The story starts with Lieutenant Selene Genji, from Earth’s Unified Fleet, observing the result of a terrible civil war when the Spear of Humanity decides that blowing up the whole Earth is the solution to their goals.  The power, unleashed by Earth’s death, warps space and time and propels her back in time by forty years.

Lieutenant Kayl Owen, from Earth Guard, is on a routine patrol when her ship’s wreckage simply appears out of nowhere.  And, almost as shocking, he finds a living survivor – Selene Genji.

As the story continues, Selene and Kayl are leaving the moon, along with a young girl they rescued from an enslavement.  They are, of course, expecting to be met with violence as someone somewhere, with influence, deems them a threat.  It’s frustrating to them both in light of their attempts to foster a beneficial First Contact with the Tramontine and Selene’s attempts to warn everyone of the impending doom of the whole Earth. But humans have always reacted badly to the unknown and uncontrollable.

As expected, they were met with gunfire when their shuttle touched down; the only casualty was the young girl they were escorting when she took it upon herself to dash away from the area, dressed as Selene – drawing their fire on herself. She didn’t die but told everyone who would listen what good people Selene and Kayl were.  While on the run, they also ran into people who went out of their way to help the duo. All of this is rather incomprehensible to Selene who keeps expecting hatred and revulsion of her ‘kind.’  Kayl keeps explaining that her actions plus the lack of institutional hatred of her ‘kind’ is already changing the mindset of a lot of people.  After all, she is the only one of her kind and most people are judging her only by her actions; not her genes.  But Selene despairs of whether this is sufficient to stop the march of time towards the events that doomed the Earth.

Aside from not getting killed, the pair don’t really have an idea where to go or what to do.  Asking for an assist from an old friend of his, ends up with them both running again.  Contacting his family, who seem to just love Selene, seems like a better bet.  Along the way, Selene continues to accidently make changes like saving a man whose boy had grown up to be a major force towards violence in Selene’s future/past. 

After contacting Kayl’s family, Selene conceives of a drastic plan that while it will make her more public and, therefore, more vulnerable, has the virtue of possibly undermining those more determined shadowy figures who fear her so much.  Its brilliant, really, and I don’t intend to tell you.  Meanwhile, their relationship is deepening even though both of them still harbor a fear that if their efforts do succeed in changing the future and saving the Earth, that Selene could cease to exist.

This was really a great deal of fun to read.  I remember being a little skeptical in the first book that the payoff would be worth it.  And I could still argue that this duology is somewhat simplistic in plot and scope. But the plot was solid, the pacing and action very good, and the resolution was logical.  I don’t know that this story needs a third book, I thought the author wrapped everything up well. But if he used these characters in a different storyline, I’d be interested in reading that. ~~  Catherine Book

For more titles by Jack Campbell click here