These artists are famous enough. The rise of a promising literary career has—briefly, in my opinion—hit a plateau. The Revisionists is a fine book with an inventive plot and an often brilliant probing of the complexities of history, of the trillions of dominoes that tumble to make history turn out the way it does. The plot introduces an agent from the future, Zed, who comes back to our present time as a hit man.
He stops other rebellious time travelers from altering history. Zed works to preserve a future, called Present Perfect, in which all problems have been solved. To have a perfect future, the Holocaust must wipe out 6 million Jews. The Kennedy assassination must wrench the nation.
Little Boy must incinerate Hiroshima. If events happen any other way, the future changes … and Present Perfect will presumably be plagued by as many hideous Pandoran ills as present-day Washington. Mullen unfolds those ills in a tricky maze of a book, a spy vs. The plots and intrigues of Washington make les liaisons dangereuse of the Parisian courts of Louis XIV look, well, like a bunch of fops in leotards and lace collars clanking swords and swearing in French. Zed must cover his tracks, of course, leaving no trace of the work he does. But how does a man leave history unchanged when he lives in it?
Mullen entangles Zed with a beautiful high-powered Washington lawyer grieving over the mysterious death of her brother, a soldier, in Iraq. A converging plot portrays a young Indonesian girl held in slavery by a Korean diplomat and his wife. Mullen subtly shows that beauty can change history, as beastliness so often does. Even more, Mullen succeeds in smartly presenting time as a kaleidoscope, where any simple twist of fate throws every future outcome into a new configuration.
Mullen looks hard at some uncomfortable issues. Corruption in high places, for instance, and the domino effect of vice on lives and fates. The butterfly effect of one single love, or a single inattention, or a single knock on a door. The power of grief to alter events, to change fates.
As I read The Revisionists , I wondered about something. I salute him, respect him, and greatly admire his work. Then I got a reading that someone was prepping a time machine of some kind so I came here. Kemper, I must insist that you do nothing to stop the coming Great Conflagration. I just like playing tourist in history.
I got no interest in changing it. Thinking about that stuff gives me a headache. When and where did his happen? I bumped into these three asshats …. I mean suspicious people who admitted to being time travelers from the future. This sounds like a real threat. I should check it out and deal with them immediately. They seemed pretty dangerous so you should probably just whack them as soon as you get the chance.
That guy was a crazy as a shithouse rat. Or at least I hope he was. This Great Conflagration sounds pretty grim. On the other hand, if he really was a time traveler, I might have just settled up with those three nitwits in London. That would almost be worth the destruction of society. View all 32 comments. Time travel stories have been done to death, but this latest addition to the genre might well become a classic.
Z Zed is a protector - a man who does bad things so worse won't happen - travels back to our present to protect his Perfect Society from the HAGs Historical Agitators. He's performed other, similar missions, but this is the most critical job ever. Thus the novel starts from Zed's point of view. Other chapters show the tim Time travel stories have been done to death, but this latest addition to the genre might well become a classic. Other chapters show the times from a couple of different contemps contemporary people - people of our time.
The details are sketchy at first. Mullen does a masterful job of slowly filling in the picture. Are they bit players or pivotal figures? If you like tidy endings, don't read this. What makes a perfect society? Are the costs worth it? Can free will exist in a scientific frame work of time travel or is there just Fate?
I'm also going to search out other works by this author. This is his third novel, but he's also written some nonfiction that should be interesting. Fass did a great job of narrating this audio book, too. His voices were perfect. View all 6 comments. Jan 31, Debbie Zapata rated it really liked it Shelves: Hags, contemps, Protectors, Events Is it the future?
The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen :: Books :: Reviews :: Thomas Mullen :: Paste
Is it the present? A little bit of both. Imagine people from our future which to them is known as the Perfect Present returning to try to change history. Hags historical agitators come to try to save the contemps who were lost in horrendous Events such as the Holocaust. But Protectors come back to ensure that history unfolds exactly the way it did, because if anything was changed, then the Perfect Hags, contemps, Protectors, Events But Protectors come back to ensure that history unfolds exactly the way it did, because if anything was changed, then the Perfect Present would be something else entirely.
