Erased by Robbi McCoy

Erased by Robbi McCoy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Unfortunately, for reasons I won’t go into, I haven’t been very good at putting together reviews for works so far in 2018. So . . . another longish delayed review.

This work here is a Science Fiction Mystery with many twists and turns and thrills and chills. Chills rhymes with thrills, otherwise not sure if it applies here.

The book starts off as a police thriller/mystery involving a married police officer off on a chase – lead by a relatively secretive/rarely revealing information FBI agent. The police officer, Dani Barsetti, is racing towards a suspected bombing location – under the direction of her passenger, FBI Agent . . . I’d like to say . . . Bryan something? Dani keeps trying to get more information from the agent. The agent grimaces as Dani speeds along, weaving through traffic, and constantly glancing at his wrist watch.

They arrive – they are in enough time to keep anyone from being killed, but not in enough time to stop the bomb from blowing up. …

I’d like to pause here to make note of one specific problem I had with the entire scenario – just what is the logic behind what was going on? A particular building is targeted – specifically a particular part of that building – later learned that the eco-terrorist is being targeted by a time traveler (which I have to note as I can’t really say anything about the book if I don’t note certain things, plus the time traveling part is in the description). (view spoiler)[there’s kind of a complicated plot about why and where the bomb goes off. My major problem with everything is . . . a specific something or other was being targeted ((view spoiler)[a particular type of beans, Chinese beans – and one of the pieces of evidence for a future issue is a report a scientist conducted on said ‘limited-in-number’ beans – it could be said that the bomb was to keep those beans from that scientist, since that is what happened – she no longer had access and so can no longer make the report that was picked up by a future scientist as a possible thingie-jingle ((view spoiler)[cure for a deadly disease (hide spoiler)]) – except . . . the future still knew about the beans and their potential after the scientist was kept from making the report so . . . it wasn’t to stop her making the report that the beans were destroyed but . . . just to destroy the beans? Um, but, um. Yes, they, the beans, are endangered in that time line at that exact moment in time, but the time travelers literally can travel anywhere in time – centuries, millennium, millions of years (one of the scientists keeps begging to go back to get a dinosaur) – so . . . they could go anywhere in time that those beans exist and get some – they don’t literally need those specific beans (well, that type of bean, but not specifically the beans in that specific building – there’s a potential medical cure found from the beans, but not specifically because of the beans in the building, but those beans in general). So what was the point of blowing up those beans? Anyone? (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]).

Spoilers made me lose track of what I was attempting to write. *thinks*.

Right, so, in the middle of chasing the eco-terrorist, the fella is spotted running upstairs – the cops are in pursuit. They are alerted to the whereabouts of this fella by the FBI Agent. Shots are fired – heard. Dani is the first to arrive on the scene on the top of the building – she sees the Agent slumped over, potentially dead. She spots the evil guy running away. She tries to chase the guy but he disappears on her. While checking to see if the agent is dead or not, she touches a ‘lipstick like item tube’ and . . . wakes up something like 200 years in the future.

Complicated time travel physics are mentioned. Stuff like how time travel can work, grandmother paradox, etc. etc. Long and short – because of quantum physics reasons, a person can’t be in two places at the same time (wait, doesn’t quantum physics mean, right, let’s forget about that right now) …. Let’s try that again. Long story short – for reasons, a person can’t be in more than one place at the same time. Meaning – once Dani time traveled to the future, she got erased from the past and got the . . . ‘time era stamp’ onto her . . . DNA. Um, something like that. As said, confusing. No matter – point is that for reasons – Dani is no longer ‘known’ by anyone in the past. Her mother won’t recognize her; her wife? No idea who this ‘Dani’ person is now. But! Because that eco-terrorist is still running around out there, the future people offer Dani the chance to go back in time . . . for two weeks (here I got kind of pissed off, I’d been thinking that she’d have a chance to try to reestablish something with the wife-no-longer-wife-because-doesn’t-know-you-exist; but . . . two weeks? Bah) and murder the eco-terrorist (because catching him and . . . doing anything at all else but murder him would . . . um . . . let him win? Something like that).

Why Dani instead of some hired assassin? That’s directly dealt with in the book.

So – Dani is teleported back to her own time period and goes about doing two things with differing levels of interest/enthusiasm – investigate eco-terrorist; wander around and bump into people who knew her before she poofed from time, and continuously get frustrated that they don’t know who she might be. Because, well ‘reasons’, but mostly because she doesn’t believe the people that she really was teleported through time.

Despite some of the things I have or haven’t stated – I rather enjoyed this book and would recommend it to those who like: 1) time travel; 2) science fiction; 3) mysteries; 4) potentially doomed relationships? . . something like that.

OH! Almost forgot to mention – out of all the books in the world, out of all the possible genres/story-lines/etc.etc., you’d think this would be solo point of view, or, potentially, . . . I forget what it’s called – when it’s 3rd person or whatever. But no – both the wife, Gemma, and Dani have nearly equal times at the Point of View control. Weird, eh?

Rating: 4.25

January 9 2018



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