While this is undoubtedly Sci Fi, the author has chosen a voice far removed from standard yarn telling. In some parts it is presented as mystery writing: the reader is not always made privy to the thoughts and all the actions of the players, so various events are deliberately made the more mysterious by this device. At other times I am forcibly reminded of an old book of my mother's... Van Loon's Lives. This wonderful book adopts the pretext of a fantasy where spirits of the past are allowed to become corporeal once more and visit the author for a meal. He agonises over the correct food and entertainment, and what combinations of guests will work well. In fact his ulterior motive is to recount some of the history of each character. So in McDevitt's book it almost seems at times that the story about time travel and even the drama of the events that confront the main characters are of less importance than his imaginative recounting of various historical events. I freely admit to a bit of page flicking here and there while waiting for the main narrative thread to re-engage.
This is far from "hard" Sci-Fi. The object that allows time travel has been invented by one of the character's father... but there is little attempt to dress this up in pseudo science. He does adopt one convention critical to the plot: if anyone actually interacts with another iteration of themselves some mysterious rule dictates that a violent adjustment will be made possibly leading to the death of one of the "versions". This leads the main players into an intricate web of movement in time and space as they try to recover from problems they cause, and come to terms with the potential of the tool they have been given.
I found this entertaining enough to read to the end, but with some reservation about the intermingling of drama and historical recounts. The inventiveness is certainly there, and this at least is an antidote to those weary of the space opera brand of sci fi.
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