I had to start reading The Map of Time twice. I had reserved it from the library and it came in one day before I got REAMDE(and I couldn’t hold off reading that since every Stephenson book deserves to be read immediately), so I ended up not having enough time to read it before I had to return it (someone else had reserved it). So, I went back on the reserve list and finally got it. I had run across the book somewhere and it just looked interesting and when I saw that H.G. Wells was going to be a main character, I knew that I had to read it. And I’m so glad I did, it’s a great book that tells its tale in an interesting way. So, let’s see what the map of Time really is.

To start off with the title, yes you do find out what the map of time is, but not until fairly late in the book. H.G. Wells is a major character, but he doesn’t come in to the story until about a quarter of the way in. The book is set in the 1880s/1890s and everyone is influenced by the Wells book The Time Machine. We have a young rich heir who ruts around town with his cousin until a joke painting leads him to fall in love with a Whitechapel prostitute named Marie Kelly (yes, that one). After she is killed by Jack the Ripper, he falls into a decade long funk that not even the capture and execution of Jack the Ripper can break him out of (yes, the book deals with it). We have a wannabe author who runs a time travel adventure where you can go all the way forward to the year 2000 and see the hero Captain Derek Shackleton fight the evil automaton Solomon to save the world for humans against the automatons who have taken it over. And we deal with a time traveler who might brings together some authors to tell them that someone is going to kill them and publish their novels under his name. (The scene  with with Wells(The Invisible Man), Henry James(The Turn of the Screw) and Bram Stoker(Dracula) is a lot of fun).

Along the way we find a fictional version of International Association of Time Travelers who are out to protect history, a modern (1890s) woman who has fallen in love with Captain Shackleton (after he came back from the year 2000 to visit her and return her parasol), the back story of Shackleton and the time travel adventure to 2000, the morose lover’s attempt to go back in time and kill Jack the Ripper before his beloved Marie Kelly dies, the attempt by 1890s police to go on the trip to 2000 and arrest Captain Shackleton for a murder and find out way too much about H.G. Wells love life. As you can see, it’s a pretty packed book with a small cast in a small area, but a lot of ideas.

The story is well told and a fun ride. The beginning is a little bumpy and slow with Andrew Harrington (the lover of Marie Kelly) contemplating suicide. Once he runs into his cousin, the book starts moving and never looks back. Palma has written a wonderful book on love and time travel that makes good use of H.G. Wells, Jack the Ripper and 1890s London. Highly recommended.