California -- Fiction |
Suspense fiction. |
Available:
Library | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
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Searching... New Bedford Wilks Branch | FIC POWERS | FICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Taunton Public Library | POWERS, TIM | 1ST FLOOR STACKS | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Wareham Free Library | F POW | FICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... West Bridgewater PL | FIC POWERS, TIM | FICTION | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
When Albert Einstein told Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 that the atomic bomb was possible, he did not tell the president about another discovery he had made, something so extreme and horrific it remained a secret . . . until now. This extraordinary new novel from one of the most brilliant talents in contemporary fiction is a standout literary thriller in which one man stumbles upon the discovery Einstein himself tried to keep hidden.
When twelve-year-old Daphne Marrity takes a videotape labeled Pee-wee's Big Adventure from her grandmother's house, neither she nor her college-professor father, Frank Marrity, has any idea that the theft has drawn the attention of both the Israeli Secret Service and an ancient European cabal of occultists--or that within hours they'll be visited by her long-lost grandfather, who is also desperate to get that tape.
And when Daphne's teddy bear is stolen, a blind assassin nearly kills Frank, and a phantom begins to speak to her from a switched-off television set, Daphne and her father find themselves caught in the middle of a murderous power struggle that originated long ago in Israel and Germany but now crashes through Los Angeles and out to the Mojave Desert. To survive, they must quickly learn the rules of a dangerous magical chess game and use all their cleverness and courage--as well as their love and loyalty to each other--to escape a fate more profound than death.
A pulse-pounding epic adventure that blurs the lines between espionage and the supernatural; good and evil; past, present and future, Three Days to Never is an exhilarating masterwork of speculative suspense from the always remarkable imagination of the incomparable Tim Powers.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Imagine a world where time travel is possible. Now imagine a world where the mummified head of an Einstein clone is helping a secret sect, led by a quasi-hermaphroditic ghost who speaks in iambic pentameter, track down and locate the time machine, an integral component of which is Charlie Chaplin's footprints in a cement slab, and you'll begin to get a grasp on just how bizarrely populated Powers' world is. Almost despite its wonderful weirdness, this thriller maneuvers at a frantic clip as Frank Marrity, Einstein's great-grandson, must pit his wits against not only the malicious secret society bent on attaining immortality but also a specialized paranormal branch of Israel's Mossad, who'd like to use the time machine to avert the Six Days' War of 1967, a stunning psychic assassin who can only see out of other people's eyes, and none other than his own bitter, alcoholic future Frank Marrity self to save his daughter, Daphne, from not merely death but from never having been. Powers' metaphysics come off a tad muddled, almost as if he is making them up as he goes along, but their very outlandishness makes the story all the more compelling, no matter how ludicrous. --Ian Chipman Copyright 2006 Booklist
Kirkus Review
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 intrigues so 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. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.