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The Kingdom of Ohio: A Novel
The Kingdom of Ohio: A Novel
The Kingdom of Ohio: A Novel
Audiobook10 hours

The Kingdom of Ohio: A Novel

Written by Matthew Flaming

Narrated by Todd McLaren

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

After discovering an old photograph, an elderly antiques dealer living in present-day Los Angeles is forced to revisit the history he has struggled to deny. The photograph depicts a man and a woman. The man is Peter Force, a young frontier adventurer who comes to New York City in 1901 and quickly lands a job digging the first subway tunnels beneath the metropolis. The woman is Cheri-Anne Toledo, a beautiful mathematical prodigy whose memories appear to come from another world. They meet seemingly by chance, and Peter initially dismisses her as crazy. But as they are drawn into a tangle of overlapping intrigues, Peter must reexamine Cheri-Anne's fantastic story. Could it be that she is telling the truth and that she has stumbled onto the most dangerous secret imaginable: the key to traveling through time?

Set against the mazelike streets of New York at the dawn of the mechanical age, Peter and Cheri-Anne find themselves wrestling with the nature of history, technology, and the unfolding of time itself.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 2, 2010
ISBN9781400185009
The Kingdom of Ohio: A Novel

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Reviews for The Kingdom of Ohio

Rating: 3.279569797849462 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

93 ratings17 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    ‘The Kingdom of Ohio’ is a time travel book, an alternate history book, but most of all, a love story. Set in 1901 New York City, I thought at first it would be a steampunk novel, since the young protagonist is working on the construction of the new subway tunnels, learning how to repair the machinery. Knowing from the book jacket that Edison and Tesla were part of the story, I thought that there would be marvelous inventions and electricity flying. This was not to be, either. The story is very, very low key. Peter Force finds a young woman stumbling and starving, and takes her for a drink & a snack. She reveals that she is the Princess of Ohio, and that she has traveled forward in time 6 years and sideways across the country. Peter suspects that Cheri-Anne Toledo is delusional, but he can’t resist helping her. Slowly he comes to believe her story- and to understand the danger she- and possibly the world- is in. And they fall in love, a bittersweet ‘Time Traveler’s Wife’ kind of love. All this is good, but the story moved much too slowly for me, at a glacial pace. Tesla and Edison have minor roles- Edison comes off as a buffoon- and the only scientific wonder on display is the time/space machine- in the shape of a wooden door. I’m afraid I prefer my alt-history stories to move along a bit faster.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really would have liked more of the last third of the book spread into the first 2/3's. I liked the idea, but all of the really interesting things happened in the last part, and really left everything up to your imagination.

    Historically, very interesting and I'm wanting to read more about Edison and Tesla and even J P Morgan. I feel like the writing is well done, the concept is intriguing, just not spaced as well as it could be? I would have been happy if this were a longer book that could have gone more in depth and earlier on to the historical aspects that got my attention. I really don't want to say more than that because I'm afraid it would spoil it for people.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I love alternate histories, but I found myself frequently confused by this one. I had a hard time understanding where actual history should have ended and the alternate parts began, which could be a credit to the author, but was also a little annoying. (The heavily footnoted early chapters left me scratching my head and wondering if there was a part of AP US History I really did sleep through. Knowing that this couldn't actually be the case, I found myself simply annoyed that the author was trying to trick me.)

    And on that note, the whole voice of the narrator was a bit tedious. I found myself skimming across the current day first-person passages, wanting to get back to the more interesting third-person historic chapters. The pace of the story was a bit slow, for all the Significant Events that seemed to be going on.

