Rating: 
Summary: Highly disappointed
Review: After reading Beneath the Web and Jeralyne, I pre-ordered this book thinking that I would encounter a high level of character development. The novel rambled on and I struggled to finish it. I thought that I might have been biased since the book initially had a modern setting, but I don't think that was true. I didn't care much about the protanganist. The two possible romantic interests were hardly addressed. The magical elements had promise, but again, the novel dragged. The book ends like there might be sequels, but I have no desire to read them.
Rating: 
Summary: Coming of 'middle age' novel
Review: Emma Merrigan is a 40-something librarian raised by her professor father. She lives in academia: a community that doesn't take a lot of risks and generally doesn't have a lot of adventures.
Emma offers help to Jennifer a young student who's clearly been battered. The girl's presence in her life, in her home, brings back nightmares from a past Emma didn't have. When Jennifer's boyfriend shows up, Emma believes the young man suffers an ancient curse, which she sets out to moot. In doing so, she discovers powers and history she never expected.
Rating: 
Summary: A very fun fantasy novel!
Review: Emma Merrigan is a 50 year old woman, living a rather dull life. But bumping into an abused teenager, and inviting her to stay with her draws her into a strange world, where curses exist, and time travel (sort off) is possible. This book is not really a time travel novel (as I thought when I bought it), it's more of a fantasy book. But I never read any other book like it. Lynn Abbey, the author, creates a believable fantasy world. It reminded me a bit of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere - a fantasy world superimposed on our modern reality. I really loved the book - and am eagerly looking for a sequel.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Paranormal Story
Review: Emma, a 50 year-old university librarian, has led a fairly normal existence until the day she stumbles upon a strange box in her basement. Her real name, Merle Acalia, is written across the yellowed cardboard. Inside she finds a book of charms and spells and old letters, all left to her by Eleanor, the mother who abandoned her when she was very young. To her distress Emma becomes involved in a world of dimensions she had never imagined, a frightening world where curses take on form and must be hunted through time and destroyed lest they cause terrible suffering for those who live in the here-and-now. With reluctance Emma takes up the mantel of hunter-witch. Out of Time has a brilliant plot and intricate, believable characters. There is a proper ending, but with one part of the plot left unresolved, leaving it obvious that there is a sequel. I searched Amazon.com to discover the title - Behind Time. I can't wait to read it!
Rating:
Summary: 18k fantasy
Review: Fifty-year-old librarian Emma Merrigan lives alone in a Bower, Michigan townhouse. Emma enjoys her quiet solitude, especially after two failed marriages. When Emma was one, her mother mysteriously disappeared. For decades afterward Emma suffered from severe night traumas that have eased up in recent years.However, Emma's quiet lifestyle changes when she meets badly beaten law school student Jennifer. She provides Jennifer with a temporary home while she recovers from her injuries. The meeting sets in motion a chain of events that leads to the return of Emma's night traumas. Only this time when she awakens she sees evidence that indicate she traveled somewhere. Emma found a hidden cache of letters from her mother that tells her how to remove curses and that she has the innate ability to travel through time. When Jennifer,s boyfriend arrives, Emma believes he suffers from an ancient curse. Emma goes back in time and changes the past but she botches the job and it looks like Jennifer's boyfriend will die. To correct her error, Emma needs the help of a fellow time traveler, a person she does not trust. Imagine a contemporary drama sprinkled with a few horror and fantasy elements. This is the essence of OUT OF TIME, a very good tale. Emma is a fabulous heroine while the support charcaters augment the plot with depth. This novel appears to be the first installment of a new modern day fantasy series in which the audience remains clueless as to the overall direction Lynn Abbey plans to take in what is an enjoyable opening act. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Out of Time shows Abbey in a promising career rebound
Review: Having wrapped up the '90's with such indefensible misfires as Siege of Shadows and Jerlayne, it seemed as if the only thing that was "out of time" where Lynn Abbey was concerned was her career. But lo and behold, Abbey's first novel of the new century (depending on how you count) is one of the nicest and most unexpected surprises I've come across. It reads almost as if Abbey herself is a new person. Her prose--heretofore pretentious, obtuse, dreary, not unlike wading through four feet of Mississippi river mud while carrying a knapsack full of bowling balls--is in this book clean, brisk, and accessible. Characterizations are warm, sympathetic, very real. And though it might seem a disservice to Abbey to suggest that after 20-odd years of trying she's finally gotten it right, it might be more diplomatic to suggest that maybe she's finally found the right type of story to let her talents bloom. In the past, with some exceptions, Abbey has directed her creative attentions towards high mythic fantasy--in most cases with stupefyingly disastrous results. Out of Time, on the other hand, is a contemporary fantasy reminiscent of 1982's The