The Outcasts of Time starts off in the The Reign of King Edward III. Our heroes speak of events by the year of the King’s rule, since the way we count years had not yet been invented. We follow two brothers as they wander around a Plague infected world. Death is all around them. Bodies lay where they have fallen in the street, people hang themselves in despair, great pits are filled with dead bodies. In short order, the brothers have the Plague themselves and death is nigh.
Then our hero hears a voice. It tells him to go to a circle of stones and once there, he will be given a choice of how to spend the last few days of his life. After much struggle against illness and bad weather, they reach the stones. The voice tells him he may go home and die, or he may go forward in time 99 years at the start of each new day for the next six days. He chooses to live for those six days and thus he and his brother begin jumping forward in time.
The story mainly consists of John and William being confronted with an ever stranger world. The houses change from mud huts to wood to stone to brick. The windows change from open to small bits of glass to large bits of glass and finally to sheets of glass. He is always out of place as his clothes are always at least a hundred years out of style. People grow taller and stronger. Buildings grow straighter and taller. Iron replaces stone and cars replace horses. The way man relates to god changes over and over.
There is a strong sense of impermanence, as all the things the two brothers hold dear fall away and are lost in the past. There was a moment near the end, where the idea that we live without thought in the age we are born into, which made me pause and think. Here I am surrounded by marvels undreamed of a hundred years ago, and yet I take them all for granted. Of course, the author stops short of predicting the future and ends his tale in the 1930s. It would have been interesting to see if the future keeps advancing, or if it returns to plows and mud huts.
I listened to the audio-book of The Outcasts of Time by Ian Mortimer read by James Cameron Stewart. James does a great job giving each of the many time periods their own feel and flare, and yet also makes it easy for the modern listener to understand.
The Outcasts of Time was a fun book and I enjoyed it. The ending was a bit on the sweet and sentimental side, but still very good. It did make me glad to be alive now and not then.
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