Reviewed
by: BigAl
Genre: Science Fiction
Approximate
word count: 140-145,000
words
Availability
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go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store
Author:
Susan
Sloate is the author of more than twenty books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Additionally she’s written plays, screenplays, been a feature writer for
multiple magazines, and a sportswriter as well as managed two political
campaigns.
Just out of
high school, Kevin Finn began his professional writing career as a television
news and sports writer. He’s worked in TV and film since.
For more
about Sloate, visit her website.
Description:
“WHERE WERE
YOU THE DAY KENNEDY WAS SAVED?
On the 50th
anniversary of the JFK assassination comes a new edition of the extraordinary
time-travel thriller first published in 2003 with a new Afterword from the
authors.
On November
22, 1963, just hours after President Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson
was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One using JFK’s own Bible.
Immediately afterward, the Bible disappeared. It has never been recovered.
Today, its value would be beyond price.
In the year
2000, actress Cady Cuyler is recruited to return to 1963 for this Bible—while
also discovering why her father disappeared in the same city, on the same
tragic day. Finding frightening links between them will lead Cady to a far more
perilous mission: to somehow prevent the President’s murder, with one unlikely
ally: an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald.
Forward to
Camelot: 50th Anniversary Edition brings together an unlikely trio: a gallant
president, the young patriot who risks his own life to save him, and the woman
who knows their future, who is desperate to save them both.
History CAN
be altered …”
Appraisal:
I’m writing
this review just a few weeks shy of the fiftieth anniversary of John Kennedy’s
assassination and, I suspect, we’ll see (or have seen if you’re reading this
after) a lot of news coverage and flashbacks. For baby boomers, this was a big
deal. A touchstone event for a generation. It dwarfs the death of Kurt Cobain,
my best guess of the closest equivalent for the next generation. And while
Cobain’s death has its share of alternative interpretations and conspiracy
theories, the volume of these doesn’t come close to that surrounding Kennedy’s
death.
The premise
of Forward to Camelot is your basic time travel story
without Marty McFly’s concern that messing with the past will really mess up
the future. It’s built around current understanding (at least as of the time
the book was written) including some of the facts that have given rise to the
many alternative theories as to what happened that day. Into that we’ve thrown
Cady, a time-traveler hoping to find out why her father disappeared the same
day and change her own history.
By their
nature, time travel stories require a reader readily able to suspend disbelief.
I don’t usually have a problem doing so and, at least for the majority of this
story, I didn’t. The authors did a good job of interweaving actual events with
their fiction, right up until the point where the story diverts from actual
history into their alternative, where Kennedy survives. It was an interesting
“what if.”
However, I
also had a few issues, primarily with one particular sequence of events in the
alternative history portion where Cady and Lee Harvey Oswald were being held
captive by Don, Cady’s father, and forced to reveal where something (what isn’t
important for this discussion) was hidden. As a delaying tactic, Cady had
directed her father towards Galveston, planning to reveal that the item was
actually in New Orleans at a point where it would be impossible to get there in
time for his purposes.
It raised
my eyebrows when Don guessed the item was in New Orleans and had somehow
arranged for a plane and pilot to meet them at an airport near Galveston. But
then, when the plane was unable to take off due to the weather, I was
flabbergasted when Don chose to wait until morning and take a boat. The next
morning they drive “hours” to the boat and then take that into New Orleans
(five hours according to what we’re told). That they still managed to get to
New Orleans just in time doesn’t say much for Cady’s delaying tactics. I guess
they were doomed to fail. But if Don thought a quicker trip by plane was called
for, why sleep for several hours and then use a method of travel that appears
to have taken at least as long as going by car would have? Even accounting for
the bad weather and slower travel on the highways of the time, this still
didn’t make a lot of sense over leaving by car when the plane couldn’t take
off. It did provide some chances for lots of conflict and adventure during the
boat trip, but at the cost of credibility as the story was building to its
climax.
Update: The authors brought to my attention two errors of fact in this review. Although I still have concerns with the believability of the portion of the book discussed in the last two paragraphs, I was incorrect when I indicated that Don and the others slept “for several hours” (this was another character) or that they waited until morning to start the trip by boat to New Orleans.
Update: The authors brought to my attention two errors of fact in this review. Although I still have concerns with the believability of the portion of the book discussed in the last two paragraphs, I was incorrect when I indicated that Don and the others slept “for several hours” (this was another character) or that they waited until morning to start the trip by boat to New Orleans.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No
significant issues
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