where she played God and created imagined worlds, and another where Nikki split realities and rent time to save her friends. Each time I would smile, and with each smile I would further rue the rising sun.
Dare I hope to see my friends Nikki and Peter at Christmas morning this coming year? One can only hope.