Splinter Effect
by Andrew Ludington
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted March 4, 2025
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I received a free digital review copy from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. Honestly, there were a couple of times I almost stopped reading. It is a debut novel, not without some merit, but also quite a few plot holes and inconsistencies. Imagine a time-traveling Indiana Jones, nominally working for the Smithsonian, but where many of his projects are funded by private collectors. Add a little bit of a Warehouse 13 vibe, along with a title that evokes memories of the TV adaptation of 12 Monkeys. The Krishnamurthy-Chang Effect, aka the Splinter Effect, says that if a significant change is made by a time traveler, another universe is created, one that splinters off "our" timeline.
One major problem from the beginning is the "present" year in which it is set. The book is dedicated to one of the author's friends, with an apology that he wasn't able to finish it in time, suggesting the friend has passed away. If it took him that long to finish, why didn't he change it from 2018 to some time in the future? A comment about an action by the then (and now again) POTUS falls flat. It is apparent the time travel technology had been used for a long time, and is well known to certain groups, if not to the general public, leading to the suspicion the book's timeline is one of the splintered ones. There is the Adams-Cortez Act that governs the technology's use, but I'm not sure which governmental body enacted that. I give Ludington credit for laying in quite a few historical figures and events, most of which seem accurate based on a few Wikipedia searches. I won't give details about that though, so as not to spoil.
Robert "Rabbit" Ward had been one of the most successful time traveling archaeologists for more than twenty years, although he had been haunted by one of his early adventures, one in which his assistant died. That man's parents had been supporters of several of Rabbit's previous jobs, but then they shunned him. The opening scene has him returning to his "decay point" near Alexandria, Egypt. His assignment had been to retrieve scrolls from the library before it burned. The decay point has to remain stationary, and the traveler has twenty days to return to that point, or else they would be stuck in the past. One rule mentioned is the traveler cannot bring anything back with them, not even the clothes they are wearing at the time, so they have to bury their artifacts in the past, then retrieve them in the present. But how do they get the clothes they need to wear in the past through the time machine? Then the author forgets the "no clothes" rule on one of Ward's other returns toward the end of the book.
In addition to expeditions sanctioned by various museums and governmental agencies, there are also other groups that use the technology for their own purposes. Ward has run afoul of a woman several times working on her own, or for unknown others, and on several occasions she has stolen artifacts he had buried before he could retrieve them. Someone in Ward's group has to be a mole, providing infomation about his expeditions to the other group. Ward runs into the woman again in Constantinople in 535 CE. She eventually identifies herself as Helen, but Ward is convinced it is not her real name, and no surname is given. She also says she does not know who gives her the assignments, nor who is paying her, another thing he doesn't believe. In this book, as it would be if adapted to film or TV, their relationship is of the "will they, won't they?" variety. The ending implies there may eventually be a sequel, but that doesn't interest me.
Another of the discrepancies about the Splinter Effect is someone who had remained in the past had already made changes, so why were they not part of a timeline already splintered? Even if their changes had not yet been significant enough for that, Ward is sure what happens in Constantinople definitely should have splintered the timeline, which would mean he was already part of the new timeline, so would not have been able to return to his time. Maybe he didn't, and it is a different timeline, but who knows? The Smithsonian would have access to the types of clothes and accoutrements a time traveler would need, and historians and linguists for support, but of course, as it is in most TV and movies, all the dialogue is in English, or else immediately translated. But how could they be sure the traveler was using the right dialect and terms for the time period? It's not like they have a TARDIS to automatically translate everything they say and hear. In summation, some of the plot is interesting, but the characters are cardboard, the plot full of serendipitous occurrences and predictable events. Not recommended, even though I know others might like it.
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