Otto Parsons, a brilliant physicist, is missing. The October Men is a story of Otto’s experiment in quantum physics – trying to create zero gravity without going into space – which yields spectacularly unexpected results: time travel. Professor Dan Sibley, ever more desperate to secure funding to keep the experiment running, allows their work to fall into the control of men with an utterly different agenda. Otto’s disappearance is the first link in a chain of events, which tie together monumental historic moments. Initially funded by producing a historical TV series that uncovers the truth behind the Roswell Incident and the assassination of President Kennedy, among others. Inevitably, the show goes viral and attracts unwanted attention. As the project requires ever more funds, sponsorship is sought elsewhere, and control of the equipment quickly passes to a shadowy cabal of international criminals whose activities have global consequences, as they exploit the equipment to take advantage of the financial and art markets. When the truth slips out, human existence itself comes under threat.
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The October Men
David Impey
I ended up DNFing The October Men because I was not enjoying the writing style or the plot. Plus I just wasn’t overly interested in what was going on. This was really unfortunate as it did sound like a good sci-fi read. My main overall issue was that this was written in more of a mystery/thriller style of writing and it just didn’t have the pace to keep me intrigued. Apart from a few chapters, there isn’t really a sense of much time travel actually happening, or if there is we don’t actually see it and there’s a lot of mystery around who we’re reading about in that time period.
Another issue I had is that there was so many POV’s that I didn’t feel attached to any of them. I was also confused a lot about who I was reading about. Plus, where we are in the time line was not really talked about either. It made me think the plot was extremely disjointed from the start, and because I didn’t finish it I can’t say if this ever improves. The pace was also slow, so I didn’t feel like we were ramping up for a big reveal which would have helped me to continue reading.
I did like that we were shown some historical figures like Van Gogh. It’s clever of the characters to have gone back in time, or forward in time in order to fund their research and is something that I’ve rarely seen in books because of time travel ‘rules’.
I think this is a book for fans of thrillers who have a wish to move into sci-fi books. As someone who enjoys very deep sci-fi world building this just wasn’t what I expected or what I wanted to read at that time. I do think I will try to read this again in the future though.
POSITIVES
+ Historical figures are included
NEGATIVES
– Personal dislike of writing style
– Too many POV’s
– Extremely slow
I received The October Men by David Impey from the publisher via Netgalley. This is an unbiased and honest review
