Quirky, humorous and packed with suspense, THREE DAYS TO NEVER is a head-spinning thriller.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“A wild and wooly romp-fun.” — Library Journal
“Machiavellian . . . [A]n astonishingly sophisticated and engrossing narrative.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Top-notch ...[T]he ingenious plot...manages to be intricate without becoming convoluted, to its highly satisfying conclusion.” — Publishers Weekly
“[A] breathtaking achievement, the complexity of which a review can only begin to capture...[A] powerful work.” — Locus
“Moves at a frantic clip...[the] very outlandishness [of Powers’s metaphysics] makes the story all the more compelling.” — Booklist
“[An] intense, downhill-race of a story . . . the summer sleeper hit of 2006.” — Denver Post
“Grade: A . . . Combining historical fact, science-fiction and thriller pacing, THREE DAYS TO NEVER is worth the wait.” — Rocky Mountain News
“Brio, bravado and a salutary measure of lunacy . . . A postmodern work par excellence.” — Washington Post Book World
“[THREE DAYS TO NEVER] contains so many genuine pleasures...plenty of action, humor and unexpectedly touching human drama.” — San Francisco Chronicle
[A] breathtaking achievement, the complexity of which a review can only begin to capture...[A] powerful work.
[THREE DAYS TO NEVER] contains so many genuine pleasures...plenty of action, humor and unexpectedly touching human drama.
Quirky, humorous and packed with suspense, THREE DAYS TO NEVER is a head-spinning thriller.
Brio, bravado and a salutary measure of lunacy . . . A postmodern work par excellence.
Washington Post Book World
[An] intense, downhill-race of a story . . . the summer sleeper hit of 2006.
Grade: A . . . Combining historical fact, science-fiction and thriller pacing, THREE DAYS TO NEVER is worth the wait.
Moves at a frantic clip...[the] very outlandishness [of Powers’s metaphysics] makes the story all the more compelling.
[THREE DAYS TO NEVER] contains so many genuine pleasures...plenty of action, humor and unexpectedly touching human drama.
Moves at a frantic clip...[the] very outlandishness [of Powers’s metaphysics] makes the story all the more compelling.
This Tim Powers supernatural literary thriller begins with the theft of a lost Charlie Chaplin film but quickly catapults a 12-year-old girl and her college professor father into realms that would perplex even the resilient Little Tramp. At the root of these shenanigans is a cast of characters who include Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and a secret band of Mossad agents who specialize in occult cabals. As in Declare and Last Call, Powers's tightly wound conspiratorial plots refuse to yield to neat summary, but be assured that this novel feels like a magical chess game played in several extra dimensions.
At first blush, Three Days to Never looks like the sort of fast-paced confection that reviewers routinely compare to roller-coaster rides, but Powers's novel is more like a ride on a roller coaster affixed to a centrifuge plummeting from the top of Mt. Shasta. Nearly every page introduces yet another crypto-supernatural trope: poltergeists, astral bodies, Aeons, dybbuks, holographic talismans, electronic Ouija boards, clairvoyance, pyrokinesis. Before too long I found myself saying, with apologies to my favorite physicist, "Surely you're joking, Mr. Powers!" And yet despite this surfeit of conceits, or perhaps because of it, the book won me over. With its exuberant genre-scrambling, to say nothing of its philosophical hijinks, low-jinks and nether-jinks, it's a postmodern work par excellence that will have you counting the days -- far more than three, alas -- until the next Tim Powers valentine appears.
Powers (Declare) delivers another top-notch supernatural spy thriller. When Frank Marrity's grandmother dies unexpectedly during 1987's New Age Harmonic Convergence, his 12-year-old daughter, Daphne, steals a videotape from the old woman's Pasadena house that turns out to be a Chaplin film long believed lost. Before Daphne can finish watching the film, its powerful symbolism awakens a latent pyrokinetic ability in her that burns the tape. Frank later discovers letters that prove his grandmother was Albert Einstein's illegitimate daughter. This comes to the attention of a special branch of the Mossad specializing in the Kabbalah as well as a shadowy Gnostic sect interested in a potential weapon discovered by Einstein that he didn't offer to FDR during WWII-a weapon more terrible in its way than the atomic bomb. In typical Powers fashion, his characters' spiritual need to undo past sins or mistakes propels the ingenious plot, which manages to be intricate without becoming convoluted, to its highly satisfying conclusion. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
This latest novel by World Fantasy Award winner Powers (Last Call) posits that long before Albert Einstein died, he discovered something potentially more frightening than the A-bomb. He hid this secret in a lost Charlie Chaplin movie, which surfaces 70 years later dubbed onto a Peewee's Big Adventure videotape. When Frank Marrity's grandmother dies, her body atop a gold swastika, her final message to her grandson and the psychic echo of her death trigger a desperate search for Einstein's discovery. Telepaths and telekinetics, a blind assassin who sees through other people's eyes, a fire-starting poltergeist, a severed head inhabited by ghosts' voices, a woman who's turned herself into a man through magic and force of will, and Charlie Chaplin's handprint in the concrete outside Grauman's Chinese Theater all play a part in the deadly scramble that follows. Frank and his 12-year-old daughter, Daphne, must flee rival agents of the Mossad and an underground sect of Gnostic heretics: both sides want them dead (at least some of the time). This is a wild and wooly romp-fun, too. Recommended for general collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/06.]-David Keymer, Modesto, CA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Middle Eastern power struggles, the structural integrity of the space-time continuum and the secret life of Albert Einstein are among the ingredients blended with Machiavellian cunning by prizewinning fantasy author Powers (Declare , 2001, etc.). An apocalyptic legacy from the Cold War years is unearthed when an elderly woman, Lisa Marrity, dies during a Harmonic Convergence observed from California's Mount Shasta. Lisa (of Serbian ancestry, born Lieserl Maric) harbored secrets, which are discovered by her grandson, college English professor Frank Marrity, and his 12-year-old daughter, Daphne, as they sort through her possessions. A tissue of allusions to Shakespeare's The Tempest , which implicitly link Frank and Daphne to Prospero and Miranda, provide entry to interconnected revelations about a videocassette of Pee-wee's Big Adventure , which actually contains an unreleased 1926 silent film, Charlie Chaplin's preserved footprint from Grauman's Chinese Theater and a rudimentary time machine invented, then disowned, by Einstein-for personal reasons that explain why those who seek to reconstruct it refer to the device as "the Einstein-Maric artifact." Hot on its trail are operatives of the Mossad and the sinister European secret society Vespers-for whoever possesses the time machine will be enabled to enter, and alter , the past, thus reshaping current events as well as the past. Further complications are provided by blinded double (perhaps triple) agent Charlotte Sinclair and Frank Marrity's estranged father Derek, each with a personal reason for wanting to change history. The novel has two glaring weaknesses: a cumbersome overload of manic invention, and intriguesso convoluted that characters are obliged to deconstruct and explain them to one another repeatedly. That said, this remains an astonishingly sophisticated and engrossing narrative-a powerful and truly disturbing envisioning of global conflict and the paradoxical allure of mutually assured destruction. And Powers succeeds wonderfully with the sorrowing, guilty figure of Einstein, convincingly imagined here as a genuine tragic figure. Not exactly a shapely construction-but, as Shakespeare's Othello might say, there's magic in the web of it.
