The Time Traveler Professor, Book One: Silent Meridian - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1950384047 ISBN 13: 9781950384044

Publisher: Atomic Alchemist Productions LLC

Synopsis

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is obsessed with a legendary red book. Its peculiar stories have come to life, and rumors claim that it has rewritten its own endings. Convinced that possessing this book will help him write his ever-popular Sherlock Holmes stories, he takes on an unlikely partner, John Patrick Scott, known to most as a concert pianist, but a paranormal investigator and a time traveler professor to a select few.

Like Holmes and Watson trying to solve a mystery, together they explore lost worlds and their friendship is tested to the limits when they go back in time to find it. Both discover that karmic ties and unconscionable crimes have followed them like ghosts from the past, wreaking havoc on the present and possibly the future.

The Time Traveler Professor, Book One: SILENT MERIDIAN reveals the alternate histories of Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Houdini, Jung and other luminaries in the secret diaries of John Patrick Scott, in an X Files for the 19th century. First Prize winner of Chanticleer Review's Goethe Award for Turn-of-the-Century Historical Fiction and First Prize for Steampunk in the Independent Press Awards. Stay tuned for A POCKETFUL OF LODESTONES; Book Two in the Time Traveler Professor series by Elizabeth Crowens.

About this title

About the Author

Over 20 years experience in the film and television industry.

Review

A budding concert pianist delves into the realms of spiritism,sexuality, and scary foreshadowing through his time travel adventures in Elizabeth Crowens' steampunk novel, Silent Meridian.

John Patrick Scott, a conservatory student, meets with Arthur Conan Doyle in Edinburgh, Scotland under unusual circumstances because of an elusive and mysterious red book. Arthur, lacking inspiration and tired of his Holmes character, covertly employs John as a ghostwriter. The two also indulge in the transmigration of souls and time travel. The latter topic is of high interest to the young aspiring musician since he has already accrued a handful of time-travel experiences via a mechanism of his creation. Although Arthur introduces John to nightly practices of communicating telepathically, John doesn't include the beloved author in his time-traveling adventures until years later.

John's time-traveling skills sharpen to the point that he no longer needs his device and uses his grandfather's timepiece instead. He becomes particularly fixed on exploring his past, especially his schooldays at the Underground University; he includes Wendell Mackenzie, his old schoolmate, on his adventures--some of which John escapes just in the nick of time. Over time, John finds it difficult to distinguish between time travel and dreams and seeks the help of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. His adventures take a dark turn when they predict an impending war.

Sherlock Holmes' enthusiast, Elizabeth Crowens, spins a wild tale riddled with glimpses of stories and themes from the early 20th century. Crowens' quirky narrative, which covers sixteen years, could easily befit behind-the-scenes to John's ghostwriting connections to Doyle's published works: The Man with the Twisted Lip, The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, and The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, to name a few.

Scenes regularly flip from John's music studies and his time-travelquests, and are heavily punctuated with references to prominent historical figures and their thematic connections of the era, such asH.G. Wells, J.M. Barrie, Jules Verne (fantasy and sci-fi); Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung (psychology); and Aleister Crowley, Theodore Reuss(metaphysical). While sexual identity plays a close second to the last parenthesized theme scenes, providing only innuendos. John continuously processes his particular leanings, weighing his feelings as a woman in some of his time-travel ventures and amid affairs against Doyle's and Wells' free-love beliefs.

Crowens balances nonfiction with fiction by incorporating memorable characters, such as Whit, John's annoying tutor, and Finn (who John dubs Sherlock), John's "Jiminy Cricket" guide who is only visible to John and comes and goes as he pleases. Sure to be a new favorite for Sherlock Holmes' aficionados, Silent Meridian's cliff-hanging closure is a perfect segue to the second book in Crowens' The Time Traveler Professor series, A Pocketful of Lodestones.

The Chanticleer Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Atomic Alchemist Productions LLC
• ISBN 10: 1950384047
• ISBN 13: 9781950384044
• Binding: Paperback