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Turns out, a lot more. This book is like a lead weight, an albatross. It took FOREVER to slog through, which surprised me. It’s got an awful lot of what I like in sci-fi/fantasy, especially time travel. If a movie or a book messes with time/space, I’m almost sure to like it. Never mind that Three Days to Never mixes in old Hollywood and new age cults.

It starts of with a cool (if convoluted) premise but the story never takes off. Even trying to explain that will prove difficult. Let’s say that it involves a previously unknown part of Albert Einstein’s research, more powerful than splitting the atom. Pair that with the plight of Frank Marrity and his daughter Daphne. They stumble upon some information never meant for their eyes. Before long they’e being chased by various evil factions. Sounds good right?  But then add in an odd connection with Charlie Chaplin, something called the Harmonic convergence, a talking head in a box, and stir in a lot of tedious mumbo jumbo about spirits and the whole recipe falls apart.

I wanted to like this novel. As I said I spent a lot of time with it. The nuts and bolts of the writing hold up. Powers’ prose isn’t the problem. Known for using historical facts to form an outline for his supernatural stories, Powers reaches too far with Three Days to Never. He could have taken on fewer narrative threads and followed those instead of piling on one after another.

It doesn’t take long for things to go wrong. You have the Israeli intelligence agency and some kind of ancient cult chasing after the Marrity’s and what they’ve found.  The groups are too similar, making it difficult to tell the characters apart when the action cuts back and forth.  In comes Charlie Chaplin’s lost film, A Woman of the Sea . It turns out to be a component of the time machine. Which can also erase entire lifetimes. That might be a different device. It’s hard to tell.  Never the less, the idea that Chaplin was in on building a time machine stretched my suspension of disbelief.

The Einstein elements were the most appealing but it gets bogged down. If Powers had left it to Einstein, the father/daughter and one secret agency, it might have succeeded.  It’s easy to get into the Marrity’s story, especially when a man claiming to be Frank’s long lost father shows up.

Three Days to Never could have been great. Unlike a lot of fantasy novels in deals in big ideas, touching on what it means to be alive, how we should spend out lives, the nature of family. However, it never digs deep enough into those ideas. I kept waiting, pushing through. However, after what felt like forever the novel comes to a fuzzy, unsatisfying conclusion.

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