"Why are the chickens so large, and the carrots orange?"

This sci-fi-ish time travel novel was a quick throw-away read.

A tech company has figured out the secret to time travel, at least one-way time travel, bringing people from the past into the future. In order to avoid anomalies, however, the company has thus far only used the technology to bring forward people who are about to die anyway, beginning with the people on a plane that was about to crash.

The current big project, the subject of the book, is that the entire city of Pompei has been extracted into the current day from immediately prior to the eruption. In order not to blow the Pompeians minds they are brought to an exact replica of Pompei (which they cannot leave), and told they have been saved by the emperor and the gods who represent the emperor. Things are not going entirely well, however, as the Pompeians have a few suspicions.

Nick Houghton, failed doctoral candidate in history, is brought on board to study the Pompeians and to report any problems that occur.

I enjoyed the aspects of this book about what day-to-day life in ancient Pompei was like--the customs of the Pompeians, how their houses were organized etc., although I have no idea how well-researched or accurate this was. The intrigue involving the tech company and its various owners, employees and enemies, I found to be a bit silly. There's a sequel to this, and while this book kept me reading, I won't go on with the sequel.

2 1/2 stars ( )

Any book which begins with a murder attempt at the British Museum is bound to catch my attention. Nick Houghton, a specialist in Roman history who’s struggling to find tenure at a university, is unwillingly caught up in the chaos. With one of his friends deeply implicated in the plot, he expects to be arrested; but instead the unthinkable happens. He is offered a job by the CEO of NovusPart, one of the most powerful and controversial companies in existence. For NovusPart has developed a technology that can cheat history, plucking people out of the ‘timeline’ and transporting them forward in time, saving them from plane crashes, death or disaster. And they’ve decided that Nick is just the person to help them out with their most recent and most ambitious project: the wholesale relocation of the population of Pompeii (in 79 AD) to the present day...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2018/03/20/new-pompeii-daniel-godfrey/ ( )

Silly but entertaining thriller. Fun for Dan Brown and Crichton fans who don't want to think very hard. The ending was somewhat abrupt and obviously setting up for a sequel. ( )