Musician-turned-time-traveler John Patrick Scott adds spy and saboteur to his resume while undercover in Germany in the final months of World War I, in A War in Too Many Worlds, the third installment of Elizabeth Crowen’s thrilling sci-fi series, The Time Traveler Professor.
Meanwhile, Scott’s once and future collaborator in psychic experiments, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is back in Britain sharing real time-travel adventures with the inventor of the fictional time machine, H.G. Wells.
Scott, after being wounded in the trenches, has finally been given an assignment in the Intelligence services. His extensive pre-war experience as a professor at the Conservancy of Music in Stuttgart, Germany, will do him good.
His assignment is to sabotage the waning German war effort through numerous false identities, while simultaneously mixing with high society to learn who is passing secrets from the Allies to the Central Powers.
Although frustrated by his sudden inability to travel through time, Scott has not lost any of his remaining powers. He is assisted in his secret work by many of the spirits haunting wartorn Berlin.
In Britain, Doyle and Wells undertake time travels of their own, to a past that seems to be more of a literary creation than a jaunt through time. They find the Island of Doctor Morbideux, a dangerous place filled with genetic experiments merging men with beasts, just as in Wells’ novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau. Morbideux appears to be a time-traveling Harry Houdini, unaware of his present life or his adversarial but friendly relationship with Doyle. The situation becomes increasingly perilous as it becomes clear that Doyle and Wells will be Morbideux’s next experimental subjects.
As the story slips between Scott’s undercover operations in Germany, and Doyle’s and Wells’ clandestine journey, this third book in the Time Traveler Professor series proves itself more complex than either of its predecessors.
Since the first two books, the war has changed Scott, leaving him older, sadder, more experienced, and more frustrated in equal measure. He takes greater and greater risks, and slips easily between chemically induced ecstasy and all too frequent despair, as danger mounts and loss surrounds him. Doyle’s and Wells’ adventures and misadventures, at least until they plumb the full depths of the island of Doctor Morbideaux, provide a bit of leavening to set against Scott’s increasing despond.
The overall story of the series continues to gain depth with a compelling pace, and the author recommends that readers enter this sprawling saga at its beginning in Silent Meridian. This book’s opening recap serves as an excellent refresher for readers who know the previous stories, but The Time Traveler Professor is a series like Outlander, where seemingly minor past – and future! – events and chance meetings may have vast implications for the ultimate fate of the protagonists and their world.
Ultimately, the adventure of The Time Traveler Professor, even if he cannot currently travel through time himself, still jumps in time and place, racing towards what is sure to be a wild ride of an ending in the projected final book in the series, The Story Beyond Time.
