Before reading this book, I had no idea that Casanova had written a futuristic novel called Icosameron which predicts television, poison gas, and self-powered cars among other inventions far beyond his time. While in Prague, John encounters not only Mozart but the historically renowned lover, Casanova. The Orloj contains 3 main components: a time-telling component with “The Walk of the Apostles” as an hourly show and the figure of death striking the time, an astronomical dial, and a calendar. In retribution, the clockmaker damaged the clock such that it no longer worked. Legend has it, the city blinded the clockmaker so that he could not make a clock equal to or greater than this one for another city. I’d never heard of this magnificent clock.

While in Prague, he sees the Orloj in non-working order. Thus begins a wonderful rollicking time travel adventure in which we find our hero, John Curry, attending an opera in Prague conducted by Mozart. “One thing about the past: I’ll never get used to the smell.” The first time you encounter this humor is in the opening line: However, it’s the humor that wins you over. It has its serious moments and is well-researched. But this book definitely fits that category in its own way. And, thinking back, I have to say that I’ve not really read a whole lot of humorous science fiction beyond the rare Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I recently found a science fiction magazine that was soliciting more humorous science fiction submissions. Doesn’t it look like an authentic painting of George Washington that you’ve somehow managed to never see before? The author says that one of his students drew the cover for him. In this case, you really can judge a book from its cover. I just finished up with one of these, Washington’s Providence, and it’s really something special. And group members wrote 3 of my all time favorite time travel books: Midnight’s Park, Beyond the Elastic Limit, and Washington’s Providence. One of our group members, Rysa, wrote the #7 top-selling Kindle book (which we had as a book of the month earlier in the year): Timebound. But what I’ve discovered is that there are far more interesting writers out there than what the mainstream publishers are pushing out.

The first time that someone sent me their self-published book to read, I assumed it was going to be horrible. One of the advantages of being the founder and one of the moderators of a GoodReads group for Time Travel literature with almost 1200 members and being an avid book reviewer is that I often get free time travel books to read and review.

Titus groan goodreads