PARADOX RESOLUTION (Spider Webb #2) (audiobook) by K.A. Bedford


Originally published in 2012.
Audiobook version published in 2013 by Post Hypnotic Press
Read by Cameron MacDonald
Duration: 9 hours, 45 minutes.

Time travel science fiction can be tricky. Do you play it straight and have time traveler affecting the time line like Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis? Or, do you play fast and loose with time travel and timelines like the Dr. Who series does?

Personally, I like the stricter interpretation of time travel. I think the loose interpretation is like Robert Frost's famed comparison of free verse poetry to rhyming/metered poetry to "playing tennis without a net." I guess it comes from to many years of playing Role Playing Games as a kid - I tend to put myself in complicated plots and think about how I would get out. Unfortunately (for me at least), this book plays by a set of fast, loose and rather arbitrary rules about time travel and leaves its own plot open to its own internal inconsistencies - the entire story could have been undone with judicious use of any of the thousands of time machines that exist in this story at any point in almost any of the main characters' lives. 

I have not read the first book in this series but I think that Bedford does a very good of catching the reader up to the events that transpired in the first book. I was drawn to the book because of the back of the book description of Spider Webb - a down on his luck ex-cop who fixes time machines at an Australian franchise location of the Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait chain. Spider is a likable guy who wants to get back with his ex-wife, can't see that another lady is practically throwing himself at him and has a very strong sense of right and wrong. 

The story starts out with a bang but in the middle of the book there are long, long often repetitive passages of discussion and thought (and thoughts about the discussions that we just heard) that bog the book down. Sadly, the book never picks up the quick pace again and prone to shorter (but still repetitive) discussions and thoughts about discussions.

I enjoyed the reading by Cameron MacDonald. He had a nice command of Australian and Canadian accents and portrays the clueless yet committed Spider Webb quite skillfully. Plus, he made the long bouts of discussion and thinking listenable.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Paradox Resolution (Spider Webb #2).

Reviewed on March 24, 2014.



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