The Map of Time is a wonderful novel in three parts. In the first, H.G. Wells assists in traveling to the past to prevent a murder. In the second, H.G Wells bridges the gap between the future and the present. In the third, H.G. Wells must make a decision that will chart the course of the future. The fist two stories contain romantic elements while the third is a bit of a mystery. All of the stories overlap a bit bringing different characters together at different points in time. The end result is a novel that explores the theme of time travel completely and questions whether one should undertake to change past events if one has the opportunity.
Felix J. Palma writes beautiful prose that wanders through time. The narrator of the story occasionally addresses the reader directly to ponder events or to move the reader along to another part of the story. Although this does draw the reader out of the story a bit, I found that it gave the novel the feeling of truly listening to someone tell this story as if I were sitting right next to the narrator.
The only thing that prevents me from giving The Map of Time the full five stars is the amount of repetition it contains. While some of this is completely necessary to bring characters up to speed on events as they enter the story at different points, there were times when it felt the narrator was summarizing events up to that point for the reader. These summaries felt unnecessary and added quite a bit of length to the book.
I received an advance copy of The Map of Time from the Amazon Vine Program in exchange for my honest review.
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