Memories

By Mike McQuay

David Wolf finds his life invaded by a traveler from the future, a distant relative on a quest for an escaped murderer. The relative, Silv, is looking to stop Hersh, the killer, from changing the course of history as he has taken up residence in the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte of France. These travelers from the future do not travel in their physical bodies, but through the blood lines of their ancestors, taking over the minds and bodies and controlling them.
Wolf, whose descendant is Silv, is enlisted by her to travel back in time to France and attempt to reason with Hersch to return to his own time and stop meddling with the past. Wolf is a skilled psychiatrist who Silv hopes has the expertise to convince Hersh to go back to where he came from. While on his quest, Wolf will travel the blood lines of his distant ancestors, and in trying to persuade and understand Hersh, will come to an understanding of his own basic unhappiness and failures as a person.

Parts of this novel were really interesting and parts were like reading a history of Bonaparte. The parts about Wolf and his problems and about his relationship with Silv were very interesting and engrossing. But most of the story is about Wolf's and Silv's interactions with Bonaparte which I didn't enjoy. In fact, as I read further in the story, I found myself just skipping over those pages concerning Bonaparte. So I found the story half good and half boring.