Guardians, and it's in a modern day setting that Abbey seems to feel most at home (the bizarreness of Jerlayne notwithstanding). So it's no surprise that this is Abbey's best book since The Guardians, and I welcome her return to fables set in the here-and-now. Granted, it's not exactly filled to the brim with lightning-paced action and edge of your seat suspense. It's a subdued, nuanced little tale, not hurriedly paced but not boring either. It all begins when 50-year-old Emma Merrigan, who works at a university library in Michigan and lives an otherwise drearily ordinary life with her two cats, discovers a frightened and apparently battered young girl sleeping deep within the labyrinthine library stacks. Jennifer Hodden's situation seems all too typical; in denial about an abusive boyfriend and indecisive about what to do with herself. Yet Jennifer's arrival seems to have triggered a return of the "night terrors," strange and inexplicable recurring nightmares that occasionally haunted Emma's childhood following the equally inexplicable disappearance of Emma's mother. As Emma gets more and more caught up in the turmoil of Jennifer and her boyfriend Bran's odd dilemma, she discovers and old box in her house that she's never seen before, though it has clearly been bequeathed her by her long lost and enigmatic mother. An examination of the box reveals that Emma's mom was either certifiably nuts or dealt in honest-to-goodness witchcraft, with a predisposition for curses and how to stop them. Soon Emma finds herself drawn into the realm of her night terrors more and more frequently, and an increasing series of frightening encounters leads her to the conclusion that what must be plaguing Jennifer and Bran is an actual curse, though where it originated and how to erase it are other problems entirely. An interesting touch of Abbey's is her concept of curses: malevolent sources of power brought about by tragic events, that can then become "persistent," travelling through time affecting new hosts like a virus or parasite, unless someone with the paranormal abilities of Emma's mother (or now, as it seems, Emma herself) can trace the curse to its temporal root and squash it before it has a chance to be freed. Nice. Other aspects of Out of Time are more mundane. Anyone who's even a slight veteran of stories of magic and what-have-you will easily predict that the mere mention of a long-lost, mysterious parent means that the story's finale will see that parent pop back up in our herione's life to help her solve the problem. (And so I don't feel guilty of a spoiler by revealing it here.) But though Abbey cannot avoid resorting to the obvious in that instance, her story thankfully isn't robbed of its intrigue because of it. When Emma finally does root out the source of the curse, it's both compelling and sad in classic tragic tradition. But Abbey's biggest coup here is the character of Emma herself, the most real heroine Abbey has ever created, and one whom it is easy to surmise may be something of an alter-ego. Even the most intricately conceived plot and sumptuous prose cannot save a story if you don't have a protagonist who transcends the status of "character on a page" to become a real person the readers feel they truly know at the end. Emma is Abbey's triumph (particularly compared to such gratingly loathsome characters as Jerlayne or Berika of The Wooden Sword), and I hope to see this kind of heart in future Abbey stories now that she's getting this good at it. Out of Time is no fantasy masterpiece, and it would be unrealistic to expect Abbey to produce one all at once after a decade's worth of clunkers. The tale loses steam as it wraps up, with all loose ends sort of falling together too neatly, culminating in an ending that is much too abrupt even while managing to leave room open for a sequel should sales justify one. Yet it is a good book to curl up with on a wintry night with a fire blazing and your cat on your lap. And it bodes well that this decade might be considerably less accursed than the last one was, where Lynn Abbey's novels are concerned.
Rating:
Summary: One of her best in a long time.
Review: I enjoyed this book more than I have any of Ms. Abbey's books in a long time (which is not to say I haven't enjoyed others - I buy and read them all). In contrast to another reviewer, I found the characters riveting, if annoying at times, and I was repeatedly surprised by what she did, as, for example, the relationship between mother and daughter. I look forward to the next one - and really hope there will be a next one.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but not compelling
Review: I read through this book because I wanted to see how it ended, but I was never strongly drawn in or intrigued by it. The characters are not particularly sympathetic or well fleshed out and they feel more like puppets on the authors stage. The plot, as well, seems to me a rather tedious patchwork rather then a consistent unfolding drama. There are no surprises, no aha!s, just a steady curious but indifferent read.
Rating:
Summary: Out of Time is another winner for Lynn
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Lynn's unique ability to blend the modern world with a fantasy world. She evens mixes in a little real ancient history for good measure. Emma travels from being a librarian to a rogue hunter and meets all kinds of interesting curses along the way.
Rating:
Summary: Unusual Time travel concept
Review: Kept me interested throughout. Unusual concept of time travel which seems to work well with the story. I also liked having a 50 something heroine for a change instead of a sweet young thing!
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