BookReview: Parallel Lines by Ken Hartis

Parallel Lines by Ken Hartis


Story:
A naturally occuring time portal enables a young man to go back forty years in time. He decides to live a double life, one in his own time and one as Gene Starnes forty years ago. These two lives are always seperated by those fourty years, which of course means that time will still catch up with him as soon as fourty years have passed in both time lines. In the end he needs to make an important decision and his choice holds the dilemma of either risking losing everything or risking the destruction of the entire universe as we know it - and then some.

Review:
A book must be well written for me to really like it
It must also have a good story

Parallel Lines is a very good example on how these two elements should be prioritized: the book is very well written and as a romantic tale, the story is okay. But that's it. The author doesn't exploit the SF genre nearly as much as he could and the message drowns in over telling a tale that could've been told in half the number of pages.

That said, I'm quite impressed by the descriptions of roads, buildings and scenaries as they supposedly looked 50+ years ago. They appear to be grounded in the author vastly researching the premises of his book, though I haven't checked any of these details (I'm sure someone out there will...)

Finally, this book does hold one of the things that makes any book worth the reading time: it's not finished when you finish it, it makes you think...