Review::Saves Nine by Les Lynam

. . . Saves Nine by Les Lynam

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Saves Nine by Les Lynam

I had an opportunity to read this as a sort of review copy quite a while ago. It obviously has undergone a few changes since then and it somehow became even longer than it was the first time. Since it's a time travel novel; sometimes being longer can be a horribly bad thing. I'm happy to say that that's not the case with this. This read to me the second time just a well as the first and in many ways felt as though I were reading it for the first time.

What I mean when I say that a long time travel novel can be bad; is that it can become recursive to an ad-nausea degree. You know: that bit where you have the character or characters live the same scene over and over until you feel like you are in some horrible remake of groundhog day. That doesn't happen here; though there is some overlap it usually breezes past quickly, because there's way too much other stuff going on to waste space[and time].

An odd thing I took from this novel is that I felt the main character Sean seemed almost a bit weak at time[which can be a good thing because character's need flaws]. This was not a showstopper weak, but there are times when as a reader I felt I would like to slap him up the side of the head for his actions and even his inaction. Of course, to his credit sometimes his inaction was a result of the programming of the enigmatic time traveler; claiming to be related to him.

The story starts out as an almost simple teen tale in high school with the usual angst. Some of this is the lame part of our character Sean as he tries to deal[not very well] with first someone obsessively stalking him and then his own obsession. But most of this is the setup for an early twist in the story and in a small way the prologue almost spoils some of it. Things get just a bit scary before they get really strange. And then when there is an excursion further into the past things are quite fun for bit.

In reading this twice I still found that it was well into the book that we meet the character I felt was the strongest in the whole story. This could just be me, so you really should read this book to see how you feel about it. At about this same time the book takes a more serious tone as we start to add up a few of the consequences of traveling through time and interacting with people[some who have been dead a few years or more in the time traveler's own time]. Les Lynam even threw a few thoughts and wrinkles that I don't recall seeing in this type of novel.

This is a long novel and happily I can say that in reading it through I never felt that there were any places where things could or should have been cut so the writing justifies the length[which is always a great thing]. When we weren't coming up with new ideas we were going through the process of developing the characters and moving the story forward. In fact; near the end and in the last few chapters I almost felt a sense of being rushed, which may have been exaggerated for me; because my favorite character was being developed a bit more and I hope that in the next installment of this series we see that happening at a different pace.

This is an outstanding debut novel from an author who cares enough to make the best attempt at delivering the cleanest clearest copy to the reader. This will make a great addition to the library of and Young Adult and those who love SFF just as well. A very thoughtful and thought provoking read.

J.L. Dobias



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