I was drawn to this book due to the initial plot line. Ancient Egyptian time travels to (well I'm not quite sure, in the beginning of the book 1877 is mentioned but towards the end someone is said to have died in the past in 1890) 19th century London and falls in love with a modern girl. This has my name all over it. Or it would have if not for a long series of errors.

First of all, the book has too many competing story lines. Having an Egyptian from several thousand years ago show up right at the height of the Egyptian craze is really quite a brilliant idea, but very much under explored. I think there could have been a lot more on Haru's getting used to 19th century life and learning to speak English. Instead there was just a bit of a language barrier and Haru's mastering of the fork. Having Felicity’s father be an opium addict was just unnecessary and cluttered up the plot. I could see him stealing the time machine to get rich, and then Haru having to choose between harming his love's family and getting back to his own as the real problem.

Secondly, the sex scenes. Where these really necessary? I do most of my reading on trains and find it really uncomfortable to be reading along and then to randomly get hit with not just a sex scene, but a particularly crass one. One of them took up 3 percent of the total story.

This leads me to the next point. Overall, the writing not very developed. The characters are a bit two dimensional and some of the dialogue feels awkward and stunted. There were also several glaring typos. Some of the plot holes were overwhelming. It was never really explained how time travel worked in this universe, just that Haru had a watch that he could set the date to. Therefore, why couldn’t he travel back to his own time at the same time he left? This would have allowed for his father to have not died. Inversely, he could have come to back for Felicity moments after he had left. Unless, of course, the time machine only took you to a certain place and year – ie you had no control over the date. But this was never explained. Also, why in the world leave a time machine in a tomb? Was this a blatant set up to bring Felicity’s father back in time in the next book? I don’t know, and I won’t be finding out as I never grew close to any of these characters and therefore don’t particularly care.

I think there was meant to be a steampunk vibe to the book, but it felt hoofed in and didn’t really flow with or progress the story line. I wouldn’t consider this a steam punk book.

The last thing that I want to mention – I find it highly suspect that someone would refer to their present as ancient. Why didn’t Haru just call himself an Egyptian?

Overall, this was a hard book to get through, however the basic concept was interesting. I got this book as an Amazon freebie. I couldn’t possibly recommend reading it if you need to pay for it. ( )