Reader’s Diary

Robert Charles Wilson

Gigantic monuments to military victories twenty years in the future begin appearing around the world. This book is the story of the world’s reactions to the “chronoliths” in the decades leading up to the date recorded on the first monument. The tale is told from the point of view of a software engineer who seems to have a more-than-coincidental connection with the mysterious monuments.

The story is interesting and the portrayal of the near future is well-imagined. However, the conclusion is inconclusive, and the ending is not worthy of the rest of the story.

Harry Turtledove

Turtledove can’t write worth a dam. The alternate histories he imagines are interesting, but they’re populated by indistinguishable characters whose stories are told in a wooden, plodding manner. This is the middle book of yet another Turtledove trilogy. Nothing notable happens until around page 350, and nothing at all happens that a reader of the first book couldn’t have predicted. Yes, I probably will read the third book, since the idea of the United States and Confederate States fighting again with World War II technology is intriguing. But I don’t expect to enjoy it.

Thomas Dyja

Steven Armour, the main character of “Meet John Trow” is in the midst of a mid-life crisis when he joins a group of Civil War reenactors. The group’s colonel assigns him the role of John Trow, a not altogether admirable Civil War soldier. Soon Trow seems to be taking over Armour. Is Armour being possessed by a spirit from the past, or is he just suffering from delusions? Armour discovers that Trow is making him more effective at his job and that Mrs. Armour rather likes her “new” husband. The situation becomes even more complicated when Armour - in the persona of Trow - begins an affair with the colonel’s wife, a women he would not look at twice in her 20th century guise.

This is an intriguing, often darkly funny book.