Book Review: Travel by Kevin Rowlett

Reviewed by Frankie Martinez

A compelling, classic-feeling time travel novel with intriguing politics, a secret spy, and waking up 18 again

In the year 2020, an unnamed man living in Wonder Lake, Illinois undergoes a strange phenomenon. After a completely normal day of work, chatting with his girlfriend Leigh, and caring for his dog, the man goes to sleep. But when he wakes up, he knows that something is wrong even without opening his eyes. 

When he does, he sees his brother Joseph asleep in a twin bed across from him, though he hasn’t shared a room with his brother since high school. As the strange feeling increases, the man notices other changes; his tattoos are gone, and he finds a silver flip phone by his bedside instead of a smart phone. When he gets out of bed, he finds his 1995 Pontiac Gran Am sitting in the driveway. This is when he realizes he’s back in high school: “Jesus fuck.”With absolutely no idea what is happening to him, the man starts his own investigation into the reason why his 32-year-old consciousness has traveled back in time, hoping that backtracking to his future home will lead to answers. 

Meanwhile, in the basement of a normal office building in 2020, security guard and glorified equipment manager Javier Del Carmen of Strategic Anomaly Observation Control notices a blinking orange light on the machines he is supposed to be watching over. These machines, which are supposed to monitor for anomalies in time and space as part of a research group called Project Outrigger, have detected an anomaly—the first and only time-space anomaly since the division’s founding in 1990. 

The team at Project Outrigger scramble to observe the anomaly and figure out how it happened, while legacy researcher H.S. Baumann conspires behind the scenes to get his hands on the technology that did the job. 

A story told between multiple perspectives and periods of time, Travel is a sci-fi thriller about a man trying desperately to get back to his own time period, all while his fate rests in the hands of an organization that has become entangled in politics and potential conspiracy, of which he has no part. 

This classic sci-fi premise starts with an en-medias res beginning, mysterious gadgets with blinking lights and laser beams, and secret basement laboratories, but the interpersonal dynamics within the scientists at Project Outrigger give the novel its most compelling edge. 

While multiple perspectives appear in the sections that focus on Project Outrigger’s activities in 2020, Javier’s perspective dominates most of these sections. While the Outrigger team argue about what to do with the time machine they’ve discovered, Javier reveals a secret background that results in some seriously mysterious intrigue and fun action sequences in the latter half of the novel. Javier is also the only person who seems to have a bit of humanity in him, showing concern for the unnamed man who was sent back in time by watching over him and feeding his dog. Baumann’s sections are also especially interesting with their history of time travel research.

The other half of the novel is focused on the first-person perspective of the unnamed narrator. These scenes are especially cinematic in their vivid detail and high emotion, but some of that narrator’s characterization leaves some to be desired. His story is highly focused on the present problem of trying to get back to his own timeline, resulting in a narrative that seems to leave little room for agency or difficult choices that would give more hints to who he is as a person.

Travel introduces many mysteries; a teacher lost in the past, a spy, and the secrets of time travel hidden in a strange machine that only one person seems to understand. After finishing, one thing is clear: If answers can be found, it can only be done with the passage of time. 

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