The Time Train

In this intentionally disjointed, visceral tale, Bosarge (Love Hurts) spins together the first-person perspectives of several refugees traveling through time. They meet one another repeatedly while trying to change history, hide in the future, and improve the outcome of an increasingly dystopian and disintegrating America that has been destroyed by the sudden arrival of tentacled alien horrors called the Kind. Sir Reginald of Raleigh, who has a time-traveling train car and a shape-shifting golden cane, collects the people he thinks can help to interfere with the invasion, including the man whose neutrino message to the stars is responsible for bringing the Kind, and his great-great-great grandfather, a train-jumping farm boy whose property becomes a secret underground facility for Reginald’s rescues. But fear and survival concerns dominate as Reginald’s manipulations collapse the world further, while he becomes increasingly ruthless. Despite the very personal stories of its characters and the wide chronological range, Bosarge’s story is strangely static, a chronicle of loss and failure that’s more revealed to the reader than experienced. An abundance of loose ends and unsolved mysteries leave the piece feeling incomplete despite its length. (July)