Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, the Harmonic Convergence, the Mossad, time travel, and a 12-year-old girl with a psychic connection -- not many can weave these elements together into a cohesive story, but that's what Tim Powers did with his Three Days to Never. It's another "secret history" story like Declare, and if I didn't love it quite as much as I did that novel, it was still an amazing read.
Powers has a knack for grounding the most high-concept and bizarrely supernatural events with ordinary characters trying to get by. It's not just the plot that keeps the story going, but the people too: the Mossad agent who can't stop thinking of the son he might never see again, the reluctant member of a dangerous secret society who desperately wants to restart her life with a clean slate, and above all the father who loves his daughter and just wants to keep her safe. That familial bond is the best part of the book, and it's what leads to the most harrowing parts of the novel -- the glimpses of alternate timelines where their relationship goes horribly wrong. It's frightening to think how love can be twisted or even broken, but that makes it all the more important to protect and nourish it.
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