Fragments - Monique Martin

   2013; 242 pages.  Book 3 (out of 11) in the “Out of Time” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Time Travel; Romance.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    It’s kind of neat to see a coworker’s picture in the newspaper.  In this case, it’s Evan Eldridge one of Elizabeth West’s and Professor Simon Cross’s colleagues.

 

    The picture is from September 18, 1942.  You can’t really call it “old” because Evan, Elizabeth, and Simon all are time travelers, and members of something called "The Council for Temporal Studies".  Indeed, Evan’s wife Lillian is waiting for him to "return home" to San Francisco in 1906.

 

    Well, it’s good to see Evan’s alive and well.  Except that he isn’t.  The caption that accompanies his photograph reads “Some men lose more than their homes.  For some, their identities are stolen by shell shock induced amnesia.”

 

    Hmm.  Evan was undoubtedly on a mission for the Council at the time, and apparently something went horribly wrong.  His amnesia explains why he’s late in getting back to Lillian, and why he’s a patient at Guy’s Hospital in London, England, a city which, in September 1942, was subject to nightly bombings by the German Luftwaffe.

 

    Someone should go rescue him.  Someone like Simon and Elizabeth.

 

What’s To Like...

    Fragments is the third novel in Monique Martin’s time-travel/romance series titled “Out of Time”.  I’ve been reading the tales in order so far, partly because I bought Books 1 through 3 as a bundle.  The two earlier novels were set in 1929 New York and 1906 San Francisco; now for the first time our protagonists are going to experience living in a war zone.

 

    There are three main plot threads to follow.  Simon and Elizabeth need to figure out what Evan's mission was in 1942 London, and since they’re “freelancing”, they can’t expect the Council for Temporal Studies to provide any information.  If/When they figure out what his assignment was, they need to complete it for him, and after that, somehow spring him from Guy’s Hospital and reunite him with Lillian.  His amnesia seems just a bit too coincidental, so it’s reasonable to expect that there will be some baddies to contend with.

 

    This is my favorite setting so far in the series.  I liked the realistic "feel" of being in London with its nightly bombings, barrage balloons, strictly-enforced blackouts, and all sorts of foreign secret agents scampering around spying on each other and engaging in skullduggery.  I also liked that there was an “is it natural or supernatural” aspect to the quest.  There’s only about a dozen or so major characters to follow, and the most noteworthy one of them, Jack, will soon be “promoted” by Monique Martin into having his very own series.

 

    I learned a new way to apologize in French: “Il s’aggissait d’un accident.  Sa chaussure.  Erreur.”  You also get to learn smidgens of Latvian and what I presume is Albanian.  When’s the last time you saw those two languages worked into a story?  The inclusion of a couple of German expressions, (Wunderhubsch and Scheisse) was not surprising since you know full well some German spies will be skulking around in London.

 

    Rudolf Hess gets a brief mention, so does Glenn Miller and Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.  If you're not reading this series in order, that's okay, there’s a brief backstory giving the highlights of the first two books in the series early on.  Since I was reading them from a bundle,  the book location references are given relative to the 3-book bundling.

 

    The ending is decent, with some excitement and the main thread (freeing Evan) completely resolved.  The baddies get their just deserts, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of them resurface in later books.  Jack gets to initiated into the art of time-traveling, which of course is a prerequisite for jumping into his own series.  The Epilogue left a lump in my throat.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Bedsits (n., plural.) : one-room apartments typically consisting of a combined bedroom and sitting room with cooking facilities.  (a Britishism)

 

Excerpts...

    “This is different,” she said.

    Simon narrowed his eyes.

    “It is.  First of all, we didn’t leave him in the past.  He was part of the future when we were in the past and now that we’re in the future, he’s part of our past, but it isn’t the same past, so it doesn’t count.”

    “Elizabeth.”

    “Don’t ‘Elizabeth’ me right now.”  (loc. 8130)

 

    A few more regulars came in and joined the old man.  One of them leaned over to their table and said, “These dirty of sods want to know if you’re married.”

    “I am,” Elizabeth said, wiggling her ring finger and eliciting groans from the men.  She giggled.  “You all are so handsome, surely you’ve been snatched up.”

    The old man raised his glass.  “Lost me wife in ’38.”

    “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said.

    “Every night,” he said, “I be praying the old bat don’t find me.”  (loc. 9829)

 

Kindle Details…

    Fragments presently sells for $2.99 at Amazon.  Book 1, Out of Time, is free, and Book 2, When The Walls Fell, is also $2.99.  The rest of the books in the series are $3.99 apiece.  Alternatively, you can get Books 1-3 in a bundle for $4.99.

 

Things that sound dirty but aren’t…

    “It wasn’t every day she got to fork a Nazi spy.”

 

“You know, for a comedy, The Divine Comedy is not a lot of laughs.”  (loc. 7894 )

    The quibbles are negligible.  I never did figure out how the Germans knew Simon was a professor.  If this wasn’t an oversight on my part, then the Council for Temporal Studies has a leak.  Also, the fact that two penumbral eclipses (aka "lunar eclipses") occur within a couple days of each other seems to me unlikely from an astronomy point of view, although I’m not motivated to check this out to confirm things.

 

    Some of the plot threads, including the “natural or supernatural” question, are not fully tied up, but commenting further on this would involve spoilers.  Let’s just say that Evan’s mission may or may not have been completely resolved.  But perhaps this is addressed again at some later point in the series.

 

    There’s a bit of cussing, but not much, and seems mostly limited to variations of “hell” and “damn”.  I think it says something about the author’s writing skills that she doesn’t have to resort to “shock talk” much to tell a fascinating tale.

 

    I think Fragments is my favorite book in the series so far.  Maybe it was because of the wartime setting.  Maybe it was because the time-travel aspect took precedence over the romance.  Maybe Monique Martin’s writing is just getting better with each book.  All I know is that it was fun to read.

 

    7 Stars.  I chuckled at the brief mention of the difference between the “London Bridge” and the “Tower Bridge”.  The image most people think when they hear the first term actually applies to the second one.  I know this because I lived for a short time in Lake Havasu City, Arizona way back when it was first getting started.  Its developer, Robert McCulloch, went to London and spent a bunch of money buying the London Bridge.  He thought he was getting the one was those fabulous towers and drawbridge.  Instead he got the plain-jane one, which you can see if you ever visit Lake Havasu.