The River of No Return

January 28, 2013
Ridgway makes her debut with an accomplished if sometimes slow-going literary mash-up. In the midst of battle, Lord Nicholas Falcott suddenly jumps 200 years into the future. Finding himself in 2003, Lord Nicholas forges a new life as “Nick Davenant” and serves in a time-traveling secret society known as the Guild. But 10 years after he jumped, Nick is told he’s being sent back to 1815 on a vital mission. While investigating the Guild’s enemies and hunting for the invaluable Talisman, he’s reunited with his sweetheart, Julia Percy, who’s just started to discover time-traveling gifts of her own. But a war over the past and the fate of the future, as well as desperate attempts to find the Talisman and use it to avert catastrophe, promises either to bring Nick and Julia together or tear them apart. Ridgway offers a well-crafted blend of science fiction, romance, mystery, and historical fiction, but stumbles with overlong explanations that, while helpful in untangling the story’s convolutions, stall the plot. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

February 15, 2013
Literate time-travel exercise by English professor and debut novelist Ridgway. No, it's not the river plied by Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum, but instead the river of time that we're talking about. Nicholas Falcott, nobleman and cavalryman, is in big trouble with one of Napoleon's dragoons one minute and recovering in a London hospital nearly two centuries later, where a mysterious stranger--always a mysterious stranger--tells him, "You are in the care of the Guild." As though in some witness protection program, Nick will be assigned a new time and place and name and given what he needs to live comfortably; the stranger informs him that he himself "jumped from Aachen in 810 and landed in 1965" and, for complex reasons, hasn't been able to go to Germany since. Yet time has a way of moving on its own; as another mysterious figure, a Russian named Arkady, tells Nick portentously, "Volga: the Queen of Rivers. Mississippi: the Father of Waters. Amazon: the River Sea. The river of time is a thousand times greater than these. As wide and deep as the universe itself." So it is, and though Nick is practical-minded enough to demand that Arkady "[s]top speaking in metaphors," he goes with the flow anyway. Not much happens for all that, but Ridgway's talky narrative is smart and often funny--and, of course, ends with enough of an opening to permit a sequel or two. It's not especially distinguished, but bookish fantasy fans who make it a point to keep up with Doctor Who will like this one.

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November 15, 2012

He's about to be slaughtered on a Napoleonic battlefield when something happens to aristocrat Nick Falcott; he wakes up in a hospital bed in modern London and finds that he's a member of the Guild, which controls time travel. In-house enthusiasm, with rights to six countries.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2013
In her stellar debut, Ridgeway manages the permutations of the time-travel trope with originality and aplomb. Lord Nick Falcott was an early nineteenth-century aristocrat, until he unexpectedly jumped into the twenty-first century while engaged in bloody battle. He then discovers the powerful, secret Guild that keeps a watchful eye on time shenanigans while it shepherds its bewildered new members through their futuristic lives. Nick is prepared to live in contemporary ease in America and willfully ignore the echoes of his past, but the Guild has other plans for him. They send him back to 1815 England to discover the nefarious plans of a shadowy nemesis who seeks a talisman that controls time. Also in 1815 exists Julia Percy, whose grandfather played with time and managed to pass on his legacy to Julia without her being completely aware of it. The juxtaposition between rather foppish yet deeply wounded Nick and spunky, highly intelligent Julia keeps the pages turning, while the entire premise and plot capture unwavering attention. Recommend this engaging, nuanced read to fans of A Discovery of Witches (2011) and Regency romances.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)