So the Protectors make sure that Events happen, no matter what. Each chapter follows a different character, and we switch from Zed, a Protector who in our time is known as Troy, to a lawyer by the name of Tasha, to ex-CIA operative Leo, to Sari, who is basically a slave to a diplomat. All these people are tied together by different Events, that unfold as they are supposed to The government of the Perfect Present insisted that its citizens were not allowed access to the past, even to the point of having special crews who cleared away all mementoes of dearly departed loved ones, so that there was nothing left: And yet this government was obsessed with protecting history, to make sure that Events unfolded in just the right way to allow the Perfect Present to develop.
I was struck by a thought Tasha had during a cab ride. The cab driver was a man from another country, as is quite common in large cities like Washington D. He is speaking into a cel phone in his own language, one that Tasha does not understand. She has just left a meeting that has left her overwrought, and she starts off thinking that the man could be either innocently telling his wife that he will bring home the bread and milk she needs, or he could be plotting a terrorist attack.
Then she simply tunes him out: If I don't understand your language, are you really Present? And if I do understand your language, but not the ideas behind your words, am I really Present? If we cannot or will not communicate, are any of we Present? I don't always go off on such tangents when reading, but this book seemed made for such thoughts.
It is fast moving and interesting, but also brings up many ideas that I want to explore more thoroughly the next time I read it. View all 3 comments. Jul 12, Ben Babcock rated it it was ok Shelves: This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Time travel is a very broad trope in science fiction. There are so many stories to tell using time travel and so many ways of doing it.
I love time travel stories particularly Doctor Who , the nitty-gritty, wibbly-wobbley, timey-wimey type of stories that can leave you utterly confused and gasping for breath by the end. For all their intricate potentialities, however, time travel is really only good for two things: Everything else is just variations upon the theme. Since stories always need conflict, and conflict is hard to do when one is an observer, most time travel stories lean toward the latter.
In The Revisionists , our protagonist wants to stop people from changing the past. Zed works for the Government, who have taken Leibniz literally and believe they have found the best of all possible worlds. Except, as he protects various important Events in contemporary Washington, D. From here, The Revisionists can go one of two ways. First, Zed is a time traveller from an undisclosed time in the future, as he claims.
Second, Zed is actually his cover identity—Troy Jones—suffering from paranoid delusions brought on by the trauma of losing his ex-wife and daughter in a traffic collision. The time travel trappings are all part of an elaborate conspiracy fantasy Troy has constructed and is now living. This is supposed to be artsy and clever and make the book that much more appealing. Unfortunately, neither interpretation leads to a satisfying experience.
Thomas Mullen tells us exactly nothing about how time travel actually works in this universe. Mullen is similarly vague about the technology Zed possesses. He appears to have cybernetic enhancements: None of this is very impressive or satisfying from a science-fiction standpoint. Furthermore, the monolithic and suspect Government that Zed protects is a very vague sort of dystopia.
However, this does not excuse a failure to explain the post-apocalyptic society itself. According to Zed, this is for their own good—ignorance, after all, is bliss. We get no sense of who is in charge of the Government, and we meet fewer than five characters aside from Zed.
So, as a time-time travel story, I have to give The Revisionists a failing mark. This is not good enough to keep me occupied until Doctor Who comes back in the fall. Then what if we regard Zed as the somewhat deranged Troy Jones? Does this make the book any better?
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The problem with normalizing The Revisionists and interpreting its science-fictional elements as hallucinatory is that it forces us to view the book as a conspiracy thriller. And, while I admit that I am somewhat of a snob when it comes to thrillers, I suspect that I would not be alone in concluding that this is a fairly lacklustre thriller. The characters are dull. Neither Leo nor Tasha are very good at what they do, and while I suppose they are likeable enough as far as people go, I never became emotionally invested in their stories.
I think this issue would be a lot more interesting when explored through the lens of time travel. Attempting to sort through the machinations of Enhanced Awareness, Ltd. As a straight-up thriller, then, there is very little in the way of purpose to The Revisionists.
Rather, he has managed to construct a plot that can be interpreted in two ways yet fails to work on either level. Jun 25, Lou rated it really liked it Shelves: Within these pages you will find a complex cerebral thriller. A world of espionage, secrets and cover ups. Don't expect a visceral thriller, from the title and book cover I was expecting more of a cinematic kind of thriller instead it turned out to be a thinking mans tale of truth and power. You have a couple of searches for truth here, one a dead brother in the army and secondly a diplo Within these pages you will find a complex cerebral thriller.
