The River of No Return in Around the World in 80 Books

Jan 17, 2013 Nadine in NY Jones rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, romance, era-regency, time-travel, suspense-thriller, genre-blender

At first glance, I can't help thinking: someone's watched Fight Club a few too many times ...

The Rules of the Guild are as follows:

There Is No Return.
There Is No Return.
Tell No One.
Uphold the Rules.

I enjoyed this, but didn't love it. Rating was difficult, but I finally settled on 4 stars. This is a real genre blender. Primarily, it is about time travel, and secret societies of time travellers. Secondarily, it is a thriller of sorts. Thirdly (tertiarily??) it is a romance, mostly set in the Reg ...more

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May 06, 2013 Sam rated it liked it

Shelves: read-2013, reviewed, 8-fantasy-scifi

In The River of No Return, Nicholas Falcott is a 19th century English aristocrat who jumps forward in time to our present day just as he was about to be killed in war. It turns out this isn’t such a unique experience as he discovers when he’s taken in by a global organization—the Guild—that helps to resettle time travelers in their new time period. They are told that time travel only works going forward in time and space, given money to live off of for the rest of their lives, and told to go on In The River of No Return, Nicholas Falcott is a 19th century English aristocrat who jumps forward in time to our present day just as he was about to be killed in war. It turns out this isn’t such a unique experience as he discovers when he’s taken in by a global organization—the Guild—that helps to resettle time travelers in their new time period. They are told that time travel only works going forward in time and space, given money to live off of for the rest of their lives, and told to go on their merry way. They aren’t supposed to be curious about using these time traveling skills or what the Guild gets up to. And at the start of this book, Falcott—now Nick Davenant—seems to be fine with this.

But then the Guild enlists him to help fight a battle that’s brewing between Guild members who want to protect the future by preventing the past from being tampered with against a mysterious group of rogue idealists who seem to believe that they can change the past to improve the present and future. Nick just has to travel back to his original time period to spy on these rogues for the Guild.

But when Nick jumps back to 19th century England and reassumes his role as an aristocrat, things get complicated when Julia Percy, his lovely neighbor, comes into the picture. Julia has a few secrets on time manipulation herself, and she doesn’t know whether she can trust anyone with this knowledge—not even Nick, the man she’s falling in love with each day.

A premise that combines time traveling, two camps battling it out over different ideologies and motives, and the looming threat of a potential disaster that’s even bigger than the one both are fighting over, plus the promise of Regency-era romance, had me super excited about this book.

Bee Ridgeway sets up a convincing framework for the time traveling, in which people surf back and forth in the river of time based off of emotions. The mythology of the two camps seems rich in rivalries, murky motives, and complicated ties among the characters. So the architecture for the story is definitely impressive. It’s on the strength of this alone that I turned the pages until the end, even as I started getting very impatient with the actual execution of this brilliant premise.

The book is a perfect illustration of what happens when a writer is *telling* and not *showing*. This is a clichéd way of critiquing a book, but just feels apt for this one. You get this boring account of characters doing stuff. We get very skimpy action, little character development, and banal language. This boring to-ing and fro-ing is punctuated by instances in which one of our characters will sit down and hear a really long exposition about all of the questions that he/she has about the time traveling, the histories of the Guild and its rival, or the impending doom they’re facing. These "info dumps" are where all of the interesting bits are. Because the author isn’t skilled enough, she isn’t able to integrate these bits into the entire story. Instead she has to make one of her characters stop and explain everything at one go in what are practically monologues. I’m not even demanding that the book be polished literary fiction; I had just hoped for a story that could unfurl competently enough as those Harry Potter books do, at least!

Most of the book feels like it is setting up for the “real” story to start. It’s questionable whether the story *ever* does start before the book ends. It seems that the characters spend most of the book familiarizing themselves with the rules of this world and discovering their own time-related abilities. And then when they finally have it kind of figured out, the novel comes to the end.

I haven’t looked up whether it’s been officially announced that there will be a sequel or not, but by the time you get to the end, you’ll agree that this is likely the case. I’m not sure whether I’ll return to it though.

I still give it 3 stars based on the premise alone. It wasn’t an unpleasant read, merely frustrating because it could be so much better. Not a ringing endorsement, but there you go.
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Feb 20, 2013 Paul rated it it was amazing

Add me to the growing "I usually don't end up reading this kind of book but..." crowd. The book came my way, and as someone who supposedly writes "real history," I was both wary and irresistibly drawn to the idea of a time traveling adventure by an author who is also a literary scholar. Did I say, "add me to the growing "Once I got started reading River of No Return I couldn't stop..." crowd?
Yup. I'm in that crowd too.

As for that scholarly stuff, what's most amazing--and often slyly amusing--ab ...more

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Oct 14, 2015 Meghan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction-and-fantasy, historical-fiction, uk-england, love-story-and-romance, politics, brothers-and-sisters, 19th-c

Great set-up. I loved the characters and the complex universe, but I am really annoyed by the abrupt ending! There has to be a sequel planned, as nothing has been settled or explained.

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