Pros
- Encounters with powerful beings
- Ryan’s sense of humor helps him rather than hurting him
Cons
- Story takes a slight detour from main conflict of hunting down last clan ship
Shattered Time Review
Shattered Time by Craig Robertson takes readers on a slight detour from ending the threat of the last time maker and Clan ship. Like Odysseus’ journey home, the journey leads to increasing detours and dangers that delay Ryan from reaching his goal of somehow bringing Earth and humanity back into time and existence.
Ryan separation from Sachiko and Tank to pursue his own journey leaves both groups vulnerable. Their journeys lead to interesting encounters with beings whose powers transcend even those of the Cleinoids, gods and demigods who threatened Ryan in the far-flung future.
These new time lords, a nod to the powerful beings in Doctor Who, live beyond the concerns of time. Their abilities make them one of the most powerful beings Ryan has encountered to date—their power is so great that they can, with a snap of their fingers, erase any living being from time, a feat that would otherwise require time energy and a powerful vessel like Aramthella.
But that’s not all. Ryan manages to gain an audience with these time lords’ father, a being so powerful that his existence transcends multiple universes.
Yet despite the power these time lords and their father possess, they’re not able to help Ryan in his quest to return his home to existence.
Precious few clues are sprinkled throughout the story that foreshadow how all can end well for Ryan and the reader. There’s Desi’s ability to see, converse with, and command the dead. How this will help humanity is illustrated through a short encounter with a sourcerer who is freed when an unwitting engineer pushes a button.
Other clues like the time riddle provided to Ryan and the sharing of details about the workings of the universe—a strange resemblance to an ancient Greek worldview—suggest that the solution to Ryan’s problem lies in the reunification of a fragmented time, as the title suggests.
But just how Ryan will manage to put the pieces of time back together and reconnect all the dispersed energies that make up humanity and earth remains to be seen. It’s perhaps an order taller than the ones he faced previously. At least those problems could be resolved with firepower.
Fans of Jon Ryan and his antics will continue to enjoy the writing style and Ryan’s sense of humor. They’re not the only ones either: Ryan’s humor wins over a powerful being who passes along a riddle that holds the key to humanity’s salvation.
Shattered Time by Craig Robertson is a great continuation of the story that pushes the plot along toward a more defined conclusion. While the journey in this book takes a few detours, the conclusion of the story finds these disparate paths rejoining into the main conflict of destroying the Clan and saving humanity. It’s what readers have come to expect from Ryan: destruction and salvation.
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