Three Days to Never is about... well, it's complicated. Basically, it starts with Albert Einstein's unacknowledged great-grandchildren, and the time machine in their grandmother's shed. Or something like that. It starts with a rock in the desert that used to bear an inscription, and Charlie Chaplin's handprints in wet concrete. No... it starts with Frank and Daphne Marrity, a widowed father and his daughter living near San Bernardino, and with a VHS copy of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. No, that's not it either. It starts with a half-dead head in a box, chattering directions to the driver of an anonymous white van, and with an NSA agent who actually works for Israel's Mossad. No, it... well, it's complicated.Three Days to Never is undoubtedly a challenging book to read and follow. That's what happens when you start messing around with time and space, with spacetime convincingly considered as a single navigable plenum. Things get complicated. The book contains the most realistic and vivid evocation I've yet run across concerning the nature of time, and how one might rise above our mundane experience of duration in order to see the totality of spacetime as a single entity. In that way, and despite other elements, this novel is almost science fiction. But that's only a part of the book's furniture. Other elements flatly contradict its hard-science aspects. It's got ghosts in it, too, and bilocation, and Kabbalah, and a Rubik's Cube with Hebrew letters on the faces of each cube, and... the novel would probably fly away into a dozen different pieces, if it weren't held together by Frank and Daphne, strong central characters whose love for each other binds them more closely than would be possible in a non-magical world.What Powers has crafted here is an intensely cerebral thriller. While there are plenty of gunshots and car chases, the engine of the plot is a vast and intellectual conspiracy whose ultimate goal is to take control of everything, past, present and future—to retroactively have made its own success inevitable. The players are many, and their methods are exceedingly subtle—does that newspaper, folded just that way and held at that particular angle, mean the coast is clear, or is it a signal to run out the back door?What Three Days to Never is really about... is complicated.We're not quite talking perfection here. I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't just read Powers' more recent collection The Bible Repairman, but here again Powers indulges in an oddly fervent recitation of tobacco-friendly motifs. Cigarettes—smoked publicly, even in front of children—were still a common sight in this book's primary eras, but apparently they can also repel ghosts. I'm not sure whether Powers himself is directly aware of just how much space he gives to cigarettes, cigarette butts, matches and lighters, pipes and pipe tobacco, throughout the pages of this book. From a 21st-century perspective, though, the constant smog does seem a little excessive.On the whole, though, this is exactly the sort of brilliant work I look for in a Powers novel. I would love to see this book made into a film, too, if it could be done without compromising the nonlinear canvas and the magical elements that make this book more than just a mundane thriller. It wouldn't be easy to do right, at all—portraying the multiple changes in point of view on film would be an incredible challenge. Christopher Nolan, the guy who directed Memento and Inception, could probably manage it, but I'm not sure that any Hollywood director would have both the clout and the desire to do justice to Three Days to Never.So I recommend you just incorporate the written work into your worldline. If you're anything like me, you will have been glad you did.
I hope that the trade vagaries that resulted in his latest novel being reasonably well distributed in India (this is the first of his novels I have bought here first-hand and within a year of publication - that I then waited an additional two years to read it is another matter) continue to hold good for Tim Powers' future novels. They're just that good. While his earlier novels are more diverse, he's been focusing on fast-paced thrillers that take some chunk of recorded recent history, re-interpret it in the light of wild occult theories and Powers' own unique approach to practical magic and result in what people call 'secret histories'. All this would be so much dry arcana without Powers' knack for creating flawed, credible and appealing characters and his gift for vivid, relentless narrative and tight plotting.'3 Days To Never' is based on the concept that the nuclear bomb was not Einstein's most horrific brainchild; that he had delved into kabbalic esoterica and developed a device or technique that could, at different levels of application, allow you to erase an individual from the world's history, to travel through time, and at the highest level, to be mentally aware of all time and space at once; to be like a god. Einstein hid these secrets well. Rival secret societies - an obscure branch of the Mossad and a group of European occultists - are on the lookout for them.When Frank Marrity and his daughter travel to Frank's grandmother's house in response to a very strange phone call in which the grandmother claims to have burned down a ramshackle old outhouse, they discover a long-lost paving slab with Charlie Chaplin's hand and footprints on it, a