Publisher: Blue Feather
Dr. Jordan Lewis was paralyzed from the waist down in a riding accident when she was sixteen, but she lives in 2105 and medical science has progressed amazingly. Jordan is the test case for a project to develop sensors that can be implanted in a patient's spine and restore mobility to the body. While she recuperates at home from surgery she decides to have some remodeling done and finds hidden in a wall diaries that belonged to Maggie Downs, a woman who owned the same ranch a hundred years before and, ironically, was killed in an accident similar to Jordan's. Jordan becomes obsessed with finding out about Maggie to the point that Jordan's best friend Kale Simmons, who lives with her, is afraid she's becoming mentally unstable and will be disqualified from the project they're both working on. Jordan begins to believe that she is receiving messages in her dreams from Maggie across time and she's also convinced that Maggie's accident may not have been an accident at all. She is desperate to find some way to reach Maggie and volunteers to be a test subject for Kale. He has been working for years to build a time machine and it's finally ready to try out. Against his better judgment he agrees to send Jordan on trips back through time to try and change history. She is determined to find out the truth of what happened and, if possible, save the life of the woman she has fallen in love with.
One complaint that cannot be made about Yesterday Once More is that the story and characters are not developed enough. Not only is the book over 300 pages, but it's in the larger format. There is ample space for exploring the characters and the plot points. Badger is a skilled writer and knows how to write realistic dialogue and control the flow of a story. There is redundancy in some scenes, but Badger turns them into points in the repeating time travel plot. Some material might have been eliminated, but the fullness of the characters would have been affected. The weakest element in the story is the time travel concept. Jordan returns again and again to the past with no concern about how her incursions might alter history or later people's lives. People who are science fiction fans know that this is always a major concern in similar stories. This is above all a romance however, so the lack of scientific discretion probably will be forgiven by the reader. To counterbalance it is the interesting work into helping paraplegics walk again. Since this type of work is already being done, it would be hoped that it would be further along a hundred years from now, but the concept is still interesting.
Overall, this is a romance that is made to be satisfying for lovers of that genre. It has all of the elements that are expected by the fans, the story is well told and it is believable if the reader accepts the science involved. It's an easy and enjoyable read, but allow yourself an extended reading period.
No comments:
Post a Comment