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There Are No Choices
There are no good and bad choices, only choices. If there would be one sentence that would embodies what this book means to me it would be this.
I think certain books find us at the exact time and way they are supposed to. I truly believe that I was meant to read this book at this point in my life. Did it help me? I think so, but at the end of the day, life didn’t became easier and I guess that’s the point. It may seem so significant, that choice that I have to make when I’m thinking about it, eating my head about it, but is it really? Do I really need to get to the bottom of it and make sure that I will choose what’s the best for me? Would really the best be the best for me?
General Book Info and Synopsis
Ashes Through the Hourglass* was very kindly sent to me by Danny Lenihan and Big Thinking Publishing. The premise seemed intriguing so I jumped into it when the time was right. I wasn’t expecting anything. I was not thinking it will be extraordinary neither that it will be horrendous. If I’m having a fun time that’s all I want from a book. Especially, if it belongs to a psychological thriller, sci-fi-ish genre. Excitement, action and fun. Little bit of emotional depth cannot hurt anyone and hopefully, the characters are sympathetic. That’s all I need.
I can say with confidence that my shopping list was ticked through and through and there are even some extra snacks in there for me. A truly well-crafted, emotionally intelligent and respectful book about grief, mental health issues, trauma, abuse, bullying, neglecting and honestly, the list can go on (it may be triggering for some readers, especially because most of these themes are associated with young people and children, so be mindful of that), while gives you a prepared little package of time-travelling and its consequences. It does multiple things at once, which also can be a weak point at times, as certain things obviously will just not have enough ‘page-time’ to truly flourish.
The book has 388 pages, a nice medium length novel, with an also medium paced plot. I would say it’s a blend of character and plot driven narrative. The genre is the child of psychological thriller and speculative sci-fi, which I think it’s a fair categorisation. It also has a hint of dark humour in it, which landed quite nicely multiple times.
Short Synopsis
Our main character is Mason Winward. We meet him in 1990 at 15 years old, when his older sister dies because of a fatal car ‘accident’. She was basically ran over by the drunk sports car driver Michael Somers. The horrible scene unfolds in front of Mason’s very eyes, which apart from traumatising, also starts up an insatiable anger and revenge inside him towards the perpetrator.
The main locations of the story are usually around Chessington, England. Mason spirals quite quickly into despair accompanied by nihilism towards his secondary studies and crowned with the fury he feels towards the murderer of his older sister, Cassie. He starts to build up an obsession with the man and the thought of revenging his sister’s death. He watches Michael Somers going in and out of his premise, day in and out, meticulously calculating and measuring the time, down to seconds precision that each simple activity takes up. Until, one day he decides he will just do it. He stands by a bush, hidden away and waits for the man to arrive with his car and when the final moment comes and he would make the leap forward with a kitchen knife in his hand, a firm but gentle hand squeezes his shoulder and tells him that: there are better ways to deal with this anger, injustice and grief that he is feeling.
The mysterious man introduces himself as Fagan, an intervention professional, who is trained to help young individuals in their most darkest, desperate hour to help them re-align their path of life towards a healthier and regulated life. Then, Fagan disappears from one day to another.
We meet Mason many years later when he is an established psychologist helping kids and teenagers who are going through extremely hard times mentally and in most cases physically as well. With his best friend, Alex who is an astrophysicist (yay from me!), they establish an institute where they go back in TIME (yes, you read it right) and try to intervene and help kids when things would turn for the worse, which otherwise would’ve been impossible to undone.
Fascinating plot, with premise of action and time travel but also seeped through with emotional depth while being educational about psychology regarding abuse, bullying, negligence and how does these effect the development of children, teenagers or young adults. As I said before, it does a lot of things at once.
If you are interested you can find the book on bookshop.uk if you click on the image here on the left, or the link in the first paragraph with a * symbol. Always love a DRM – free ebook when it’s available.
All The Good and the Even Better
Nice short chapters, perfect for readers who don’t necessarily have a lot of time at once to read, or just for readers who like to take in books, therefore, prefer to stop often and write down their thoughts, expand on their marginalia or just wonder about what they read.
One of the main subject is grief, the injustice of it, the helplessness of it but also shows the way how to channel it into something not just positive but even helpful and giving.
I think the main character, Mason is absolutely loveable. He has huge respect for people, not just children from different class and sociological background, while also being just and firm about individuals that are harmful. It’s a very hard balance, especially, when the bullies are also young so you are not sure if they should be harshly punished for their behaviour, but the author managed to be fair and didn’t go overboard on either side of the spectrum of being too kind or too harsh.
As an older sister to a younger brother, we have six years between us, I’m super grateful to the author for not making the story the other way around. I could not have been able to deal with that.
Well written, with strong prose standing on firm legs of description, easy to follow dialogues and even being humorous at times. Which inserts little air bubbles into the story, little pause times to breath and calm my nerve system down after reading about a harder case.
There were no boring pages at all for me. Sometimes I felt like we are talking too much about certain aspects of the time travelling machine, but hey, another part of me was very excited to deep dive. I had a little fight with the reader/dreamer part of my brain and the logical/data loving part. We are all good now and everything is fine.
The pacing was a strong medium I would say. I wasn’t always sure about the direction, as to where the author wanted to go with the story, but I knew where I wanted the story to go as a reader. Eventually, turns out we both thought the same thing, so hurray
I loved the friendship between Alex and Mason. I also have a best friend, whom I ‘m quite close with, more like sisters, really. So it was lovely to read about a strong and close relationship like that.