You have a couple of searches for truth here, one a dead brother in the army and secondly a diplomat while is in the midst of deals with a foreign enemy, his maid has been the recipient of some abuse. It is a long haul to read and at times wanted a bit more accelerated pace, in the end I would say I found it was crafted together quite cleverly. Oct 08, Catherine rated it really liked it Shelves: What is this book about? Maybe all of it and then some. Definitely more of a mystery than sci-fi, with twists and turns, additional pieces of the story around every turn of the page.
I really, really liked Mullen's first novel, which was a fairly straight-forward narrative about the Influenza epidemic, logging and unionization. I was not so crazy about his second novel, whi What is this book about? I was not so crazy about his second novel, which was about bank-robbing brothers in the s, with a paranormal twist. So you might think the convolution of so many different themes and genres would turn me off even more, but it didn't.
I liked these characters. Even Leo, the former CIA agent who reveals himself multiple times to be a selfish asshole, isn't without his redeeming qualities. All of the characters are confused who wouldn't be, when you don't know who's watching you or who you can trust? They have depth that I thought the Firefly brothers lacked. About pages from the end, Mullen throws a curve ball that left me stunned, but I liked it.
The ending is left rather open to interpretation, which I usually hate, but it didn't bother me here. I picked the version of the truth that suits me, and I'm good with that. Of course, that leaves the question of what actually happened all of the times when "Zed" believed he was killing hags and wiping out the evidence with "Flashers. May 19, switterbug Betsey rated it it was amazing. Actually, both novels are ideal as bookends; in King's book, the protagonist goes back in time to try and alter history, whereas Mullen's protagonist, Zed, is an agent from the future employed to preserve history exactly as it is and prevent disruption or changes.
If you add Orwell's constant surveillance and Farenheit destruction of historical documents , you have a riff of Mullen's themes. Date unknown, but we have survived the "Great Conflagration," a period of warfare and global destruction that started in Washington, D. Yes, there is world peace, no hunger, and no religious wars and no religion , and race is essentially a non-issue, as everyone is mixed. But, at what cost this Perfect Present?
For one thing, all history is sacred, yet exiled from citizens' knowledge. The past is considered dangerous, because it is psychologically and socially harmful to dwell on the events that caused wars and disasters. The government forbids historical knowledge to circulate; moreover, when a loved one dies, all traces of them are erased in a haunting and treacherous manner. Zed is cybernetically enhanced with the power of GPS and superhuman surveillance skills.
His "contemp" 21st century name is Troy Jones. Certain rebels or "hags" are anti-government agitators who believe that people deserve to know their history, and part of their job is finding ways to access hidden and confidential historical documents. The hags travel back to the past and attempt to prevent specific horrors from occurring.
These time travels provoke cat-and-mouse chases between the Protectors and the hags. Zed's job is to eliminate the hags and protect the Perfect Present. This is as much a novel of ideas as it is a spy thriller. Characters wrestle with themes of protection vs power, of morality vs truth, and also grapple with identity, memory, and loss. In addition, the question of life's narrative is ubiquitous in the story--continuity, progression, recall, and interpretation. Moreover, how do you preserve history, when you are standing in it? What happens if you get involved with a person from the past?
Supposedly, some people count more than others, and minor changes with insignificant members of the population don't necessarily affect the future. But Zed is standing close to the precipice, facing a steep chasm of people and history, flirting with fissures. Tasha is a young corporate lawyer in D. She doesn't believe the government's story about what happened, which leads her to a mission of her own, and a potentially perilous breach of ethics.
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She meets Zed at a demonstration. He is breaking the rules by consorting with "contemps," but figures that there will be no butterfly effect from his interactions with her. Leo is a former CIA spy now working for a morally ambiguous security company. While grocery shopping, he meets a beautiful Indonesian nanny, Sari, who works for a Korean diplomat and his wife. Her inscrutable air fails to conceal some ugly facial bruises, but she isn't talking.
The Revisionists
The twists and turns are about two steps ahead of the reader, but with a casual pace that burns slowly and effectively, allowing time for character building and depth, and for ideas to flesh out. And, no matter how refined the technology, everyone is damaged and, to some extent, working with crude tools. And, as in life, not all questions can be resolved.
But there's love, and a knock at the door. Will s he answer it? View all 4 comments. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book that I decided to read on a whim. A mix of time travel and modern-day politics? Okay, let's see how the author handles it.
By Emma Healey
To my surprise, he handled it very well indeed. What politics there are in the novel are not overt, which means you can sit back and enjoy the story, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book that I decided to read on a whim. What politics there are in the novel are not overt, which means you can sit back and enjoy the story, and it's a very good story. Basically, there is an agent "Z" from a future society whose job is to prevent a group of would-be revisionists from Z's time from changing the past and thus destroying the society of the future.
Initially Z is presented to us as a good guy defending an advanced, peaceful society from possibly devastating historical changes. As the story goes on, however, we learn that Z's society isn't as wonderful as we've been led to believe -- indeed, as Z has been led to believe. Increasingly, he questions his mission and the truth behind it, and through flashbacks we learn just how dark the future really is.
Paralleling Z's story is that of a former CIA agent in our own time who, like Z, increasingly found the ideals he was supposedly working for in conflict with the work he was actually doing. There is also a young Washington, D. Weaving all these different threads together would be complicated enough in a plain old thriller, but as it is a science fiction novel as well, I feared it would either be a mess or something resolved with some kind of deux ex machina. In fact, everything ties together quite well, and the overall tone of the novel does not even feel that much like a science fiction novel, more like a literary thriller.
This would be a good book to hand someone who likes mysteries and thrillers but not science fiction particularly. The time travel elements are so unobtrusive you don't even find yourself worrying about the sorts of things you usually do in time travel stories like the Grandfather Paradox, etc. There is some philosophizing by all the characters, each of whom is basically a good person who sometimes acts out of self-interest and has to weigh how much guilt and responsibility they can bear.
Overall, a good and somewhat intellectual read with a fast-paced story. This one really surprised me. Recommended for a change of pace for anyone who likes science fiction, and worth trying even by those who don't. Dec 14, Jonathan rated it liked it Shelves: I wanted to like The Revisionists. In our story, the protagonist Z pronounced as the English Zed is sent to protect a terrible war known as The Conflagration. This sets off my first bone with the story, so I'll just get it out of the way: I mentally counted down the days as Z stayed in our present, waiting for the Conflagration to begin, or to at least start building It seems as if halfway through the book, Mullen decided that Z was really there to ensure a series of events that would sort of touch off the Conflagration.
I won't spoil it, but the steps that lead to the war in this book are flimsy. If I wanted to prevent the war, there would seem to be a dozen more likely targets in that distant somewhere future in which he set the war. This drains the story of its urgency right before the important third act. I think this decision doomed the story to a fizzle of an ending. I don't know why he decided to do this, but it's disappointing. Pacing is this story's greatest enemy, but other problems creep in, as well. Some reviews said that the characters are indistinguishable at the front of the book.
They all seem to have their reasons for doing what they do, along with emotional landscapes. The problem is that almost all are entirely unlikable, such as the moronic former CIA agent Leo, who stumbles his way through the story doing selfish, stupid things and never learns from his - or others' - suffering. I didn't buy Z's "redemption" either, but I think that's partially because of another problem with the story: We jump between the heads of four characters, some of which are only tenuously connected.
I found myself frustrated as I settled into one POV only to be ripped into another, possibly in a different part of the story, making us catch up with events from which he cut away. In the case of Z, we never see the actual events that lead to his redemption, just a few hints when we're in his POV. Again, the plot had potential, but it seemed like he had trouble deciding which elements should rule: Combining the two is very tricky, but it can work. Unfortunately, it doesn't work here. The romantic elements drag away the urgency as soon as they hit, and in the end the thriller elements feel sacrificed to those parts.
The ending itself provides a big hint of what knocked the plot down a few pegs, as it focuses on the character at the center of the romance subplot It's never clear which is which. But it's not all bad. Good premise, at least one intriguing character, another character who has a complete arc and grows, and some interesting sci-fi elements. It desperately needed a rewrite. If you like dystopian fantasy it's worth checking out, but with the caveat of all of the issues mentioned above.
Jan 04, Lisa Wolf rated it really liked it Shelves: I have a soft spot for all things time-travel, and the basic synopses I'd read of this book seemed to put it squarely into that genre: Main character Zed works for a post-disaster society at some point in time several centuries from now. In the "Perfect Present", there is no war, no racial tension, no hate. Zed's government agency works to keep the perfect present perfect, by sending agents in "The Revisionists" was not at all what I'd expected, yet I couldn't put it down -- hence the four stars.
And strangely, that's not at all what this book is really about. Much more than anything else, I'd describe "The Revisionists" as an espionage-thriller set in DC, filled with intrigue, shadowy quasi-governmental intelligence outfits working against one another, multiple layers of pawns and spymasters, and a reality that slips and shifts from chapter to chapter.
This is not a sci-fi book, when you get right down to it. Zed's mission is the driving narrative, yet we get no information whatsoever about the mechanics of his time travel and only the barest of descriptions of some futuristic technology. Without saying anything that might inadvertently be a spoiler, I will say that the entire time travel premise is not necessarily what it appears to be, depending on how you choose to interpret certain events and passages.
I was fascinated by this book, and it will probably take me some time to mull over all the twists and turns and come to terms with what may or may not have happened. I do recommend "The Revisionists", although I worry that its perfect target audience -- people who enjoy a good spy thriller -- won't ever discover it if it continues to be described as a time-travel novel. Apr 03, Alan rated it liked it Recommends it for: Dupes of the system. Apparently, time travel is easy, once you stumble across the trick. The hard part is making your past hold still , afterwards assuming that "afterwards" continues to mean something.
The past you remember from yesterday may not be the past you will have had tomorrow, especially once your opponents start using their own versions of the same trick. This book could easily have been called The Santayana Inversion —those who can remember history are condemned to enforce it—though I'll admit that The R Apparently, time travel is easy, once you stumble across the trick. This book could easily have been called The Santayana Inversion —those who can remember history are condemned to enforce it—though I'll admit that The Revisionists is a better title. Zed is an agent of a possible future which has learned the trick of time travel.
The Perfect Present is a utopian society that arose from the ashes of the great Conflagration, an event slated to have occurred sometime in our near future—exactly when isn't specified, but it's a lot closer to our time than to Zed's. Only by allowing the old order to burn itself away and then cauterizing the stump can Zed's perfect present—technically advanced, freed from nationalism and racism, orderly, and committed to a more sustainable, less materialistic way of life—come into being.
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His mission is simple, really: Zed is one of those who ensures that the Conflagration takes place, despite its cost to us, we "contemps" only one letter away from "contempt," which is telling living obliviously in our 21st-Century "beat. That must mess with your motivations. Even Perfection has enemies. Historical agitators—hags—have stolen the government's time travel technology, and are using it to disrupt the very Events that Zed is dedicated to preserving. And even though time is surprisingly resilient, and even though Zed is carrying around a headful of helpful technologies, it's getting harder instead of easier to push back the hags.
Eventually it starts seeming as if almost everyone is a revisionist of one sort or another The Revisionists is slow to get rolling, verbose, and—for a time-travel thriller—oddly uneventful. This is understandable, to some extent—Zed's mission, after all, is to preserve the status quo against all comers. And plenty of things do happen eventually My other major problem with the book primarily involves how Mullen handles the technology he posits for his time travelers. Early on, for example, Zed takes a convenient blow to the head, which disables just enough of Zed's internal devices to make the story more interesting.
That seems awfully contrived. Another bit of future tech, the "flashers" Zed and his colleagues use to dispose of inconvenient corpses, leave burn marks like spontaneous combustion or a mini-IED. This is, after all, a thriller of sorts, and like all such is full of failures of imagination, replete with murders committed where persuasion might actually have worked instead. But surely the rash of such traces occurring in the D. Or are Zed and his fellow agents simply relying on no one ever connecting the dots?
The technology really isn't the point, though. Unlike a more traditional time-travel novel, The Revisionists focuses on the small scale, showing us relatively little of the great sweep of history or of the consequences of Events gone awry. Zed's lonely vigil and memories of personal loss lead him to try to connect with contemporary souls, in defiance of his own department's rules.