"A zany, whacky and wild SF adventure"
Apparently, Govannon's races effortless traveling
through the gates of time ends when a hiccup occurs that
leaves the alien people stranded in a void between
dimensions. Govannon may be the last of the Mohegans
unless he can patch up the flaw in the timeline. He is
also stranded and forced to don a human form, which
obviously equates to death or marriage and taxes. His
human friend Karen, whom he met while Julius Caesar ruled,
knows she must save Govannon from either odious fate. Karen visits Govannon's home planet Relic though he cannot
do so for some unknown reason. She enters the Museum, an
edifice that contains the history of Govannon's race, in
order to create the story of Govannon and his travels. Her
theory is that everything will return to normal (whatever
that disgustingly is) when Govannon re-finds his alien self
once she writes up his memoirs. As with the first two PRETERNATURAL novels, 3 is a wild
science fiction ride that tears into anything and
everything that gets in its path. The plot contains
multiple story line to include that described above and a
Neo-Nazi kidnapping that Margaret Wander Bonanno blends
together while acerbically satirizing the universe,
ironically including the publishing world being a road kill
victim too. Margaret Wander Bonanno takes HG Wells and
turns him upside down, in and out, and around. No one does
time travel quite as zany and entertainingly as this author
does proving that great things obviously comes in threes. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted September 7, 2002
SummaryFirst, it was telepathic jellyfish. Then, it was a bit of
time travel that altered history. Or did it? But now . . .
We're way beyond jellyfish this time, baby.
In the third Preternatural novel, our human friend Karen
and the alien known as Govannon learn once again that time
ain't what it's cracked up to be.
Govannon's people, a.k.a., TQ, have always had the knack of
transmigrating from There to Here. Or is it Here to There?
But then a timeline hiccuped, stranding the entire species
between dimensions, out of time. In short, neither Here nor
There.
Meanwhile, one of Govannon's human avatars seems to be in
two places at once. Or is he actually two different people?
Unless they solve this conundrum, Govannon may never find
his species or his way back home. He'll have to settle for
a human life and spend the rest of that life trying not to
change anything. And we all know how difficult that can be.
Besides, if he goes human on her, Karen's will lose him,
because he'll either be married or dead, and she can't
decide which would be worse. So here we go again.
Along the way, Karen and Govannon intervene in a
kidnapping, tangle with a group of neo-Nazis, and encounter
a woman who may be the illegitimate daughter of the Nazi
mastermind Joseph Goebbels. They're even involved in the
search for a missing billion-dollar Russian art treasure.
All of which bears a striking resemblance to a spy novel
that Karen once wrote but couldn't sell.
Except this time her fiction turns out to be fact. Again.
Or is it the other way around?
With her usual stylistic flare, Bonanno takes the reader on
another roller-coaster ride through the Möbius strip of
time, in what is meant to be her swan song
in "professional" publishing before she vanishes into a
dimension all her own.
Be seeing you . . .
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