Here and Now and Then

Here and Now and Then
by Mike Chen

Kin seems like your average, normal person; he works, he's married, and he has a teenage daughter.  But he is actually a time-traveling secret agent from 2142.  He was stranded in San Francisco in the 1990s after a mission went wrong.  And now eighteen years have passed.

Kin has kept his past a secret from his family, but it has been hard lately since he has suffered from more and more blackouts and memory loss.  His family is worried about him, but he can't tell them the truth, that he is a time traveler and his brain is having a hard time handling two time-lines.  The body was only meant to remember one.  

He is rescued and sent back to his own timeline.  Well, eighteen years have passed for him, but it has been a mere few weeks in his time.  While he was in the past, his brain remembered some of his life from his own timeline, but he had forgotten large chunks of it.  Now he is remembering parts and people he had forgotten.  He is torn between the fiance he had forgotten he had and his wife and daughter from the past.  Eighteen years is a long time, and he worries about his family, particularity if his daughter is going to be okay.

Oh, I just loved this one!  It reminded me a bit of The Timekeeper's Son by Mike E. Miller.  The storylines were both different, it just reminded me of that because it also had time travel and was just such a good, imaginative story.  

I read through this one quick, it was such an enjoyable story that drew you in.  I liked the characters.  It was a dad worrying about his family, a genuine good guy when it came down to it.  If I'm looking for a nice, solid, science fiction story that has some time travel in it, this really hits the spot.  This is the debut book from this author and I'm looking forward to reading more books by him in the future.