The Loneliness of the Time Traveller by Erika Rummel (Book Review/Book Tour)

The Loneliness of the Time Traveller by Erika Rummel

Synopsis

“It is a dreadful thing to be possessed, to be invaded by a spirit woman who commands your body and soul and looks out at the world through your eyes. It happened to me. Pray it will never happen to you.”

Adele’s diary tells the story of her domination by the incubus Lynne, a serving girl in a London alehouse who died a violent death and commandeered Adele’s body for eight years. Can Adele be held responsible for Lynne’s crimes? Will the evil spirit return and renew her tyranny over Adele’s mind?

Lynne has moved on into the twenty-first century, but transmigration has left her emotions flat. Lynne is eager to go back to her first life and experience once more the passion she felt for her lover, Jack. To do so, she needs a channel to the past: the manuscript of Adele’s diary—if only she can find it.

A time-slip novel set in contemporary Los Angeles and eighteenth-century London, The Loneliness of the Time Traveller is a story of love, crime, and adventure combined with fantasy, a little bit of Jane Austen-style irony, and a healthy serving of social criticism.

There is a tour wide giveaway for 2 print copies.

This giveaway is for 2 print copies and is open to Canada and the U.S. only. This giveaway ends on October 8, 2022 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

About the Author

Erika Rummel has taught at the University of Toronto and WLU, Waterloo. She has lived in big cities (Los Angeles, Vienna) and small villages in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria. She has written extensively on social history, translated the correspondence of inventor Alfred Nobel, the humanist Erasmus, and the Reformer Wolfgang Capito. She is the author of a number of historical novels, most recently The Road to Gesualdo (D. X. Varos, Ltd., 2020) and The Inquisitor’s Niece (D. X. Varos, Ltd., 2018), which was judged best historical novel of the year by the Colorado Independent Publishers’ Association. In2018 the Renaissance Society of America honoured her with a lifetime achievement award. She divides her time between living in Toronto and Santa Monica, California.

Visit her on her website: https://www.erikarummel.com/

My Review

Pros

This is the second book by author Erika Rummel that I have read, the first being Evita and Me. So I was prepared to give Ms. Rummel another read with The Loneliness of the Time Traveller. In fact, as a fan of time travel I gravitated to the title. However, I was unprepared for the storyline presented.

As you can readily ascertain from the Synopsis of the book provided by the publisher, this is not a time travel story. Instead, it is a story of being possessed by a spirit who refuses to accept death – an incubus. Having researched the meaning of the word ‘incubus’, I find that the author should have used the word succubus – which refers to a female demon.

The story centers around a female demon (succubus) named Lynne. In her first life, Lynne was a barmaid at an alehouse in old London frequented by thieves, cutthroats, and other low life types. Her man was Jack who in some fashion made her feel womanly. Sadly, Lynne’s life ended at an early age and she was unwilling to leave the earthly realm. So she slipped into the body of Adele, a virtuous young woman on the brink of death and through her efforts Lynne shared the body of the young woman.

Fast forward to the 21 century. After twelve transmigrations, Lynne has lost the ability to feel emotions; she desperately longs for the passion her one time lover, Jack, made her feel. But in order to return to the past she needs a conduit. She is convinced that the original manuscript of Adele’s diary will be her ticket. But that diary is under lock and key in a university library in California. And so Lynne sets off to find a way to steal the diary and go back in time.

The ending is a bit unexpected but sharp readers will figure it out long before the conclusion of the story.

Cons

Although the story has a good premise, this book falls short of the other work I’ve read by Ms. Rummel. Throughout the story it was, for this reader, confusing as to which character is actually speaking (Lynne or Adele). Additionally, it was difficult to ascertain in which era they are speaking (present or past). There are no clear chapter definitions, only sections labeled as either Lynne or Adele. This would work if the story didn’t hop around so much. I believe that most readers like a definitive chapter break, i.e., I’ll read only one more chapter before bed. The second thing that bothered this reader was that paragraphs rambled on, sometimes for pages at a time. And while this may be a personal style of the writer, it annoyed me. If however, these things don’t bother you, then you may enjoy this book.

NOTE: I received a copy of the book as part of a promotional book tour.