The River of No Return

I want to admit upfront my total bias regarding this book. I didn’t really study with B. personally (except for some illuminating conversations during Senior Seminar) while at Bryn Mawr (due to my total lack of interest in 19th C. American literature–however, after reading this novel, I think she might have been able to change my mind.), but I had the great fortune to take several courses with her partner, and both of them have a well-deserved reputation for being brilliant, hilarious, and generally made of awesome. I feel this novel is a fine representation of the diversity, erudition, and humor of the English Department and the spirit it naturally instills in its majors, of which I am so proud to be one. The premise of the novel is pure camp: time travel saga meets Regency Romance meets spy thriller, but its genre mash-up is deft, and the level of historical detail as well as subtle political philosophizing made it a treat for me to read. While some may be disappointed by the speedy denouement and conclusion, I think it perfectly sets the stage for a sequel, which she is in the midst of writing. I, for one, cannot wait!

First off, I have always been drawn to time travel stories. That is the only reason I ordered this book. But, this one is odder than most. First off, it is time travel without technology. How does it work? I still don’t know. The author went to great pains to explain it, but how could she? She didn’t know herself. I think she flailed a bit at times. It has something to do about an innate property that some people have. Inherited? Genetic? They can make time stop by thinking it. The truly adept can travel backwards in time. Make the river of time stop in its course. Or something. If you can get past that, you can enjoy this book. The book is well written if you like books with a PBS romance feel. There’s a great deal of character development, introspection, endless dialogue interspersed with flashes of activity. But, in the end it is a Victorian love story tucked inside of a story of clashing worldviews about what to do with the power to control time. I don’t want to be a spoiler, so I’ll leave it at that. As others have said, the ending is not a real ending. It has a rushed feeling as though she had to wrap things up in a hurry.

The beginning of The River of no Return is one of the more brilliant I’ve read recently. The reader thinks they are in a two time period romantic adventure when the time travel dart is launched. From then on, this reader was all in. It seems that some people have the ability to travel through time, especially at times of danger, stress and trauma. Thus a society is formed of those gifted. One of the things they do is try and figure out when time travellers escaping death will appear and rescue and recruit them. Nick Falcott, Regency rake, veteran of the Napoleonic wars is one such traveller, escaping from certain death on a battlefield, he finds himself a veteran cheese maker in Vermont, until of course the organization that rescued him asks him to return to his own time. Julia Percy’s recently deceased grandfather was also a gifted time manipulator and Nick and Julia grew up together. Both come to the notice of the Guild and what follows is a glorious mash up of genres, conventions and counter conventions. The River of no Return is great pop fiction and an all around good read. I’m not even annoyed that this will he the inevitable trilogy because I like the characters and even think some of the secondary characters could be brought forward to narrate. Bottom line? An incredibly fun read with a wide appeal to many different genre audiences.

There had better be a sequel to this abruptly-ending novel! I felt very let down and disappointed to come to the end of the story with such major plot mysteries and issues left hanging. If there will be a sequel, there should have been some notice of it at the end of the book – I just felt annoyed and tricked by the fact that such initially compelling story lines and characters were left unexplained. Ms Ridgway is clearly a very talented author, so I sure hope there’s a sequel. If not – the whole book was thrown under the bus by a failed ending.

What a great amount of fun. I loved the characters and gladly set aside all the problems with time-travel not being possible for a quirky and original story. Others have written better synopses than I could so I’ll just gush for a moment about the fun I had reading about Nick’s and Julia’s growing relationship as well as enjoyable “side” characters that kept the story running at a good clip. There are few books that make me not want to put them down but this was definitely one of them. I stayed up late and wouldn’t get up from my seat to eat or get things to drink that’s how engrossed I was. Fun stuff all around. The reason I only gave it four stars was its very disappointing ending. Story lines not wrapped up, and characters suddenly disappearing with no explanation or hint at where they might have gone and why, added up to a painfully clumsy set-up for a sequel. It was particularly disappointing on the heels of such a fun book.

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