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Loading... Three Days to Never: A Novel (original 2006; edition 2006)by Tim Powers
Work InformationThree Days to Never by Tim Powers (2006)
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) mgplavin | Oct 3, 2021 |  I mean, what does Einstein and Charlie Chaplin have in common with time-travel that mimics the trajectory of a swastika? Or a novel that attempts to do the same in it's plot progression? Theoretically, these are some damn cool villains. The opening is solid and grounded, and even all of the Shakespeare quotations make perfect sense as a means to focus oneself in a timeline. It's cool! So why didn't I love this? I think it's probably the characters. I kept losing my "care" focus. The family stuff was interesting in retrospect, especially when some of that family isn't family but is yourself at a different age or across an erased timeline or as a sacrifice to a better timeline that turned on itself to bite you, your progeny, or your friends on your ass. I love the fact that it got really wacky and strange. Truly. But it also took it so far away from my love of the characters that I started going glassy-eyed. Especially when the ghosts came into play. Or the sex changes. Or the ragged bursts of time travel and reattachments of lifelines on a revolving helix of galaxies. Or something like that. Just how many Mary-s WERE there? Yikes. At least when Heinlein did it, he spread out the weirdness over many books in small doses and grounded fully in good stories. :) Let's do an all-out 4th dimensional viewpoint romp, shall we? It's impressive, but it's even a bit too much for me! Whoa. :) Maybe it's just me. I also don't like it when authors don't do ENOUGH of the weird stuff. :) Maybe I'm just impossible to please. :) ( ) bradleyhorner | Jun 1, 2020 |  ) Loryndalar | Mar 19, 2020 | ) chaosfox | Feb 22, 2019 | I've been away for two days in Powers' head,, held by his way of taking a weird idea, such as Einstien inventing a time machine, then filtering it through a world view that contains ghosts, ESP and all manner of psychic phenomena. Anybody who has read Powers in recent years knows all his tics and enthusiasms, and they're here in full, but this is tighter, more controlled than the frenzy of, say, Earthquake Weather, and all the better for it. There are moments of briliance here too, in descriptions of how a blind woman can live by seeing through others' eyes, of swooping travels in the astral planes, and a climactic sequence as tense as any thriller. But at heart, it's a story of a broken family, working together for each other against heavy odds, and it's often rather touching and tender. And funny too, with a comedic touch that's sometimes absent from Powers' books. I'm sorry I took so long getting to this one. It's another winner. And I'm also sorry that there's no more new Powers books for me to read now. I'll be waiting impatiently for his next one. (  )1  williemeikle | Dec 22, 2018 |
 The place is Greater Los Angeles, a neighborhood today, San Bernardino, Pasadena, Hollywood, Palm Springs. People arrive, or their predecessors did, so there are reflections, or repercussions, of Germany — Switzerland — Israel — and a ranging universe so vast and strange the characters think of it as a freeway to their local lives, or God. The time is 1987: three days of it: hence the title — with a look at 1967 — the days of Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein — Pope Innocent III — Moses — and a man from 2006 who can’t stand the crude technology. The actors are a preteen girl and her father who teaches literature — and her great-grandmother — and her uncle — and two teams trying to undo place, time, and action, one from the Israeli intelligence service, one vast and strange. The focus of these forces keeps this story strong. Powers has set us at their nexus, holds us there. The careful painting of their operation, almost prosaic in the midst of poetry, almost mundane in the midst of the mystic, keeps this world weird. He makes it shock and shimmer. Its spine is his imagination. Its sinew is his understanding. He is unafraid of good or evil, of comedy or crime. Belongs to Publisher SeriesScience Fiction Book Club (1213739) Awards
When Einstein told Roosevelt in 1939 that the atomic bomb was possible, he did not tell the president about another discovery he had made, something so horrific it remained a secret--until now. When 12-year-old Daphne takes a videotape labeled Pee-wee's Big Adventure from her grandmother's house, neither she nor her college-professor father Frank has any idea that the theft has drawn the attention of both the Israeli Secret Service and an ancient European cabal of occultists--or that within hours they'll be visited by her long-lost grandfather, who is also desperate to get that tape. And when Daphne's teddy bear is stolen, a blind assassin nearly kills Frank, and a phantom begins to speak to her from a switched-off television set, they find themselves caught in the middle of a murderous power struggle that originated long ago in Israel and Germany but now crashes through Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.64)
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