Shouting From The Rooftop
A separate shout-out for the detail and research that probably went into the idea, of time travel and its consequences. Starting from the basic methodology and theoretical background, the setup of the machine, to the most detailed concepts of not being able to wear certain clothes as in the past (obviously, depending how far back we are), those clothes or models wouldn’t have existed yet. To come up with a moral codex, go through with the reader hand-in-hand what can go wrong and why. You could tell that was a lot of love and work put into this book.
I always love books, where music and movies are mentioned as I can go down to a completely new rabbit hole thanks to that. I don’t want to spoil it here though, but nice touch. Also, makes the novel very personal, and an author letting you in to their world this close is I think is very appreciative. Makes the reader, me, think that I’m worth the trust. I think lot of the books don’t reach readers because somehow the writer doesn’t let the readers close either to themselves or to their characters. And that distance is palpable and the reader will feel it, especially, if its mainly a character driven story. I can go on a full-length post about this, but Ashes Through the Hourglass did not have a problem with that, what’s more we can even argue that the reader got too close at certain times.
The Little Things That Made Me Say Hmm...
I can’t say anything truly negative about the book. I was invested in the story and the characters and made me think about my own childhood and experiences. This section is more like, what I would have loved less or more. Basically, you can even skip it in case, if there is an accidental spoiler in there, or if you are not interested.
Sometimes the strongest aspect can be too much. This is what I felt, with certain dialogues between Alex and Mason. Especially, when they were drunk. But! Since regular people, and even more likely close friends are also probably quite annoying to listen to when they are drunk, we can say that the writer was actually, just being authentic towards the characters.
I wished there would’ve been more time spent with the kids, so the reader would get to know them better. Some cases felt a bit rushed. And simply, because as I mentioned before, the book does so many things at once, there is literally not enough pages and reading-time to go deeper into certain characters, but I would have loved to get to know some of them a little bit better.
There were a few things I did not understand, why it happened the way it did or why certain things wasn’t done. For example, why the police didn’t check the driver for alcohol after the accident? I also found it a little problematic to lace a drink of someone instead of just trying to talk to him first? Small details really. And it even be possible that I just went over the details or I haven’t paid attention closely enough. This being said, a lot of the times Mason do acknowledges if he messed up something, so it can be again, that the author does this deliberately and not missing out information accidentally.
I would also categorise here the simple fact that I could predict the end from the very beginning. But to be honest, it didn’t made the reading experience anything less, so I’m not mad about that. Plus I’m a huge fan of this concept, so I see it everywhere, even when it’s not present. Kind of like people obsessed with certain numbers.
Respect the Craft and its Maker
As you can see there is not much negative I can say, and these points are not even serious, they are just a tiny sigh, a hmm…, nothing else. I’m having a hard time with writing down these things, but I thought a lot about it (this could be also a long post), and I have to say that I do think, when somebody gives me a critique that is supposed to be helping me to get better at writing, I take it as a sign of respect.
Especially, if they liked what I wrote. Not that so many people read so many of my stories, but that’s beside the point. 🙁 Because they respect me and my craft enough to tell me that ‘ahhh, i wish you would’ve wrote more about this character because I was so curious about her inner world, etc…’, or ‘man, you pushed too far with the unnecessary cringiness, it curled my toes up to the stratosphere‘… as you can see the sentence itself is overflowing… anyway, I take it very seriously and it makes me so happy because I can sit down and be excited to do better.
Why? Because I hate the feeling of being stuck. If it’s bad I can make it better. But if you tell me that you loved everything and it was amazing, but you DNF-d it, my heart would broke. Again, this is just me, such a sensitive topic though, it probably works differently for everyone. Hence, why I am so afraid of writing about it, but I can’t mold myself into different shapes all the time, can I? So I will just go with my own way and my way is to respect the author to tell the little things if otherwise, the book was absolutely worth to spend money, time and brain power on.
Overall, The More the Merrier
It was a very good book and it made me curious about other novels written by Dany Lenihan as well, so I might get some more titles in the future. I appreciate the writing style and the effort that he puts into his craft and more than anything, the chance for us readers to get close to his characters inner worlds. It has a good balance of being technical and geek about sci-fi and time travel and also being character-driven, deeply emotional and introspective.
Finally, maybe someone needs to hear this: There are no good and bad choices. Only choices. Don’t get tangled in the nets of indecisiveness for the sake of making the perfect choice. We only live once, life goes on.
What's next:
A review about Event Horizon* by Balsam Karam and translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel. Kindly sent by Fitzcarraldo Editions.
One of the harder but important reads this year. Genre: modern and contemporary fiction, translated fiction
I am also putting new lists up to my virtual bookshop, could be interesting for someone who are looking for new books or just for general recommendations.
And I have a lot of ideas about what to write for the upcoming weeks, months even. Keep your eyes peeled for the main page, as the current reads are always changing, and I always have some cool info there.
I have also made a little Throne Wishlist as an alternative way of supporting this website. Any gifted book will be reviewed and will have a shout out, unless the person who gifts it choose to be anonymous.
ALL OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE MY OWN
If you like my work please consider supporting my page by buying me a cup of coffee or buying a book through my affiliate links. I also have a bookshop.org UK where you can find even more books I recommend. It would mean a tremendous lot because this way I can make sure that I can keep my website safe, up and running. I am posting new reviews every weekend. Alternatively, if you wish to gift a book rather than any of the above, check out my Throne Wishlist, where I collect all the books that I would love to read.
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