Philip Fracassi: "The Third Rule of Time Travel" (ARC Review)

Title: The Third Rule of Time Travel [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Philip Fracassi [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Sci-Fi, Thriller/Mystery, SPOILER - click on the Spoiler button below if you want to know, since revealing the other genre would ruin your reading experience...If you want to go into the book without knowing anything vital about it, I recommend not reading the Labels at the end of my review either. No need to worry though - the review itself will be spoiler-free...
Year: 2025
Age: 18+ (but it can be read by mature teens)
Stars: 4/5
Pros: Engaging variation on the time-travel trope, with a strong human angle and a transcendental core.
Cons: The side characters are slightly underdeveloped. The metaphysical interlude can feel disorienting.
WARNING! Plane crash, car crash, guns, blood and gore, loss of parents and a sibling, loss of a spouse, stillbirth, trauma, grief, implied misogyny.
Will appeal to: Those who prefer their time travel to be emotion-driven and not necessarily physical (or literal). Those who enjoy a philosophical twist to it.

Blurb: Scientist Beth Darlow has built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time - to any point in the traveler's lifetime - and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it's not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. After Beth's husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella - their only daughter - and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology. Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp. As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future. (Amazon excerpt)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK/Orbit for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

EMOTIONAL VOYAGE

Time-travel stories are always entertaining and thought-provoking no matter what, but I was pleasantly surprised by the spin Fracassi put on the trope. As it turns out, you can produce an exciting specimen of time-travel narrative even by having your characters remain fixed in place and only be able to revisit moments of their past...at least if you up the ante by throwing a couple more ingredients into the mix (one of which shall remain unnamed, to avoid spoiling your fun), and ultimately allowing said characters a different kind of agency than the reader would expect. As much as the adventures of a person displaced in a different era or physically reliving the same day can be fun, there's something to be said for a more psychological - and in this case, even philosophical - approach to being untethered from your present. I know, I know...I'm being cryptic, but spoilers are just around the corner. Suffice to say, while Beth is a stationary character, the trips her consciousness makes (and the ones her late husband made before her) spin a twisty (and emotional) web while apparently warping her present - first in subtle ways, then with catastrophic consequences - and won't make you miss the thrill of "real" time travel. [...]

AGENCY HICCUPS

TTROTT is also the story of a female physicist in a male-dominated field, with everything it entails - though to be honest, Beth's work isn't the only one her boss is set to exploit, and he's pretty much horrible to all his employees, regardless of their gender...but the way he manipulates her and/or puts her through the wringer, and his response to her emotional distress after her increasingly more shocking travels, are textbook sexism - which Beth calls out, even trying a little (impromptu) manipulation of her own in return. Beth herself isn't your typical likeable character, but she owns her mistakes, and she feels authentic and relatable, both as a scientist and a person (and a widow, and a mother) put under an enormous amount of strain. If I have to be nitpicky, I might say that - counterintuitively for a brilliant scientist and a woman who manages to stay headstrong in an impossible situation - there are a few occasions when Beth is, for all purposes, stripped of her agency by the male side characters, who either keep her in the dark about crucial matters for her own protection, or try to make decisions for her (about a machine that's mostly her brainchild, too), or conversely, create the conditions for her to be able to pursue her goals. I understand that the story requires these things to happen for it to unfold the way it does, but it's a little frustrating.

SOUL-FI

Last but not least - Fracassi's latest offering is a (well-researched and plausible) sci-fi novel, but it's probably a better candidate for the much wider label of "speculative fiction", since it ends up taking a philosophical (you might even say "spiritual") turn. No need to worry though, because this aspect integrates nicely with the main genre of the book (and even better with the other one I'm not mentioning), and it doesn't come out of the left field - the author did a great job of incorporating certain ideas and themes early on. Maybe some sci-fi purists will wrinkle their nose, I don't know - but I think everyone who's on board with a more metaphysical approach to time travel will find a lot to love in this brutal at times, yet ultimately soulful sci-fi story.

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Alternate main Reading Room/main genre: Multiverse