    The conclusion of the story was satisfying enough, but I feel like the whole book could have been tightened up a bit to make getting there more exciting.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was a very well written story.It had all the elements I like such as historical perspectives. Competetion in the Industrial age, time travel and a sad but good love story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really liked what I read of this book but somehow it wasn't the book I picked up, ever. Maybe next time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A vivid, mechanical-age romance with a gritty sense of history. Loved the early section of the book, which beautifully conveyed the wonderful, rough, dirty, impoverished and dangerous world of the men who worked to build the tunnels of the New York subway system. So much left unfulfilled in terms of Tesla, Edison and time-travel technology, but a fabulous read nonetheless.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This sweet summer escape has the ineffable beauty of a Chopin nocturne or a Chanel perfume. Sure, the formula sounds fool-proof. Take a time machine; weave it into a love story; tie in a few titans of history - like Tesla and J.P.Morgan; package the lot as a mystery, or maybe a memoir; embellish the pages with a archival footnotes; oh - and I almost forgot - pick the ultimate nether/other world mis-en-scene, the NYC subway. But not every mixture of roots and desire turns out to be a frosted glass of Coca Cola on a scorching July day. This mystical concoction succeeds. Compellingly. And though there wasn't actually a Kingdom of Ohio in this universe, the author has me convinced that Holy Toledo is just a short worm-hole away. Readable? Irresistible! Consider this. Less than 24 hours ago, on a Tuesday evening, I stumbled upon this 322 page enchantment in the new book rack at the library. And now, as I finish this review, it's dinner time on Wednesday. That's time travel for you!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    ‘The Kingdom of Ohio’ is a time travel book, an alternate history book, but most of all, a love story. Set in 1901 New York City, I thought at first it would be a steampunk novel, since the young protagonist is working on the construction of the new subway tunnels, learning how to repair the machinery. Knowing from the book jacket that Edison and Tesla were part of the story, I thought that there would be marvelous inventions and electricity flying. This was not to be, either. The story is very, very low key. Peter Force finds a young woman stumbling and starving, and takes her for a drink & a snack. She reveals that she is the Princess of Ohio, and that she has traveled forward in time 6 years and sideways across the country. Peter suspects that Cheri-Anne Toledo is delusional, but he can’t resist helping her. Slowly he comes to believe her story- and to understand the danger she- and possibly the world- is in. And they fall in love, a bittersweet ‘Time Traveler’s Wife’ kind of love. All this is good, but the story moved much too slowly for me, at a glacial pace. Tesla and Edison have minor roles- Edison comes off as a buffoon- and the only scientific wonder on display is the time/space machine- in the shape of a wooden door. I’m afraid I prefer my alt-history stories to move along a bit faster.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book piqued my interest because it purported to be a time travel story, mixed together with all sorts of steampunk. And let me tell you, that time travel story it is, although not as full-blown as I would have liked. This is Matthew Flaming’s debut novel, and he coming from a philosophical background writes as such. Thus the book is what I would call “dreamily” told, by an antique shop owner much past his prime, we gather, but yet unable to forget the past.There are two stories intertwining here, one of the antique shop owner, who tells us has that he has opened the shop, to hide away from the world. One day when he sees a photograph of a man and a woman in a book, he reminisces about the past. The second story is of a young man Peter Force, who in the early 1900s comes to New York from up North. For a living he gets a job working on New York’s great underground railway, and one day, meets Cheri-Ann Toledo, a mathematical prodigy. Toledo, she says, is from the past, having arrived seven years ahead of her time, via a malfunctioning time machine. "I have a tale," she says, "that defies common sense and perhaps even belief. In fact I considered inventing some other story to explain the favor I will ask." It takes Peter some time to untangle this statement. He nods and she closes her eyes, swaying slightly in her seat. "But listen," she continues, "and I will tell you the truth as simply as I can".At first, Force is wont to disregard Toledo’s story as so much tale. But when the great inventors and entrepreneurs of that time, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan begin to wheel and deal for dibs on information on that time machine, he has no choice but to believe her truth.Flaming builds his story painstakingly; much of the book is footnoted. There is lots of detail and lots of philosophical musing. Flaming builds up the locales well; the book has a feel of being set in steampunk-land. The novel's narrator grapples with a wealth of information wondering what to tell us and what to leave out. Peter and Cherie-Ann’s characters