Breaking Time Book Review
Book Name: Breaking Time
Author Name: Sasha Alsberg
Genre: modern fantasy
Release Date: June 14, 2022
Number in Series: Book 1 of 2
Page Number: 352 pages
Review:
Ever wondered what the story of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon would be like if the roles were reversed? Then look no further than Breaking Time by Sasha Alsberg. Breaking Time follows two characters: Callum and Klara. Callum is a Scotsman from the 1500s who gets flung forward in time to 2022 after trying to save his best friend Thomas from a mysterious killer. Klara is a newly graduated high schooler living in Scotland who is trying to figure out a way to tell her dad she’s not going to college. To clear her head, she takes a drive and accidentally hits someone with her car. The person just happens to be Callum.
After helping him get on his feet, Klara and Callum get thrust into an earth-shattering event where Klara is the key to saving the world. Turns out she has the power of the Scottish goddess of time, Arianrhod, in her and a demigod wants to steal her power. Now it's up to Klara and Callum to keep Klara alive or face the world ending.
Breaking Time has some fun, interesting parts, but the bad sadly outweighs them. For the good, I like the person-out-of-time trope. It's fun to see Callum describe modern technology in his chapters, like calling cell phones strange lightboxes. I also love reading about the folklore of Scotland given in the book. Even though fantasy is over-saturated by European-based lore, it’s mostly countries like England or Germany. Places like Scotland are not nearly used as much, so seeing it in this book is a bit refreshing.
Now for the bad. This book has instant love for the two main characters. Klara’s chapters have her explaining a strong draw to Callum and constantly thinking about him when they're not together. Callum thinks Klara is the most amazing and beautiful woman he’s ever seen. They barely interact in the four to five days the story takes place and their madly in love with each other. And people talk bad about romances in Disney movies… It also doesn’t help that the leading man is not too fleshed out.
Also, the story does not seem to have any urgency. The world will end if Klara is killed before the Scottish holiday Samhain, which is only a few days away in the book and the characters are backtracking, hanging out in pubs, and staying at Klara’s grandmother’s house even though the woman tells the main characters they need to leave now! Let’s just talk about how Klara is the chosen one and go down memory lane some more!
Lastly, I feel the villain did not show up as much as was needed. He appears about three times throughout the 345 pages and because of this I felt he was not as big of a threat as the author thought. In fact, I almost forgot about him at times. Hopefully, this can be fixed in the sequel. Yes, this book is the first in a duology. I am not sure I will be picking the second book up when it comes out. My overall rating for Braking Time is three out of five stars.
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