A fun look at the idea of time travel that compares favorably with Back to the Future, this book is a bit thought-provoking but mostly good entertainment. The story revolves around our hero, Ned Henry, and his co-conspirator, Verity Kindle, who are working hard to find an historical artifact from Victorian England that went missing during the German bombing raids on Coventry during World War 2. It’s a time travel comedy of errors, in which every little mis-step leads to disastrous implications for the fate of the free world. And of course, throughout the story we’re treated to the faux-academic bombast of Professor Peddick, whose historiographic bloviations that personal characteristics, and not large-scale demographic forces, determine the course of significant events. (I found the Professor rather annoying, actually, and I didn’t really like this too-obvious device; rather than provoking thought, it made me want to skip through his dialog.)

The science fiction element of the story is a kind of fun twist on the idea of time travel. In this take on the concept, time travel is not some dangerous new invention that a mad scientist invented in his lab and is using to wreak havoc. It’s been around for nearly forty years, but its use is limited, mainly uninteresting - but still potentially catastrophic. Rather than trying to preserve history just exactly as it was, and therefore avoiding any sort of interactions with other individuals from other times, our heroes merely do the best they can to contain the damage that they’re causing. It’s the equivalent of letting a piece of pottery fall and get shattered, and doing one’s best to glue it back together so that it looks more or less as it did before. I enjoyed that approach to the idea of time travel, because I thought it gave the narrative quite a few interesting places to go that wouldn’t have been available with more stringent rules. On the other hand, the force which balances out all of the blundering mistakes - the time travel device which is simply called “the net” - is attributed all sorts of omniscience which is a little difficult to figure out. And the conflict which sets the whole thing in motion - a rather eccentric woman’s crazy project to rebuild a perfect replica of the World War 2-era cathedral at Coventry, down to every minute detail, in the year 2057 - is similarly a bit hard to swallow.

For anyone who enjoys travel diaries or mystery novels, this book works as an amusing homage. Accepting as a given that the science fictional elements are a little opaque and that the characters are a bit over the top, this book is definitely a lot of fun.