are a little stark; Peter’s is built up relatively better, and I had a hard time picturing Cherie-Ann in my mind’s eye. [And I tell you this because with the best reads, the descriptions are so fantastic that the story is like a second skin, and I have a hard time remembering whether I read the book or saw the film (if there was a film)]. We hear Peter and Cherie-Ann's story in the third person, and while we get to hear their thoughts, the language seems "heavy", and the words seem bigger than they are. Their romance is sparingly built up and it is hard to tell that this is the great passion which will spur this novel further."The Kingdom of Ohio" is an interesting novel, based upon nascent technology and prodigies and love. It also uniquely brings in Tesla and Edison, and their adversarial status as they war on AC and DC current distribution methods. And while it was hard to put down, it did not quite build up to the promised climax. The pace of the story is slow, burdened with copious footnotes, and little “action”.And while I’m not quivering with excitement at the thought of recommending this book to other readers, it is hard not to, because it was an un-put-down-able read while it lasted, and I know that it will appeal to some, whose patience and love of history is greater than mine.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Kingdom of Ohio is one the most thought-provoking books with a "possible worlds" setting that I have ever read. While most alternative history books are devices to explore particular questions of "what would the present be like if the past had differed in such-a-such way", this one instead uses it as a device to explore the nature of history itself.The semi-negative reviews by upstairsgirl and suetu both demonstrate a failure to comprehend Flaming's intentions that speak much more to the readers' inattentiveness than to any failure on the part of the author.For example, they both somehow conclude that Flaming intends to disguise the narrator's identity:upstairsgirl: "Flaming's attempt to keep the reader from figuring out the narrator's true identity until the end of the story. (This attempt is less than successful.)"suetu: "Flaming obscures the identity of this narrator, but it’s so obvious from the start who it is, that this, in itself, telegraphs the novel’s ending."However, any careful reader will know that the reason the narrator's identity is obvious is that Flaming WANTS the reader to know who it is. He then wants you to think about why the narrator is being coy and oblique about his own identity. Even the narrator doesn't truly intend to hide his identity - if he did, he would not drop so many clues. What he wants is for his readers to accompany him in his journey from a state of denial and disconnection with his past, towards an attempt to recover and return to it. This journey is not possible unless we know who the narrator is - we must know what he is denying in order to perceive his denial. It is also not possible if we are initally told by him, because it would mean he had already progressed beyond denial before the journey began. Being led to guess the narrator's identity early, and be told it very late, is the only choice that would WORK, and yet these reviewers, with their blinders on, saw it as authorial ineptitude.Similarly, both of them found the copious footnotes pointless, despite the many signals as to what they were there for. Flaming is not using the footnotes (as suetu conjectured) "to blur the line between reality and fiction". He is using them to demonstrate the vast gulf between the past as seen through a historical footnote, and the past as it was lived.The primary theme of the book is what a feeble, thin, unreliable substitute both memory and historical research are for the richness of the past, and yet such poor substitutes are all we have. The narrator writes "I can’t help but think that all this stuff about facts (in the footnote sense) is overrated anyway", and yet he fills his book with footnotes. He writes that he has come to believe that the meaning of the past lies in the forgotten minutiae of ordinary lives, that fictional accounts that make the reader feel what life was like are more true than facts in a history book, yet he cannot give up his dependency upon historical research. He clings to footnotes and moldy documents despite finding them unsatisfying because he wants desperately to recover the past, and CAN'T. They are his lifeline, and we are intended to both share his frustration with how inadequate they are, and to perceive his inability to give them up. The footnotes are the bottle to which the narrator is addicted.Googling them to discover which facts are shared with our reality, and which ones are unique to the alternative reality of the novel, may be an entertaining sideline for some readers, but it isn't what the footnotes are put there for. What they say is not as important as seeing that the narrator is compelled to include them.These reviewers have completely missed the point, but it isn't because the point is obscure, it's because they are so intent upon fitting the story into a familiar mold that they are missing the blatant statements as to what the point is, statements that are repeated on page after page. They skim past the narrator's many ruminations about the frustrating unreliability of memory as being "bland and boring", when those ruminations contain the central theme of the book.Someone who tries to