Three Days to Never

I've wondered for a while if have lost the love of reading. I spend a lot more of my leisure time interneting and playing computer games these days than I do with my nose in a book. It is often all I can do to get a chapter or two read at bedtime before my eye-lids droop and I have to put the book down and go to sleep. And then I find a book like Three Days to Never by Tim Powers and finish it in two days, reading until 4am because I cannot put it down. I have loved Tim Powers' books since I read Anubis Gates, and he still rocks. There were a couple there a while back that were not quite up to par, (though still thoroughly entertaining) but with Declare in 2001, and now Three Days to Never, he is back to mid-season form and knocking them out of the park. There is more invention per page here than most other books have per chapter. The pace is screaming, the underlying concepts fascinating and complex, but always intelligible, and yet with all that going on, the story is so firmly grounded in matters of the heart, and in ordinary human pain and longing, that it still breaks your heart and makes you pray for good things to happen to his main characters. It is a human story first, but with the wildest time travel/thriller plot I've ever read laid over it so seamlessly, that you cannot separate them. So, in regard to my original concern, I think my problem is easily solved. I just have to read BETTER BOOKS!

Just when you think he can't get any better, this author, like that proverbial fine wine, keeps improving with age. After a long hiatus since his masterful attempt and successful supernatural conquest of the spy genre (Declare), Powers pulls off his latest adventures into new realms in this exceptional novel. From a cozy beginning with a family at home, we are swept through supernatural mysteries which turn into spy-adventures which end beyond the bounds of space and time bordering on an almost Phildickian philosophical mysticism, all the while recalling so much of the "weird-California" elements that his readers have come so much to love. The result is a wonderous sense of exploring new frontiers, while giving the reader a false sense of security of being grounded in the vaguely familiar. All that, and Einstein too. This may be one of the most experimental Powers has done yet. More proof (as if it were needed) that he is The Maestro, even in areas he has never gone before.

Tim Powers is a master of taking historical and biographical facts and overlaying them with a supernatural construct that is entirely plausible in its consistency. One reason the supernatural elements work is that the facts themselves are so damn *weird*. Einstein went to a seance with Charlie Chaplin and had a daughter about whom almost nothing is known? Intelligence agencies actually relied on psychic espionage by "remote viewers"? The supernatural effects in _Three Days to Never_ are dazzling yet seem entirely appropriate in a novel that takes place during the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. Twelve-year old Daphne Marrity's great-grandmother dies in mysterious circumstances on Mt. Shasta during the Harmonic Convergence. Meanwhile, Daphne and her father Frank find an odd collection of mysterious things in her great-grandmother's "Kaleidoscope Shed": letters from Einstein, a concrete slab that seems to be Charlie Chaplin's handprint slab from Graumann's Chinese Theater, and a videotape labeled "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure," which turns out to be a movie which terrifies Daphne so much she mentally starts two fires, discovering that she is a poltergeist. These elements as well as other objects in the Kaleidoscope Shed are part of a time machine that Einstein had created, and Daphne and Frank soon find themselves entangled in life-threatening events involving the Mossad, the Kabbalah, other dimensions, a mysterious group called the Vespers, and a man who purports to be Frank's long-missing father. All these people are looking for the time machine, and they each have agendas regarding changing the past. The story is absolutely gripping, of the can't-put-it-down variety, and it is interwoven with parallels and references to Shakespeare's _The Tempest_. Powers thoroughly develops such characters as an ambivalent Mossad officer and a blind assassin, but the heart of the novel is in the emotional and psychic bond between Daphne and her father. Daphne's character is a marvelous portrayal of a highly intelligent and sensitive twelve-year old girl coping with multiple dangers that include attempts on her father's life, and a series of bizarre events that include the discovery of her own telekinetic power. I thoroughly enjoyed _Three Days to Never_ with its engaging characters, the melange of espionage and the occult, and the riffs Powers plays on the theme of time travel. My only regret is that now I have to wait for his next novel.

In 1987 Frank Marrity's grandma dies suddenly during the New Age Harmonic Convergence. The family comes to the deceased's home in Pasadena where Frank's twelve years old daughter Daphne takes a videotape to watch. The flick is a lost Chaplin classic, but it does not leave the preadolescent watching it laughing. Instead some subliminal compelling symbols awaken a dormant fire starter-kinetic skill inside of Daphne; to her trepidation her new talent leads to the burning of the tape. Not long afterward, Frank going through his grandmother's documents uncovers a shocking find that she was Albert Einstein's illegitimate daughter. Though he tries to keep this quiet until he can figure out what this means, two dangerous groups learn of his connection to the late great scientist. The Kabbalah cell of the Mossad and a Gnostic sect want Frank, Daphne and the documents; both sides will do whatever to take what they covet as each believes that Einstein discovered a weapon more powerful than the atom bomb, but so fearful of its potential pandemic devastation, he refused to give this weapon of ultra mass destruction to even President Roosevelt. THREE DAYS TO NEVER is a superb science fiction espionage thriller that proves that Tim Powers (apropos name for this novel) writes tales faster than the speed of light. The action-packed story line is fast-paced yet never loses focus of the two Einstein offspring being in jeopardy with no one but themselves to trust. Readers will root for the precocious Daphne and her dad to defeat their adversaries, but the odds are overwhelming as the enemy comes from two sides and each moment a new one seems to arise. If relativity is genuine, this one sitting tale will receive several award nominations as one of the year's best thrillers. Harriet Klausner

Tim Powers' latest book was a pleasure to read. The characters were interesting and well-drawn and, as usual, the author provides a cornucopia of fascinating ideas. This time, unlike his previous book The Anubis Gates, he provides a form of time travel where it _is_ possible to change the past, leading to an emotionally effective look at the role of free will in our lives and that we ultimately are what we choose. I can't say much more about the content of the book without spoiling surprises that you'd rather read yourself, but there are a lot of cool concepts and quirky characters wrapped around this supernatural spy thriller. For any Tim Powers fan--or for those interested in trying out his unique style of modern fantasy--"Three Days to Never" is a wonderful instance of what make his stories special.