The Outcasts of Time

Damn, damn. I really like Ian Mortimer's Non-Fiction “Time Traveller” series which I find eminently readable, interesting, and with good flow. I also loved the basis of this novel; The idea of time travelers going back in time are plenty but sending the POV character forward is rarer. However in the end this book did not work for me. It was a bit of a plod morality tale instead of what could have been. The erudition is there and it is not laid on so thickly to be an impediment to the plot, it is just that, for me, the plot fell a bit flat and was episodic.

Meh. The premise was so much better than the book. It sounded so interesting, but it was actually just really dull. And SO much religious discussion, which is not my thing.

I'd have given it one star for “I didn't like it”, but I reserve that for books I really hated, which Goodreads doesn't have an option for. It was somewhere between “Ok” and “I didn't like it”. So 1.5 stars.

What would you do if you knew that you were dying? Would you take your fate and hope for the best, or try and make a deal?
John and William are two brothers who are living through the black plague. As people die around them, they work on getting back home, just hoping that they can make it alive. As they pass the dead and dying, John wonders about his soul, and whether he would make it to heaven or not. As they pass a young couple on the road, John notices a baby, and he refuses to leave the child even though the parents are dead of the plague. As they carry the screaming babe through the night, William curses his brother, but John could not allow the child to die alone on the side of the road. They head to the home of an acquaintance, who is nursing a child of her own and can at least feed the child until they can read their own home. But as they enter the home and the woman goes to care for the child, it is discovered that he is plague ridden. The brothers leave the home, and are soon sick themselves, but John heard a voice telling him to go to a certain spot.
Once there, they both hear a voice, although it tells them different things, they are given an amount of time, each day will be 99 years in the future, and they can see the changes that are coming. As they set out, the changes are shocking, and dangerous.

This was an exciting read. I had a hard time putting it down. As John and William work their way through the different centuries they remember home, and do their best to make the most of their situation. As time goes on, and the days dwindle, both are ready for death and the end of their suffering. John suffers through the choices that he has made, wondering if anything he did made any difference.
This shows the good and the bad of each century. While there are some who enjoy the suffering of those around them, there are those who are determined to do good, and to try and make the world around them a better place. Hope and chance - the ability to work through the challenges of what life throws at you, and the eventuality of what the choices of one person in the past could have on the future generations.