fit The Kingdom of Ohio into the same category as Time and Again or The Time Traveler's Wife will find it a poor fit. (Of the time travel books I've read, the one it has the most thematic similarity to is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.)The Time Traveler's Wife used the situation of uncontrollable absences and lives lived intertwined but out of sequence to make points about the nature of long-term relationships and what qualities they need to succeed. Love and relationships are something we all care about, so that book has broad appeal.The Kingdom of Ohio, while it has a love story as the central plot strand that ties together all the disparate parts, is not primarily about that love story. Its central theme is not the nature of relationships, but the nature of memory, and the limits on what we can know about the past. A secondary and complementary theme is the limits on what we can know about the future, the way in which every decision is a leap into the unknown. (Which is why the ending must be unresolved in order to be true to that theme.) These are drier topics with less emotional resonance. For many readers, such abstractions will not be enough to pull them into the story and make them care what happens.Someone who doesn't care about what a book IS about is bound to be disappointed with the fact that it isn't about the things they DO care about. But that doesn't mean the author has failed at anything, it just means that they picked up the wrong book for them. A book on baseball trivia will fail to entertain me because I care nothing about baseball, but I can't fault the authors of baseball books for writing about something they care about. If the quotes in the review by Karieh intrigue you, if they make you want to stop and ponder their ramifications, then this book is written for you. If they make you go "huh?", then find another book, because those quotes give a very good feel for what the book is like.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    In so many ways, this book has all the hallmarks of a great read. Electricity! The industrial age! Robber barons! Immigrants! The frontier! Time travel! Romance! And yet somehow it manages to weave all of these interesting topics, and interesting historical figures, into a bland and kind of plodding work of fiction. I'm not even sure exactly what the problem is with this book. It seems to have an ambivalent relationship towards its own departures from reality, which I think is unintentionally amplified by Flaming's attempt to keep the reader from figuring out the narrator's true identity until the end of the story. (This attempt is less than successful.) So much of the time-travel part of the plot goes unexplained, supposedly because of the limited knowledge the narrator is able to acquire. Here that reads as a cop-out for the author's inability (or unwillingness) to decide on an explanation and go with it, though. We never really understand who knows what, or how they know it, or what they're planning to do about it. The link between time travel and the construction of the New York City subway system is, likewise, never made clear - or even vaguely translucent - in a remotely satisfying way.It's a frustrating book. I wanted to like it. I was charmed by the cover, and the premise. I picked it up in the bookstore knowing nothing about the author or the story, and my usual trick for these things - flipping to a random page and seeing if the writing is irritating - suggested it would be great. It has a great, if slightly baffling website! It *should* be a good book. And instead it's just adequate, in my opinion.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Matthew Flaming's debut novel, The Kingdom of Ohio is a great story to escape in. First off, this story reads as two stories. One story, set in our modern times, is told from the POV of an elderly man that one day comes across a photograph in his antiques store. This photograph is the catalyst for his attempt to put into words a story that he has tried to ignore for decades. His attempt to write this story is the second story, which is set predominantly in New York City in 1901. This 'story in a story' focuses on two main characters: Peter Force - a young man in his early twenties that has recently arrived in New York City from Kellogg, Idaho and finds work as a laborer, then mechanic's assistant for the construction of New York City's subway system; and Cheri-Anne Toledo - a young woman with a mysterious past that Peter encounters on the streets of New York City. Cheri-Anne's story is a difficult one to swallow: she has traveled 7 years into the future from the Lost Kingdom of Ohio, where her father reigned as king over a frontier kingdom in, appropriately enough, Ohio. Understandably, Peter has some difficulty swallowing Cheri-Anne's story but he has a somewhat open mind and wants to help her try to return home, if he can.Other predominant characters of this 'story in a story' are the inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, and of course, the famous financier, John Pierpont Morgan. They helped make the story, and the footnotes, such a fascinating treat for me to read. Flaming brought these historical characters to life in a way that was easy to visualize; their appearances and personalities, medical conditions, foibles, as well as the historically documented on-going adversarial relationship between Edison and Tesla over their inventive prowess. As for Peter and Cheri-Anne, their adventures through the streets of New York were fun to follow.Part historical fiction, part mystery and peppered with footnotes of historical facts, I found it easy to fall into Peter and Cheri-Anne's world and obtain a refresher of some interesting pieces of history from the time period at the same time. The concept of time travel during the mechanical era when amazing advances in science and technology were occurring doesn't come across as some far fetched delusional dream and I think that is what makes this story work. An all around enjoyable read for someone that likes history, finds science interesting and enjoys a good tale.