When The Walls Fell - Monique Martin

    2013; 260 pages.  Book 2 (out of 11) of the “Out of Time” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Time-Travel; Romance; Whodunit.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

    Ah yes, Temporal Paradoxes.  They're the reason the CFTS ("Council For Temporal Studies") warns every one of its time travelers not to change anything when they journey back into the past.  You never know when you might change history through even the smallest act.

    But now the CFTS wants Professor Simon Cross to go back to 1906 San Francisco and stop someone from murdering a man named Victor Graham.  It seems that one of the current council members, Charles Graham, a descendant of Victor’s, has disappeared, and the council believes this was due to somebody creating a temporal paradox by killing Victor.

    Simon has his doubts about the mission.  The council may have ulterior motives, although what those might be is anybody’s guess.  So the CFTS switches to plan B.  They approach Elizabeth West, Simon’s student assistant, lover, and time-traveling sidekick, to try to talk her into doing the job.  They even add one more incentive: if Victor dies, it’s possible that Simon Cross himself will never be born.  How’s that for a temporal paradox?!

    By the way, didn't San Francisco get leveled by a deadly earthquake in 1906, with dozens of deadly fires and hundreds of people killed?

    Coincidence?  I have my doubts.

What’s To Like...

    When The Walls Fell is Book 2 in Monique Martin’s Out Of Time series.  I read the first book back in 2013, its review is here.  Both books are a clever blend of Time Travel and Romance genres, and here there’s a bit of a whodunit mixed in as well.  The council knows when Victor Graham is killed, but not who did the killing and why.

    I like that the time-travel is limited to requiring a special pocket watch and only when there’s a lunar eclipse; it prevents the chrono-hopping from being too convenient.  The Romance element centers around Simon and Elizabeth patching things up after a lovers’ spat.

    The writing style is what I call “storytelling” mode: the emphasis is on moving the plot along without getting bogged down with long descriptions or character depths.  Yet the 1906 setting is still portrayed well; and Elizabeth’s joy ride in an automobile from back then was a memorable experience.  I also liked Monique Martin’s habit of making up words and phrases: “physics-y”, “Jeevesy”, “rococo gone loco”, “great googley moogley”, et. al.  It takes a certain confidence to coin your own expressions in a novel, and here I felt it fit in nicely.

    I thought the book was well-researched for its time period.  Madame Blavatsky gets a brief nod; as does Rachmaninoff.  There’s even a smidgen of Chinese worked into the story, plus a brief discourse about the serious topic of racism, which I thought was quite timely (no pun intended).

     The ending was a mixed bag.  A couple plot twists crop up to challenge our heroes, including a clever one that I didn't see coming for the baddie.  Yet the resolution of the main thread, Victor’s demise, while certainly twisty, didn’t feel very exciting.  Overall, I was expecting Simon and Elizabeth to face bigger challenges than what went down.

Kewlest New Word...

Cheviot (n., but an adj. here?) : the wool or tweed cloth obtained from the Cheviot sheep.

Others: Fatuous (adj.).

Excerpts...

    “She’s found some psychic.  Madame Palianko or Petroika or something equally Russian.  You see my wife’s foibles aren’t just limited to her taste in music.  They’ve somehow managed to venture into the Other World.”

    “Twaddle,” Wentworth said between puffs.

    “Caroline will be seeing spirits for weeks,” Gardiner said, rolling his eyes again.  “Last time we had a medium over she was convinced the ghost of her Uncle Merryweather was trapped in the credenza.”   (loc. 5411.  All locations refer to the three-book bundle from which I read this book)

    “I hate that we can’t change things, and yet, I’m kind of afraid I did.”

    Simon’s eyes narrowed.  “Elizabeth, what did you do?”

    “Nothing, maybe.  Or, maybe, I might have said something that’s sort of responsible for the beginnings of the inklings of the founding of the Temporal Council and the invention of the time traveling watch.”

    “I was gone two hours.”

    She shrugged.  “It was an interesting two hours.”  (loc. 7091)

Kindle Details...

    When The Walls Fell sells for $3.99 at Amazon.  The first book in the series, Out Of Time, is free; the rest of the e-books in the series all sell for $4.99.  You can also purchase the Books 1-3 bundled together for only $4.99.  Monique Martin has a bunch of other books and series available for your kindle, most of which are priced at $3.99, plus a couple of Christmas novellas for $2.99 apiece.

“The Vichy just doesn’t soise like it used to.”  (loc. 4715)

    There are some nits to pick, but most of them are minor.  At one point some extremely potent components are smuggled into a jail and then used to quickly eat through the steel bars on the prison cell.  Ignoring the unlikelihood of successfully slipping these unnoticed past the guard, there’s also the issue of how incredibly fast-acting the concoction was.  I’m a chemist.  Trust me, this doesn’t work in real life.

    There’s only a smattering of cussing in the text, and a couple of rolls-in-the-hay, but nothing lurid.  Despite the tameness, some reviewers weren’t keen on these sex scenes being included.  They have a point, but hey, it’s clearly indicated that these are “Time Travel Romance” tales, and those of us who read them only for the Time Travel angle need to suck it up and tolerate the lovey-dovey stuff.

    Finally, for me the storyline seemed to be a bit “loose” in places.  For example, the séance was a high point in the story because it challenges the reader to try to figure out if it's supernatural or a scam.  The evidence was mixed – mysterious wet footprints versus the medium’s known origin.  But I don’t recall this plot thread ever being conclusively resolved.  I also never figured why Maxwell was at times referred to as “The Great Leslie”, nor whether Charles Graham eventually managed to “undisappear”.

    Full Disclosure: I read the last half of When The Walls Fell in a hospital waiting room, so it’s entirely possible that the answers to these plot threads were there, and that I was just too distracted to grasp them.

    5 Stars.  Add 1½ stars if you like the idea of mixing Romance with a Time Travel tale.  Methinks it's an acquired taste that I still haven't gotten used to.