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Branch Point
In time travel, there is a starting point, an end point, and a point of no reutrn. From a journal written in 1836, in a city which will not be called San Francisco, here are the memoirs of a girl chronicling her voyage back in time from the year 2062 to the year 1962, and how the world was saved from nuclear war.
310 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 19, 2015
I love time travel and alternate history, so this book piqued my curiosity when it arrived in a bookbox. And the cover quotes by Robert J. Sawyer and Allen Steele impressed me. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with this very poorly written book. I do not know much about this author, but I am guessing that she is a lifelong resident of San Francisco, a first-wave babyboomer, a Democrat, a theist, a follower of pop culture, and descended from Russian ancestry. I guess this, because if you are not ALL of those, you will probably find you are not the intended audience. There are so few human beings that fit all those criteria, that I have to suspect the intended audience was only herself. That, is what is called a "Mary Sue". This writing can't even decide if it is YA or not. At first, set in the early 1960s it seems so, but as the decades pass the biases shift, I think following Clee's own level of maturity during those times. I didn't give the book my lowest rating, because I felt a few of the ideas could have been developed, if only there had been an editor that did their job.
June 24, 2022
This book was a good read. Not great (which I'll get to), but enjoyable - a solid, time-travel romp! Time travel is always fun and always a bit wonky, and in this book, at least in the first part, was very well executed. A bit of spoilers! People from a nuclear-fallout survival bunker in the far future create a time machine and decide to send a team back to "fix things" so that the nuclear apocalypse never occurs. I quite enjoyed the first part of the book...set in the early 60s, we have a team from the future dealing with America and Russia (and JFK!) and trying to figure out how to properly adjust things so that apocalypse never happens. Fun stuff. All the conversations with JFK were fantastic and I also really enjoyed Jeffrey and Anna's experiences in early 60s Moscow. One thing I give the author props for, they never make the Russians (or the Americans for that matter!) the "bad guys". You can tell there is great respect for the Russian culture and Russian people, and that made me all the more eager to enjoy this book! Again, the first half of the book is fantastic. Where it unfortunately begins to go off the rails is the second half of the book, where it appears that the author has decided the plot needs to be sped up and so...things just kind of happen as necessary for the plot. There is less detail and less subtlety. Years are just sped by and even the death of one of the main characters is barely given space for mourning. The ending - while a bit shocking - is not entirely surprising as it is sign-posted in the first few pages of the book. I admire this book for the fact that all the main characters appearing on the page are shown as full, well-rounded characters who have capacity to change and grow. But unfortunately, this means all the power figures off the page are air-brushed as villains, unredeemable, warmongers. I also may be a tad biased though, because I noticed and rolled my eyes over the biases of the author. I chuckled over the obvious biases of the author and they probably put me off this book a bit. The author loves JFK, Bill Clinton and San Francisco. Texas and Oklahoma, the author makes sure to show disdain for. I do appreciate the craft in making all the time-travel pieces fit together, but a bit saddened that this book ended up being a bit more flat and colorless than I was hoping for. Ah well, still a fun read and I'm probably being too harsh! Worth reading at least once, but I probably won't read this again.
August 2, 2020
Upfront - a book I did not and chose not to finish.
Mona Clee breaks - no trashes - my first rule of a well written book. That being that the author is responsible for setting up and maintaining a world that I can - at least for the length of the book, believe in. If at any point I start rolling my eyes and thinking how utterly ludicrous, then it's all over.
Quite simply the plot is trite, the characters one dimensional and uninteresting, the portraits of historical figures - John F. and Robert Kennedy, Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton, etc. are hagiographic and the reasoning/expectations that form the basis of the finale would require multiple Deus Ex Machina interventions.
Mona Clee breaks - no trashes - my first rule of a well written book. That being that the author is responsible for setting up and maintaining a world that I can - at least for the length of the book, believe in. If at any point I start rolling my eyes and thinking how utterly ludicrous, then it's all over.
Quite simply the plot is trite, the characters one dimensional and uninteresting, the portraits of historical figures - John F. and Robert Kennedy, Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton, etc. are hagiographic and the reasoning/expectations that form the basis of the finale would require multiple Deus Ex Machina interventions.
December 17, 2021
excellent timetravel/alt-history
December 27, 2021
I liked the time travel and mixing in historic characters. It was a good read but, not the kind that makes you stay up late just to see what will happen next.
August 28, 2024
enjoyed the premise of this
October 31, 2017
The book is the diary of a woman who grew up in a bunker generations after the world has been virtually annihilated by nuclear war following the Bay of Pigs incident in 1962. The scientists in the bunker have finally created a time machine that will send three teenagers, including the narrator, back to 1962 to persuade President Kennedy to back down from the conflict. The catch is that no one knows what will happen to the future timeline if the kids succeed in changing the past.
Because the diary begins as the writing of a teenager, it starts out gushing with excitement. Later entries are written in a more mature style, so the book begins as a young-adult novel and continues as an adult one. As other critics have pointed out, the writing could be improved, but I would prefer to focus on the novel's best features.
More than anything, the novel evokes a sense of loss. The inhabitants of the bunker are trapped in a nuclear wasteland; nothing green exists outside and even the soil has been irreparably ruined by erosion. They are living on borrowed time and the bunker has no future even if its timeline is eliminated.
When the teens emerge in 1962, they are given breakfast -- and fall into tears when they taste fresh eggs and toast, not only because it drives home the poverty of their own lives in the bunker, but because it exposes just a small piece of the world that was lost.
The teens succeed in changing the timeline. What do you do after that, but to enjoy the life that you were denied in the bunker? There isn't any home to go to now. Unfortunately, this new timeline, a world that has been given a reprieve, is also flawed. The story continues, and the sense of loss is intensified.
As an antiwar novel, Branch Point depends on domestic life (sometimes pretty unusual domestic life, to be sure) to show what is at stake in a world armed with nuclear weapons. For all its flaws, I found Mona Clee's novel gripping and original, and have reread it several times. Apparently it resonates with some readers.
Because the diary begins as the writing of a teenager, it starts out gushing with excitement. Later entries are written in a more mature style, so the book begins as a young-adult novel and continues as an adult one. As other critics have pointed out, the writing could be improved, but I would prefer to focus on the novel's best features.
More than anything, the novel evokes a sense of loss. The inhabitants of the bunker are trapped in a nuclear wasteland; nothing green exists outside and even the soil has been irreparably ruined by erosion. They are living on borrowed time and the bunker has no future even if its timeline is eliminated.
When the teens emerge in 1962, they are given breakfast -- and fall into tears when they taste fresh eggs and toast, not only because it drives home the poverty of their own lives in the bunker, but because it exposes just a small piece of the world that was lost.
The teens succeed in changing the timeline. What do you do after that, but to enjoy the life that you were denied in the bunker? There isn't any home to go to now. Unfortunately, this new timeline, a world that has been given a reprieve, is also flawed. The story continues, and the sense of loss is intensified.
As an antiwar novel, Branch Point depends on domestic life (sometimes pretty unusual domestic life, to be sure) to show what is at stake in a world armed with nuclear weapons. For all its flaws, I found Mona Clee's novel gripping and original, and have reread it several times. Apparently it resonates with some readers.
June 19, 2010
More of a 3 1/2 star book, but not 4. The first half of the book would appeal to anyone who enjoys playing Fallout - three kids from a future postnuclear bunker (!) travel back in time to 1962 to prevent a botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The story bogs down midway as the kids acclimate to the real world and history branches out repeatedly. Quick and entertaining, and a better book than the average GR rating shows.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 30, 2015
Good time travel story.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews