THE RESET | Kirkus Reviews

In Datta’s SF series entry, a trillionaire tech entrepreneur and inventor in the near future is hesitant to use his superpowers to “reset” the universe, as he might delete his loved ones.

The series’ central conceit is that certain humans are born with innate “Time Corrector” powers that allow them to halt or reverse time and thus rewrite reality. This talent is bound to a rare Earth substance called intreton—a key element in everything from clean energy technology to cybernetic limbs, digital mind transfer, and artificial intelligence. In the early 21st century, super-genius Vincent Abajian is the incredibly wealthy leader of the cutting-edge Quantum World, a company that makes positive and progressive use of intreton. The inventor is a Time Corrector—intreton is part of his physiology, in fact—but his life hasn’t run like clockwork. As a bullied orphan, he bonded with Japanese Dutch violin prodigy Akane, who disappeared in a strange space-time storm. As an adult, he met the alluring but inconstant classical pianist Emika. Terrorists and traitors targeting Vincent and Akane turn out to be manipulated by Philip Nardin, a mega-tycoon who has an alter ego named Oliver Journe from a different reality. Nardin is covetous of Vincent’s power, and Oliver turns out to have an important connection to the Quantum World CEO. Vincent can radically manipulate the timestream and do a “reset,” saving numerous victims, foiling Nardin’s bad guys, and maybe even erasing himself. Taking such a drastic step would also delete the existence of Nozomi, Vincent’s cherished daughter with Emika. Scoundrels in the governments of the United States and Japan are converging on the dueling trillionaires, attempting to exploit intreton and its ramifications for the weapons market. Vincent must find a path through the tangled relationships and cause-and-effect paradoxes.

Characters frequently maintain multiple identities, and there are diverging/merging timelines, illusions, ever-shifting rules, and even double take–inducing walk-on roles by Zeus and other figures of Greek mythology (especially Chronos, the personification of time itself); indeed, readers will find that the narrative is more intricate than the inside of a complex pocket watch. In order to help readers through the curlicues of multiple perspectives, flashbacks, flashforwards, and do-overs, Datta provides a plethora of footnotes (“This is a continuation of a scene from ‘Omurice,’ chapter 15 of The Winding, Time Corrector Book 1,” reads one), which makes one wonder whether the e-book version ought to have been tricked out with some helpful hyperlinks. In the home stretch, after leading readers through corporate shenanigans and combat-SF, the plot becomes a drama of second-chance destinies and romantic what ifs, guiding readers through histories that have technically already occurred. It should be predictable, but for those hardy adventurers who tough out the loopier bits, the storyline will hold their interest as the many gears, cogs, and coils of fate mesh and unwind. If Back to the Future is elementary time travel, this is the stuff of doctoral theses.

This latest series installment delivers an intricately recursive time-hopping tale of heartache and skullduggery.