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What happens when two people in love are separated? What happens to the love, the heartbreak? Can time and space shift?Peter Force, newly arrived in New York City in 1900, finds a job working on the subway system at first breaking rock and then repairing the machines that break and move the earth. One cold evening, he meets Cherie-Anne Toledo, and feeling sorry for her, offers her help. Cherie-Anne tells him an amazing tale of time travel and inventors that he can't believe but he also can't tear himself away from her or her story.Cherie-Anne is a mathematical prodigy and a member of the royal family of the Kingdom of Ohio, a place Peter has never heard of. While he is drawn to both Cherie-Anne and her story, he doesn't find it in himself to believe it. Although cautious, he finds himself helping her anyway intrigued by what he has heard.A lot of famous people make appearances in this book --- Thomas Edison, JP Morgan, and Nikola Tesla. Numerous footnotes dot the story adding odd notes and sidebars the narrator feels are necessary for the reader to have a complete understanding. These notes make you wonder about the narrator and his actual role in the story he is telling.The Kingdom of Ohio is a short book and a very rich one. It's about love, heartbreak, time travel, science and its impact on the world as well as its consequences. It's all about what we know and what we think we know. How something as simple as the light bulb can have such an effect on our lives and make us wonder where we are going and what the affect might be.I wasn't expecting the story I was told in this book but what I did find was very lovely. It's a grand love story, but not overly mushy or drawn out, that crosses time lines --- one solidly rooted in the present and one in the past kindled by old photographs and antiques. It will leave you with a lot of questions in the end about what really happened to these characters but in a good way. I highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An intriguing premise plays well with fascinating characters, including some drawn straight from history, and an unorthodox narrative form to create a compelling read. Flaming's debut novel reveals an author confident enough in his skills--justly so--to craft a "factual" accounting of fantastical events that play with the fabric of space and time. As the plot twists through the vividly portrayed underground of 1900s New York into modern LA, a sweetly poignant love story unfolds. The end is heart-rending but consistent and satisfying.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    If only the author could go back in time…I love debut novels and I love time travel stories. I love trying something new and potentially finding a favorite new author. Alas, that’s not how it worked out this time. The simple truth is that The Kingdom of Ohio was a real slog to get through. More bluntly, it was the most boring time travel story I’ve ever read. I’m not going to go into great detail with regard to the plot, but the novel is set in New York in 1900, at the time that the subway is being excavated. Our hero is Peter Force, one of the subway workers. One day, while looking out the window, Peter sees a woman collapse and rushes out to help her. She’s tattered, but beautiful. She tells him that her name is Cherie-Ann Toledo, and that she has traveled somewhat inexplicably seven years into the future, and from Ohio to New York. The basic questions of the novel are, is she mad, and if not, how did this happen and what does it mean?The story is stranded in a morass of superfluous detail. For instance, the world of this novel is exactly like our past (complete with starring roles for some of the preeminent figures of the time: J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, and Nicola Tesla), except for one major thing: In the novel, there was once a “Kingdom of Ohio,” all but forgotten now. It was literally a piece of land sold to a French family during the early part of America’s history, and ruled within this county’s borders as its own kingdom (complete with King) for more than a century. It is this Kingdom that Cheri-Anne claims to be from, but really, what’s the point?What, too, is the point of the copious and extremely tedious footnotes scattered throughout the book? Presumably the author was trying to blur the line between reality and fiction. This was simply a very bad idea. Additionally, the author used the device of a present day narrator telling the story in retrospect. Flaming obscures the identity of this narrator, but it’s so obvious from the start who it is, that this, in itself, telegraphs the novel’s ending.Flaming has attempted to write a time travel story in the tradition of Time and Again or The Time Traveler’s Wife. In other words, a story strong on romance and weak on science, but again he fails, as I never grew to care about these characters or their relationship. Honestly, I didn’t even like them very much.Again and again and again as I read this novel, I searched for redeeming qualities, but here I failed. The prose exhibits the clunkiness of a first-time novelist and the story bored me more than anything else. I’m sorry, but I can’t recommend reading The Kingdom of Ohio.