I can't say it's quite so deeply peculiar, but I just finished a book that reads like the plot summary of a potentially very interesting book. Unburning Alexandria, by Paul Levinson.
It's about characters from the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries time traveling to the world of ancient Greece and Rome. Unfortunately, it alternates talking heads with characters rushing around doing the same things in different places. Every scene is either a subset of characters discussing their plans for time travel (usually while sitting down at a meal together), or a subset of characters traveling to a city with a time machine so they can get to their destination city to meet another time traveler from a different time who is either trying to assist them or thwart them. Characters change names and faces regularly as they time travel and impersonate each other and historical figures.
The plot-advancing scenes all read like: "Now I will go to London in 1850 so I can get to London in 150 AD so I can take a ship to Alexandria, where I will run into someone from 2050 New York whom I last saw in 50 BC Alexandria, which was last month for me but 10 years ago for him. He will tell me how in the last 10 years (for him) I showed up in 2050 New York under a different name and wearing a different face, which hasn't happened for me yet, but as a result of this conversation I will decide to go to 415 AD Alexandria and try to stop his past self." Every 5-10 pages, it feels like, we're in a different place and time, trying to figure out how to get to yet a different place and time. Hardly anything *happens*, people just race around space and time trying to rescue or intercept each other, while arguing about the morality of their respective goals.
The book was 250 pages long and needed to be at least 400, so we could get to know and care about the characters, or at least keep track of what's going on. Instead, we got a whirlwind of a few pages of dialogue here and there interspersed with a few pages of plot summaries here and there. It's the sequel to a book that was slightly better and didn't make me wonder so much how it got published (The Plot to Save Socrates), but wow. I'm planning to skim the next book, but I expect it to be much the same.
ETA: I just noticed the subject's post and should add that this is not a YA book.
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Date: 2019-05-02 01:49 am (UTC)It's about characters from the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries time traveling to the world of ancient Greece and Rome. Unfortunately, it alternates talking heads with characters rushing around doing the same things in different places. Every scene is either a subset of characters discussing their plans for time travel (usually while sitting down at a meal together), or a subset of characters traveling to a city with a time machine so they can get to their destination city to meet another time traveler from a different time who is either trying to assist them or thwart them. Characters change names and faces regularly as they time travel and impersonate each other and historical figures.
The plot-advancing scenes all read like: "Now I will go to London in 1850 so I can get to London in 150 AD so I can take a ship to Alexandria, where I will run into someone from 2050 New York whom I last saw in 50 BC Alexandria, which was last month for me but 10 years ago for him. He will tell me how in the last 10 years (for him) I showed up in 2050 New York under a different name and wearing a different face, which hasn't happened for me yet, but as a result of this conversation I will decide to go to 415 AD Alexandria and try to stop his past self." Every 5-10 pages, it feels like, we're in a different place and time, trying to figure out how to get to yet a different place and time. Hardly anything *happens*, people just race around space and time trying to rescue or intercept each other, while arguing about the morality of their respective goals.
The book was 250 pages long and needed to be at least 400, so we could get to know and care about the characters, or at least keep track of what's going on. Instead, we got a whirlwind of a few pages of dialogue here and there interspersed with a few pages of plot summaries here and there. It's the sequel to a book that was slightly better and didn't make me wonder so much how it got published (The Plot to Save Socrates), but wow. I'm planning to skim the next book, but I expect it to be much the same.
ETA: I just noticed the subject's post and should add that this is not a YA book.