CELTICLADY'S REVIEWS: The Loneliness of the Time Traveller by Erika Rummel Guest Review and Giveaway!

The Loneliness of the Time Traveller by Erika Rummel

Publisher: Inanna Publications (June 18, 2022)
Category: Science Fiction, Time Travel, Crime, Suspense, Supernatural
Tour Dates September 7-Oct 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1771338783
Available in Print and ebook, 298 pages

Description Loneliness of the Time Traveller by Erika Rummel

“It is a dreadful thing to be possessed, to be invaded by a spirit woman who commands your body and soul and looks out at the world through your eyes. It happened to me in 1778. Pray it will never happen to you.”

Adele’s diary tells the story of her domination by an incubus Lynne, a serving girl in a London ale house who died a violent death and commandeered Adele’s body for eight years. Can Adele be held responsible for Lynne’s crimes? Will the evil spirit return and renew her tyranny over Adele’s mind?

Lynne has moved on into the 21st century, but the transmigration has left her emotions flat. Lynne is eager to go back to her first life and experience once more the passion she felt for her lover, Jack. To do so, she needs a channel to the past: the manuscript of Adele’s diary, if only she can find it.

A time-slip novel set in contemporary Los Angeles and 18th century London, The Loneliness of the Time Traveller is a story of love, crime, and adventure combined with fantasy, a little bit of Jane Austen-style irony, and a healthy serving of social criticism.

Review Loneliness of the Time Traveller by Erika Rummel

Review by Laura

“It's the season to slough off my old body and slip into a new sin, to enter new territory. I know the danger, but I can't resist the call.”

A killer new novel about a woman who has lived dozens of lives. Or, should I say, a “spirit.” Most of the time, when I use that term, I might be trying for a metaphor, but in this case the main character of Erika Rummel's novel, 'The Loneliness of the Time Traveller,' actually is a spirit and she actually has lived dozens of lives.

Lynne is a transmigrant, and she can travel into other people's bodies and live inside of them until the bodies are used up. Her first life is as a serving girl in a tavern in the 19^th century. At that time, she is murdered, but she soon discovers that her spirit has the ability to inhabit other people's bodies.

Adele Collingwood is her first victim. Adele is a teenager living a very different life from Lynne's down and dirty, gritty London existence. Although Adele's father does not have a lot of money, she often spends time with an aunt and uncle who do, and they offer to send her to a boarding school where she can get a better education.

Reluctantly, Adele's father agrees to let her go, but soon he calls her home and Adele laments being separated from the boy she has feelings for, the headmaster's son. But soon, Adele's father unexpectedly dies and she is so upset that she becomes feverish.

This is where Lynne makes her move. When Adele is at the point of death, Lynne is able to transfer herself into Adele's body, and from then on, they become side-seat passengers in one corporeal form.

This story is a fantastic sci-fi read, and honestly, this isn't even the half of it. The flashes forward to Lynne's current life as she tries to go back to Adele's time were some of my favorite parts of the book. I could not put it down. This story begs to be read and enjoyed!

Guest Post by Erika Rummel

The popularity of time travel novels

H.G. Wells started it all with his 1895 Time Machine, and the genre has been popular ever since. What attracts readers to the subject of time travel? Well, who doesn’t want to look into the future, and if that’s not possible, to imagine it? Or, reversing the course (like Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court) to relive the past and try to change it? There is something fascinating in the relentless forward movement of time and something daunting also in the knowledge that we are caught in its slipstream. There is a 2000-year old Latin proverb that says it all: Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis – Time changes, and we change with it.

Sci-fi novels satisfy our longing to know the unknown by offering us a glimpse of an alternative world, and some Sci-fi writers have shown an uncanny ability to predict the future. Think of George Orwell’s 1984. His forecast was dead on. Big Brother aka the internet is watching us. We no longer have privacy, and Orwell warned us of that kind of world eighty years ago! It’s not surprising that his book has become a classic.

So much for the popularity of futuristic novels with readers. And why do writers turn to Sci-fi novels? Because it gives them unparalleled leeway to indulge their imagination. Some writers focus on the technical aspects, the gizmos and mechanics of time travel, others not so much. Think of Rip van Winkle, where a long sleep is the simple means of being transported into the future, or the 2011 film “Midnight in Paris” which doesn’t even try to explain the phenomenon of time travel. It just happens. That’s my approach as well. Time travel is an exotic frame on which to hang a story.

My new novel, The Loneliness of the Time Traveller, is the story of Lynne, a demonic woman who travels through time by successively exchanging her aging body for a younger one and thus living on into the present. I call Lynne an “incubus.” The word (current since the 16^th century) describes a demon who descends on sleepers and invades their body to have intercourse with them. In my novel, Lynne descends on comatose, gravely ill victims, invades them and has “intercourse” in the literal sense of the word, that is, mixing with them, becoming one with them, and eventually taking over. What attracted me about that concept was the idea of the split personality. To a certain extent we all have a “demon” living within us who makes us do things our rational selves don’t approve of.

By switching bodies, Lynne moves from 18^th century London to 21^st century L.A, but a mysterious painting triggers a tidal wave of nostalgia in her. She yearns to travel back to her first life and be reunited with her first lover. To return to that point in time, she needs to get her hands on an old manuscript, a woman’s memoir, locked away in the safe of a Rare Book Library. If she can pull off the heist, the handwritten pages will serve as her “magic carpet,” a channel to the past.

Most time travel novels move forward into the future. A few do a loop (like the 1993 movie Groundhog Day) showing the inevitability of fate and proving that you are doomed to repeat your past mistakes. Why did I go for a time-slip novel, set in the present but looking back to 18^th century London -- the original home of my time traveller? Because I am a historian by profession and love imagining the past. Throughout my academic career I wrote straight history textbooks, but I’ve entered a new phase. I want to give my writings an imaginary twist. Adding a time-slip element to a historical novel allows me to compare the present with the past and, by the way, get in a little social criticism. How much the position of women has changed! How much dating and sexual mores have changed! But powerful men abusing women? That hasn’t changed at all! A time-slip novel has that handy distancing effect – I can aim a searchlight at the past and find contemporary issues. Read The Loneliness of the Time Traveller and ask yourself: Have things really changed, or is the past still painfully relevant?

(c) Erika Rummel

About Erika Rummel

Award winning author, Erika Rummel has taught history at the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo.

She divides her time between Toronto and Los Angeles and has lived in villages in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria.

She has published eight novels and more than a dozen books on social history of the Renaissance. A recipient of international fellowships and literary awards, she was honored in 2018 with a lifetime achievement award by the Renaissance Society of America.

Erika’s Website: http://www.erikarummel.com/
Erika’s Blog: http://rummelsincrediblestories.blogspot.ca/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/historycracks

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Giveaway Loneliness of the Time Traveller by Erika Rummel

This giveaway is for 2 print copies and is open to Canada and the U.S. only. This giveaway ends on October 8, 2022 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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