The Third Rule of Time Travel
by Philip Fracassi
Publisher?:? Orbit
Pub Date: March 18, 2025
Time Travel/Science Fiction
DESCRIPTION/SYNOPSIS:
Rule One: You can only travel to a point within your lifetime.
Rule Two: You can only travel for ninety seconds.
Rule Three: You can only observe.
The rules cannot be broken.
In this electrifying science fiction thriller from acclaimed author Philip Fracassi, a scientist has unlocked the mysteries of time travel. This is not the story you think you know. And the rules are only the beginning.
“Tense, fast-moving, surprising, and above all else, entertaining.” – Owen King, New York Times bestselling author
“Part Crichton, part Bradbury, and all Fracassi, The Third Rule of Time Travel further demonstrates why Fracassi is one of the best writers working today, regardless of genre.” – Tyler Jones, author of Midas
Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She’s built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time—to any point in the traveler’s lifetime—and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it’s not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.
After Beth’s husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella—their only daughter—and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.
Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp.
As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.
REVIEW:
With The Third Rule of Time Travel, Fracassi puts a unique spin on time travel. Instead of physically traveling to any time period in the past or the future, the time traveler can only travel to the past, only within their own lifetime, and only to revisit their own experiences. Further, only the consciousness of the traveler makes the trip, becoming a new layer on top of their past self’s consciousness, with no ability to change the past, merely to observe. With that premise, the safety of time travel seems assured — and the ability to tell the story as a thriller made all the more difficult. Nevertheless, Fracassi succeeds. The science behind the time travel feels speculatively possible, certainly within the context of the novel. And, after a slow ‘proof of concept’ type of opening to the tale, the dangers, internal and external, begin to creep in.
Looming within each time episode is the need to keep the trip to 90 seconds or less to protect the mind of the traveler, skirting the possibility of mental damage or the inability to retrieve the traveler’s consciousness from the past event. Second, Beth always travels to times where she experienced tragedy and intense grief, which exposes another variable in the travel. She and her team don’t know how to control which WHEN the traveler experiences. So each trip for Beth is a harrowing experience, suffered in hopes of advancing the science and learning how to control which experience is revisited. Further, budget cuts have added stress to the operation while the lack of funding puts pressure on Beth to perfect the process before she loses her lab. All the while, her relationship with the CEO of the company providing the funding deteriorates throughout, eventually taking a dark turn.
The story kicks into high gear when casual comments by Beth’s daughter and her own experiences suggest the ghostly presence of her dead husband, and soon Beth realizes that the Third Rule has been broken, but she has no idea how. Despite being an observer only, she has somehow changed her own timeline in a horrific way. Everyone in her orbit believes she’s delusional, suffering hallucinations either from mental deterioration or overwork. And, appropriately, time is running out for her to restore her timeline. She’ll need to risk her life, in more ways than one, to fix her past to preserve her present.
I’m not sure if there will be a sequel to The Third Rule of Time Travel (the story has a satisfying conclusion), but the ending really expands the idea of time travel in a way that’s as exhilarating as it is frightening, providing a cautionary note about messing with things we don’t fully understand.
Note: I received a physical galley (ARC) of The Third Rule of Time Travel from the publisher in consideration of an unbiased review.
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