Book report: The Map of Time, by Felix J. Palma


Book report: The Map of Time, by Felix J. Palma

It’s all my own fault. I couldn’t resist a book with a title like “The Map of Time.” Plus, the idea of [SPOILER ALERT!] H. G. Wells using his secret time machine to hunt down and defeat Jack the Ripper in Victorian London is wonderful. But, boy, does this book need pruning!

For example, even before reading this book, I was aware that Jack the Ripper was a bad guy. I don’t need 84 pages about how the main character, who was in love with one of the murder victims, was affected by the crimes for me to come to the conclusion that preventing said crimes would be good. I also don’t need a complete biography of H. G. Wells from the age of 8. Nor do I need a thorough plot summary of The Time Machine, which I’ve read several times, and seen both movies of, and whose events don’t really pertain to the present story. And I really don’t need an exposition on how the main character’s father made his fortune by selling toilet paper.

What I do need is the actual adventure, which occupies only about 11 pages out of the first 236 pages of the book. So, what this really is is a fairly well-written and moderately clever short story that’s been padded out to 236 pages. I say “236 pages,” even though the book is actually 512 pages long, because that’s where I stopped reading. I’m sure it gets much better on page 237.

I say “fairly well-written” because it does have some nice turns of phrase, but it’s also a translation, so I don’t know whether to chalk the writing up to the author or the translator. Even giving the author the benefit of the doubt, against this you have to set some weird plot holes, which you can’t pin on the translator. For example, why does the main character, so distraught by the murder of his one true love, wait 8 years to kill himself? Because, dear reader, that’s how long it was between the Jack the Ripper murders and the publication of Wells’s The Time Machine. If he did it any sooner, there wouldn’t be a plot. So, the main character does something totally contrary to human nature because it’s dramatically necessary. My writer’s group would never let me get away with something like this.

I say “moderately clever” because I guessed the twist by page 77, and I’m not that good at guessing twists.

I will admit that I liked the part where H. G. Wells meets Joseph Merrick, the “Elephant Man”, in yet another scene that has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot.

I’m sure that I’m missing all kinds of allegorical and symbolic meaning in this book, but I’m not that clever at such things. No doubt, others will spot all kinds of fascinating items that I missed.

I just looked at the book’s web site on Amazon and found that this book is the first part of a trilogy. Oh, my God!


Recommendation: stay away

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