The author of any story dealing with time travel has the problem of handling the inherent paradoxes. The most successful handling of this problem that I've seen was that of the third Harry Potter movie. But the potential time travel paradox in that movie occurred during a relatively short sequence within the movie.
Here, in The Speed of Darkness, we have the concluding volume of Catherine Fisher's Obsidian Mirror quartet -- a quartet that has been centered entirely on time travel. The paradoxes abound, and the characters openly acknowledge those paradoxes and attempt to come to grip with them within the boundaries of the plot.
I would have to go back and read all four books again to find out how successful the author was. Not all that successful, I suspect. The books were enjoyable and well-written and worth one reading. But only one such reading, I think.
Aside from my concerns with the time travel paradoxes presented by the plot -- which really is the central issue, explicit in the books themselves, and not something swept under the carpet -- this final volume is an exciting read, as we watch the fairly large cast of characters experience great adventures and continue their development as persons, their motivations becoming more evident to us, and, interestingly, to themselves as well. Even the greatest villain, the dastardly Janus, arouses a certain sense of pathos. Summer, the queen of the fairy Shee, remains remorseless, superficial and without feeling -- but still appealing to us in a perverse way.
And the changeling Gideon, to me the most sympathetic of the characters from the very first volume, finally has his wish fulfilled, although not the wish I would have wished for him.
A good read. But, of course, the first three books are an absolute prerequisite if this book is to make any sense at all.
-----------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment