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Some weeks ago, author Gregg Cunningham asked if I’d mind reading and reviewing his novel Redux: the Lost Patrol, A SciFi Time Travel Novel. To that end, he sent me a PDF formatted ARC copy.

I started to read Part One of the novel “War Pig.” I’ve read War Pig at least twice and so burned through it a third time. Then I hit Part Two “The Lost Patrol.” I was most of the way through Chapter 1 “Time” all the while feeling like I’d read this before. Then I checked Amazon and saw I had bought the book last May. Yikes.

I checked my reviews and I hadn’t published one, but when I checked the digital book on my Kindle Fire, I found my notes. I feel really dumb. I’d read Gregg’s book months ago, but never wrote the review.

Sorry about that, Gregg.

Well, it’s never too late so here we go.

This book is equal parts gritty war story, “buddy” book, lost love tale, and time travel. The story mostly happens on a terraformed Moon (yeah, our Moon) and frankly is one of the most convoluted time travel histories I’ve ever encountered in over nearly sixty years of reading science fiction.

I mean that in a good way. Time travel, especially manipulating the timeline to achieve one particular outcome out of endless possible outcomes would be convoluted, gritty, and messy.

I also want to point out that I absolutely love Floyd. There’s more than one iteration of our hero’s robotic pal depending on upgrades, which one gets shot, gives its memory away, and so on.

Redux is also gritty, messy, and convoluted, a hero we can all relate to who has plenty of screw ups on his record, but manages to keep plunging forward anyway.

There’s a point when he gives up on time travel, gives up on finding a resolution, mostly because he loses his time traveling War Pig. But that doesn’t stop events from giving him more chances in histories he doesn’t even remember, especially of saving his lost girlfriend Dixie.

A lot of the action and scenery is pretty bleak and I always felt there was the danger of getting bogged down in the awfulness of it. But like Redux, I kept being pulled along with the narrative, not sure of what was going to happen next, but always sure there would be a next.

There’s an ending, not a perfect ending like we’d all wish and hope for. Thirty years have passed for some but not for all. History is mashed together again into something like a “new normal” and then Redux and everyone else has to find a way to live in it. It’s not easy, but nothing about his life and his world ever is.

Buy and read Redux: the Lost Patrol, A SciFi Time Travel Novel for the sheer suspense of entering the world of Redux and then seeing what’s going to happen next. You’ll love it. An absolute five-star rating on Amazon, and I don’t give those out too often.