Tom Sweterlitsch, The Gone World *****

The Gone World is an excellent crime / science fiction hybrid. In 1997, a West Virginia family is brutally murdered, with the father and oldest daughter missing. Because the father is a Naval officer assigned to a top-secret time traveling program, Agent Shannon Moss is assigned to investigate. As she digs in, it starts to seem likely that the case is somehow related to Terminus, the end-of-the-world scenario that time travelers report as an increasingly likely future.

The first part of the book reads like a crime novel with science fiction flourishes; the balance shifts in a decidedly sci-fi direction as it continues. Sweterlitsch manages to keep the story grounded and realistic even while venturing into multiple timelines and apocalyptic prophecies. There's a quote on the hardcover edition from Blake Crouch, the author of Wayward Pines and Dark Matter, but thankfully The Gone World lacks the outlandish quality of Crouch's work. Characters act in a recognizable human manner, and the story combines exciting action sequences with well-embodied ideas about time, fate, and the nature of the self.

Tony Soper, The Northwest Passage ****

I wouldn't normally list a travel guide in this blog, because I wouldn't usually read one cover to cover. But The Northwest Passage is unique in that it's a travel guide for a place I'll (probably) never go -- in fact, a place I would have thought it was nearly impossible to go.

The first part of the book is a summary of European attempts to discover a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the top of North America, culminating in the disastrous Franklin expedition in 1845 and Roald Amundsen's success in 1906. The heart of the book, though, is a tourist's guide to the present-day attractions along the route. Soper hits all the notes from a traditional guidebook: scenic vistas, wildlife refuges, lodging ("There is a very good hotel [at Gjoa Haven], named inevitably after Amundsen"), and tourist facilities ("The Arctic Coast Visitor Center [offers] an excellent selection of maps, informative brochures and exhibits... Businesses in the community include a Northern Store with a Quick-Stop selling KFC and Pizza Hut"). There are numerous sidebars about the unique animals along the route, not to mention nice photography.

I expected the Northwest Passage to be nothing but desolate ice and tundra, with its only attraction being its historical significance and mere existence. The Northwest Passage, though, made the trip seem both attractive and doable, albeit not trivial. I found myself mentally flagging the sights I'd want to catch, just as I do when planning an actual vacation. 

Michael Ondaatje, Warlight ***

The narrator of Warlight was a teenaged boy in post-war England when his parents "went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals." It's clear to Nathaniel and his sister that their parents trip to Singapore is somehow related to the work they did during the war, but they don't know what that work was. Their guardians are two men they call the Moth and the Darter, the latter of whom smuggles greyhounds into England for illegal racing. The first part of the book describes Nathaniel's adolescence; the second part describes his efforts a dozen years later to discover what his mother was up to during that time.

The fundamental theme of Warlight is that our lives are driven by forces we only obliquely understand. The actions of Part 1 all find their true meaning in the the war and its immediate aftermath. Ondaatje's style, here as in The English Patient, creates vivid set pieces with clearly metaphorical intent. 

We continued through the dark, quiet waters of the river, feeling we owned it... We passed industrial buildings, their lights muted, faint as stars, as if we were in a time capsule of the war years when blackouts and curfews had been in effect, when there was just warlight and only blind barges were allowed to move along this stretch of river.

Ondaatje's prose has a peculiar distancing effect, so that it always feels like we're viewing the narrative at a remove. Nearly everyone in the story goes by a nickname or pseudonym. Most of the story consists of memories that have a romantic gloss to them.

M. Wylie Blanchet, The Curve of Time ****

I have a soft spot for journal-like memoirs that take place along the Inside Passage from Vancouver to Alaska. Joe Upton's Alaska Blues, Edith Iglauer's Fishing with John, Jonathan Raban's Passage to Juneau: these are some favorite books of mine. The Curve of Time is a family-oriented contribution to the genre. The author is a single mother of five who, in the late 1920s, spends summers cruising the British Columbia coast with her family in a 25-foot boat. 

The Curve of Time is a disconnected collection of anecdotes, and the author never establishes the children's characters -- in fact, I'd be hard-pressed to name them all. But I can't be objective about the subject matter, the period photographs, the nautical charts on the endpages, or the watercolor on the cover of this 50th anniversary edition.