Guitars and Life

Time After Time - Ben Elton This is a really terrific book.  Here's the simple question you are posed with "If you could go back in time and change one thing what would it be?" Seems simple doesn't it.  However as ever total conjecture since time travel isn't available to us.  But... what if it were.  What if there was a place and point in time where you could go back?  This is the situation for our hero Hugh Stanton who is an ex-soldier and YouTube star of survival videos who is given the opportunity to do just that. The point of incredulity, scientifically and historically is that Sir Issac Newton figured out all of relativity before he died and way ahead of Einstein.  He determined that some time loops overlap in a small fragment of space and time.  Name in Istanbul in 2025 and 1914.  So you can go back to 1914.  And do what?  Stop the first world war?  Seems logical.  So that is what Hugh is tasked to do by a group of...

I've read a lot of Mr Khoury's books in the past.  My favourite of his is The Sign - which is a really good book, with some thought provoking themes. This one follows on from the two Templar Novels and the Devil's Elixir.  However again there is a small level of linkage - firstly Sean Reilly is the main hero but his partner Tess Chaykin that has featured as a co-hero in the previous novels is not even a bit player... she is totally reduced to "the lady at home looking after the kids" - feminists might not be best pleased with this character "development" :-/ Anyway... the story has an interesting idea at its heart.  How was Rasputin so successful in his life?  How did a penniless pretty much illiterate peasant come to be the trusted confident and advisor to the Tzar and Tzarina of Russia?  History tells us that his ability to help control their sons haemophilia was the key.  This book proposes an interesting theory as to exactly how that worked. Fa...