An amazing piece of art by a master storyteller who provides a thrilling conclusion to the Stratford County trilogy. ( )

“My best course of action is to find a comfortable place to sit and watch things unfold.”
—“Zebra Skin Shirt” Gregory Hill, 128
That’s truly the best course of action with this book. Building up expectations is a waste of time with the way Hill writes: even when not much is happening (or a lot is happening but incredibly slowly) the next thing is never expected. This is what carries the book along. Even though it’s set up with a quest in mind, the revelations our good narrator Narwhal comes across on his temporal trek change his direction literally and figuratively quite a few times.
Narwhal Slotterfield as many have said is a referee by trade and by calling, by personality as much as by occupation. In the course of the book his obstacles are mainly those of a timely fashion, and so the book has the ring of a character exercise. Put your character in an elevator, or in a bathroom of a small diner, or all alone in the middle of the eastern Colorado prairie. Now, what does he do? What does he think? What does he stack on top of each other in a cheerleader formation? It all has to do with how he thinks the world works, and we get to hear most of it.
If his reflections and turns of phrase (Hill’s? Narwhal’s?) were not so novel, this book would not soar the way it does. The way he relates to Vero, his dear fiancée, is downright disturbing at times in its binary simplicity, and because we only see the events through his eyes, we never quite get a good fully four dimensional look at her. (We get the time dimension quite liberally, so it’s the third direction of her personality we’re missing.)
“She’s a foundation of truth. She digs me and all my officiantatious nonsense. She’s the one thing in the world that wouldn’t benefit from my adjudication. I would not change a thing about her.” That quote is from page 31 but it’s a decent example of his worshipful view, which allows his relationship to be an anchor for him at the same time it ties Vero down.
The way he puts one word in front of another is glorious:
“Revenge is a dish and I’m famished.” (49)
“I can alter lives, bring down government, heal the sick, disarm nuclear bombs. Hell, I could change a car tire in less time than it takes a normal human to blink. Somebody hire me for a pit crew pronto.” (123)
“Hot damn, Gretel, we’ve got our crumbs back.” (234)
But it’s unfair to do this, because each of these serve their better purpose in the flow of the narrative, each surprises with its own twist. Narwhal’s mental narrative is a little faster getting from one point to another as well, which is why perhaps it seems so unnaturally natural for him to be the guide through a timeline none of us know.
And this brings us to the contentious end: the unification (one can only suppose) of the whole trilogy this book ends. It turned a bit reminiscent of [b:Beyond the Horizon|23310201|Beyond the Horizon|Ryan Ireland|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1415678172l/23310201._SY75_.jpg|42295700] in terms of how it holds on to the reader and how much anyone knows. I didn’t mind it as much as everyone else seems to; Hill spends the whole book giving and grabbing right back different ideas for reality, so the spontaneity of the ending doesn’t bother me. Of course it all wraps back around to certain scenes which seemed dropped into the middle of his narrative! Of course it brings in a few completely new themes and problems! Of course neither he nor we really understand! And that’s how it is and that’s how it ends which, when you think about it, isn’t really that different from how it progressed all along. ( )

I received this ebook from the author. I rate and/or review any book I read or listen to. While well written, as were the other two the author gifted me, this one was too strange for me to truly enjoy. ( )

This book began with an outstanding premise with time coming to a crawl and our intrepid hero with his sense of fairness and justice and giving the world its just due. The first 2 parts of the book were filled with fun and humor and kept me wanting more. However, the last 2 parts seemed to be an acid trip gone horribly wrong. I felt like Alice going through the rabbit hole into the heart of a madhouse. Had the story stayed on its initial trajectory it would have been a most fun ride recalling memories of Douglas Adams. All told, the first half of the book was 5 stars with the last 2 parts being only 2 at most. I have to give it 3 stars overall. Perhaps if I had read the first 2 books in the trilogy, it might have helped but Gregory Hill definitely held my attention through the first half. ( )

A terrific book with a tremendous ending. Hill is my new favorite writer. He's got the inventive diction of Pynchon, the satiric ear of Twain, and the narrative imagination of Vonnegut. Wholeheartedly recommended! ( )