Extracted

This first book in a time traveling trilogy is a “hold on to the seat of your pants” kind of book.

Basically, time travel is real.  A “device” was made, but then something went wrong.  After visiting 2111, something in the existing timeline was thrown off, and the world is destroyed.  Now the time machine creator is trying to fix the problem he made by going back and extracting valuable people, an elite force to find and fix the problem.  But as to not mess with time more than necessary, the people they extract must be dead, and their deaths need to leave behind no trace of themselves.  The three best candidates are Harry (a WWII elite soldier who infiltrated and lead an attack against a German encampment and destroyed five submarines before dying in the icy waters), Safa (a military protection force who helped save the prime minister during a terrorist attack then got blown up herself), and Ben (a civilian who foiled a terrorist bombing in the London subway then getting blown up when the train hit the bomb-wearing eco-terrorist).  The three wake up in a sterile facility away from prying eyes and are shocked to find out they are supposed to lead the mission to save the world.

It’s a very well set-up first book.  It lets us get to know Harry, Safa, and Ben, along with Roland—the man funding the time traveling mission—and Malcolm and Konrad—the two other techs involved in the project.  Obviously to get to the saving the world part you have to read the next books in the series, but the overall story is laid out well.

A few things did bother me, though.  First, the middle of the book slowed way down and spent too much time describing the scenery.  It made the middle lag, but it did show character development since during this time Ben was experiencing a mental breakdown from his extraction.  The second thing I didn’t care for was the dialogue.  The author vary rarely puts tag lines on the dialogue, so you have to just know who’s speaking.  It also swaps points of view frequently, even in the middle of a paragraph, so you just have to know that from the start.  Finally, the cursing.  Like really.  These characters need to have their mouths washed out with some soap because they do like dropping some f-words (much like The Martian).

I will definitely be continuing this series, but you must like science fiction or time traveling to really enjoy this book.