box of letters written by Albert Einstein and catch a glimpse of gold buried beneath the floorboards of the shed, which is still intact. Grandmother, however, is not - she was mysteriously found dying quite far from home minutes after she must have made the call to Frank.Frank and his daughter soon find themselves in the midst of a vastly complicated game of spy vs. spy, as each side tries to get information out of them. The plot is complex - really too complex to keep track of at times. But Powers' narration, always grounded in his main characters' experience and impressions is what kept me locked in for the duration. As did the cast of variously noble, cantankerous, tragic or downright twisted characters - Powers has a particularly good line in villains, as usual. As in any time travel novel, there is at least one time-travelling character present. I won't reveal the time-traveller's identity, but it has startling consequences for one of the main characters, and makes at least part of the novel about who we are, who we might become, and how the choices we make, along with an element of pure chance, could some day make us unrecognisable to ourselves.There was much more I wanted to touch on about this novel - the use of quotations from 'The Tempest' that make the story sometimes seem to parallel Shakespeare's play and add so much resonance to it all, the business with Charlie Chaplin, the supremely creepy Baphomet head, several other characters, but that would result in one of those reviews that wind up being a needlessly detailed plot-summary with a few appreciative gurgles tacked on. Instead, I'll end by saying that concepts like 'slipstream' tend to be bandied - and practiced - as if they were esoteric, ultra-hip and difficult disciplines. It takes a master like Powers to use the idea of melding together disparate genres to create gripping entertainment with both head and heart.
What do You think about Three Days To Never (2006)?
Tim Powers returns to the wacked-out time travel fold, which he so memorably explored in The Anubis Gates, but this time he's thrown in alternate universes, paradoxes, the Mossad, a shady mystery cult, psychic powers, Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, supernatural forces, and - look, if you want it, it's probably in here. Powers also manages a fairly complex and intertwined action plot with a lot of skill. He even deftly copes with two very different characters who have the same name, something anyone who has ever written will appreciate is quite the feat. He handles the action plot so well that this book is quite a fast read; once it finds its feet, which happens fairly quickly, it's difficult to put the book down. The result is a novel that is a wild thrill ride for people who love alternate universes and time travel.The only reason that I didn't rate this book five stars is that I was definitely done with it after one reading - I don't know that I'll be going back to re-read it any time soon, and probably that's because of character issues; although I liked almost all the main characters, I found myself unable to love them or connect with them. A less skilled writer would likely have ended up with characters who were just tools of this particular plot, and it's impressive that that didn't happen here, but still - it's the plot, not the people, that made this book so much fun for me. So it's delightful once, but it's never going to make one of my all-time favorite lists.
—thefourthvine
I should have stopped reading this book at the first "F" word. I was intrigued with the premise of this book, and I loved the collection of short stories I had read by this author. This book disappointed me. The story line became much too complicated and took too long to unwind. The language was pretty foul. As a reader, it is clear to me that Nazi's are pretty bad sorts. I don't need to be insulted by tons of profanity. To me, that is a sure sign of a lazy writer. It detracts from the deeper theories of quantum physics, religion, usefulness of philosophy, purpose of life, etc that were presented in the story. By the time I was done with the book, I felt like I often do after sitting through a numbingly violent movie. I felt like I had wasted a lot of time hoping that the end justified the beginning of the book. I do not recommend this book.
—Skylar Hatfield
This novel took me back to the enjoyment I had reading the trilogy beginning with Last Call (Faultline series). The characters were engaging although not heroic. The plot was somewhat convoluted, but fun for all that. And the details were wacky and mysterious. Oh, and there were ghosts. I love it when there are ghosts!As usual, Powers packs lots of detail into the plot; even describing the type of pipe tobacco the main protagonist from 1987 smokes. Sometimes I find that his striving for authenticity is a little over the top. But I have to admire the effort. And ultimately, it all fits together (for the most part) to make for a satisfying progression of elements that make up the whole. Without getting into spoilers, my main appreciation of this story comes from the premise that different (and sometimes cataclysmic) circumstances can dramatically shape not only the life but the character of an indivisual. The ether hopping time shifts in this tale give ample opportunity for sometimes mind-bending character development and deconstruction.Very enjoyable and highly recommended.
—Jim Mcclanahan
