Pros
- Series comes to a satisfying conclusion
- Some important historical points to Earth’s history
- Leaves open a possibility of a timeline split due to events in story
Cons
- Not as much action in concluding book due to lack of enemies
- Some sections seem more like a lecture
Healing Time Review
Healing Time gives readers and fans of the series a satisfying conclusion to a story that started off very exciting with Earth’s fight against the time makers and ended with a seemingly impossible task made possible again.
There are a lot of seemingly impossibles that Ryan manages to accomplish throughout the series: fighting off aliens with unimaginably powerful ships that can erase material from time, reuniting the split time entity itself, and somehow communicating with the dead. Fans of the series shouldn’t be so surprised—Ryan’s very existence (and age) seems an impossibility itself. So much so that readers would not have been surprised if he had met himself when he encountered Time.
Healing Time resolves the very last problem that Ryan and his motley crew face: resurrecting an Earth that was erased from time. There aren’t very many enemies remaining who could obstruct their mission, making the book feel a bit more slow as a result. While there are still some action scenes, they don’t feel as important or as urgent as previous villains like the time makers.
Where there is a bit of absence of action, there is a lot more exposition. Time gives Ryan the template for resurrecting Earth, and to fulfill this template, Ryan has to imagine the framework for Earth and its history. The result is some discussion about what constitutes pivotal moments for Earth’s history.
There are some moments that wouldn’t be a surprise. No one would argue that the asteroid that ended the reign of dinosaurs and allowed the rise of mammals isn’t pivotal. Other social moments that the author includes are interesting, though they do lean more on Western history.
One interesting consequence of the story’s resolution is the possibility of the entire series becoming unstuck from the otherwise linear progression that is Ryan’s long forever life. While Ryan himself isn’t changed—or if he has, readers wouldn’t know—by the divergence in Earth’s timeline, he recognizes that his distant past no longer aligns with Earth’s past.
As a result, there’s more opportunity or freedom for Ryan to do as he pleases—he’s unstuck from the linear and persistent march of time. That’s not to say that he was stuck earlier, but the possibility was never raised until this series and in particular, this book.
Healing Time will please readers with its conclusion and opens up the series for more interesting directions for its immortal android protagonist. What awaits Jon Ryan now that he has overcome the limitations of space and time?
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