Surprisingly, I enjoyed Ian Hocking’s Déjà Vu. I say surprisingly because Déjà Vu prominently features time travel as a plot element. Somehow Hocking managed to overcome my usual distaste for such stories.
Time travel has to be one of the lamer crutches in science fiction. Most authors get caught up in trying to deal with the causality paradoxes generated by the possibility of time travel. Maybe I missed it in gobbling up Déjà Vu, but Hocking basically asserts a minimal time travel capability, characters avail themselves, story proceeds. No long soliloquies about altering the path of history, or changing your own past. Just a nice tightly plotted thriller.
Hocking also has done a much better job of character development than many of my recent reads. First, there’s a small number of distinctive players. No wasting details on minor characters. Second, the major characters are rich with nuance. Saskia Brandt and David Proctor are fully realized. The European setting adds a lot of flavor.
Lastly, the opening gambit that introduces Saskia is nicely done and pulled me deep into the story.
And to top it all off, it’s only 99 cents as a Kindle ebook.
Hat tip to Ken Macleod.