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I started this book thinking I would be reading some historical fiction about the construction of New York’s subway system. That aspect is there…but it quickly becomes a sideline to the real story, which is…which is…well, there I’m a bit stuck.Beyond a bit of story about said subway system, this is also a story of time travel, and long lost love, and a person from a long ago time trying to fit into a modern world, and Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla and J.P. Morgan, and a kingdom in the middle of the United States, and the effect of technology upon human life and the possibility of an infinite number of worlds like this one but unlike this one.I enjoyed reading this book…I’m kind of a sucker for time travel. And the historical vignettes were interesting and the story absorbed me…but there was no emotional center of the book. There was no one character or idea that grabbed a hold of my imagination and sucked me in.The main characters are Peter Force and Cheri-Anne Toledo. The story of their meeting in New York in 1901 is ostensibly the heart of the book, but there is so much else going on that these two almost get lost in the shuffle. When they are allowed a moment to think outside of their parts in the plot, there was much I found to catch my interest.Peter, in the (close to) present day: “…I can’t help but think that all this stuff about facts (in the footnote sense) is overrated anyway. I wasn’t a scholar growing up, but I remember learning that Christopher Columbus was a hero, and that the Civil War was about slavery. Now I’m told that Columbus was a “hegemonic exploiter” and that Mr. Lincoln’s War was fought primarily for economic reasons. In other words, even though more facts are instantly available than ever before, they also seem to be less factual, shifting between one momentary vogue and the next.”(Which, as a side note, was true in my reading of this book as well. There were so many footnotes and seemingly factual facts that I Googled my way through the first part of this book, trying to figure out what was historical and what was fiction.)I suppose what resonated with me the most was the feeling of nostalgia…the wishing for times past. The feeling of being swept up in a world that seems far beyond one’s ken.“I close my eyes. I understand that I am sick with the chasm between this world and the things that I remember. But if I can’t forget and I can’t find any kind of certainty, what is left?”“And that’s the funny thing about memory, isn’t it? Nothing is so near, and nothing else so unreachably far. Even as our memories define the essence of our selves, they turn on us, flitting away toward vague forgetting, changing shape (each recollection is a potential smiling Judas in the pay of time), and making us strangers to the past.”I realize, this far into my review, that I have given little sense of what occurs in the book. I apologize for that, but I don’t really have a good answer. Again, there is time travel, and a love story, and history, and technology and memories.In the end, I suppose, there is simply a debate about what did happen and what might have happened in this story. “…these blinders that the comfort and complacency of our days depends on: we survive by shutting out the endless questions of what else might be.”“For a moment then, I feel a pinch of doubt. But really, I tell myself, maybe this is how the stories that we live finally end: with the blankness of a new beginning, beyond the maps of memory and history.”Makes me wonder for just a second, if I started “The Kingdom of Ohio” again, right now, if the story might be completely different.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I had very mixed feelings about this novel. It's a good story, and it immediately grabbed my attention and had me riveted for the first half. Somewhere in the middle, though, it felt like it derailed, kept making efforts to find the tracks again, and never quite did.The novel begins when Peter Force, a worker helping to build New York's subway system, meets a strange young woman who claims to be a princess from the lost Kingdom of Ohio. Things become stranger for Peter when Cheri-Anne tells him that she has travelled through time to end up in New York.The novel is partly a history of this lost kingdom, partly a love story, and partly a look into the lives and imagined psyches of the most powerful, richest men in America, including Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan. It also explores quantum physics and the possibility of time travel/ parallel universes. Each of these in turn is fascinating. However, I think the ultimate difficulty with the novel is that it tried to take on too much at once and was never able to settle into any one of them deeply enough to be satisfying to the reader. It's a very original novel, and Matthew Flaming is a promising writer. I look forward to reading more from him and seeing him develop as a novelist.