Review of "The Edison Enigma" by Thomas White

Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)

Pardon the pun (as this is a book about time travel), but give this book time... it's a slow build but it's worth it!

Initially, we were disarmed and perhaps even bored by the opening chapters. Yes, there was the teleporting-the-watermelon-through-time thing. Yes, there was the really awkward budding romance between Dr. Tom & Dr. Lori (in which we pretty much get a "you're like a brother to me" moment). Ok, to be fair, Tom & Lori do have a little bit of chemistry that gets stronger later, and they do make each other smile and laugh with their cheesy researcher jokes.

Anyway, this book REALLY picks up once the researchers find themselves locked out of the lab and their workplace following the breakthrough. All of us have been there: unceremoniously having our key cards or account passwords voided due to layoffs or some dumb reason, causing the expected feeling of betrayal and the question, Why not send me a text or email? Why not call me? Why waste my time making me come all the way to work just to have me discover I'm locked out all of a sudden?

That's a relatable frustration!

And that's when Tom breaks out from being a dead-in-the-water, lame-duck protagonist into being a force of nature. Fuming, he goes to Raphael Barrington, the CEO funding his time travel research, and let's him have it. And, finally, he had us on his side.

Tom then learns a sobering truth from a mysterious man named Don Rivendell: Tom is not the first person to successfully send something back through time. Rivendell—who seems trustworthy initially—convinces Tom that history was tampered with decades earlier to protect oil interests and sabotage a cleaner future centered on electric vehicles and solar power. In order to avoid this dark fate for humanity, Tom is convinced that he must stop the rescue of a mysterious girl in the past, creating what should be an enormous moral dilemma.

Now, honestly, this is simultaneously one of the best and worst aspects of this book. It's awesome in the sense that it pushes the plot forward and, ironically, allows the protagonist to embark on his exciting and entertaining adventure to the past. It's somewhat terrible because our heroic protagonist seems to do this without much qualms about what he'd actually be accomplishing: the death of an innocent person to save the many.

We think this was probably meant to be a bigger moral dilemma in the book, but it seems to not faze Tom at all. Like, he literally doesn't care until another major development near the end. Tom seems 1000% committed to letting some innocent girl die just to stop global warming, in his mind. That kinda disturbed us. How is that any different from Walter White letting Jane die from an overdose in Breaking Bad? In fact, it's a lot worse. At least Walter White had personal reasons to let Jane die: she was turning Jessie against him and also getting him readdicted while also knowing White's dirty secret with the meth business. Tom, on the other hand, is willing to let someone die who did absolutely nothing wrong to him.

It almost makes you think: are these climate change activists a bit desensitized to the side-effects of their actions? Like, they might be fighting for cleaner air and the environment, but what about the economic factors, political instability, and the wars that follow when countries pursue, say... nuclear energy?

The sneaking-into-the-lab sequence is both exciting and a bit cheesy. There's the whole bit with the dumb CCTV security guard, who happens to share the same name as the Ukrainian president. But it is kinda cool to see Tom and Lori be such a dynamic duo. However, we really felt this scene was mostly just a way to get from point A to point B.

Anyway... when Tom goes back to the year 1904 to accomplish his mission, this book really becomes fascinating and fun! It's especially fascinating and fun to read about how different the world was back in 1904. And it's funny how Tom keeps stating anachronisms and committing little social and cultural missteps that remind us just how out of place he really is.

He talks about Coke/Coca-Cola before it gained the distribution and popularity the beverage has today. He talks about little league baseball before such a thing gained steam. When his train is delayed, the workers tease him by essentially saying he won't get to Washington DC on time unless he can sprout wings and fly there (because planes weren't invented yet). A few cents could buy you a lot. 45 cents gets you a cab ride. $213 is a small fortune that would allow him to live in comfort for at least a week. There are no seatbelts in cars and barely any traffic laws or regulations. Operators still connect your calls. DC, Chicago, and the rest of America was different. The universities and colleges out west sound like they weren't as respected as they are today. Reporters weren't these rude, forceful, demanding, gaslighting people they are today. There was decorum.

Oh, and as the book reminds us many times, women were still fighting for the right to vote.

Anyway... the real highlight of 1904 and the second half of this book is one person: Emma.

Emma Fitzgerald Livingstone is one of the most wonderful, charming, endearing, lovable, and likable characters we've encountered this year. She's cute, funny, beautiful, kind, spunky, and motivated. She's actually quite a bit of an activist, vouching for women's suffrage. Funny enough, it almost seems like Tom finds her slightly annoying, especially due to her devotion to her cause, but she really grows on him. The two develop the most beautiful relationship that verges on romantic to father-daughter/sister-brother. They genuinely seem to care about one another. Tom tickles her and calls her the "cutest alarm clock" he ever had and talks about needing to find her snooze button, which confuses her.

One thing we found somewhat repetitive and redundant is that it seems like the characters are constantly being captured and tied up, being put in peril. Like, it happens with both Tom & Emma as well as Tom & Lori. We almost wonder if maybe scenes got conflated in later drafts or something because we kept getting a sense of deja vu from these. Perhaps that's the point with a book about time travel.

Check it out on Amazon!