She Treads Softly: Splinter Effect

Sunday, February 23, 2025

Splinter Effect

Splinter Effect by Andrew Ludington
3/18/25; 320 pages
St. Martin's Press

Splinter Effect by Andrew Ludington is a highly recommended time traveling tale. If you are someone who thinks about ancient Rome at least once a day, this will be an excellent choice for you.

Robert "Rabbit" Ward is a chrono-archaeologist who travels through time for the Smithsonian on sponsored expeditions to the past to secure precious artifacts moments before they are lost to history. Considered one of the best now, he still regrets a failure from twenty years ago when he lost his mentee, Aaron, and a precious menorah of the Temple of Jerusalem hidden in ancient Rome in 455 CE. Now new evidence reveals the menorah reappearance in 535 CE Constantinople and Rabbit is ready to find it this time. Problems surface in Constantinople when, among other things, an unlicensed “stringer” named Helen, is also hunting the menorah.

At the beginning the Splinter Effect as it relates to time travel is explained to set the rules into place how it works, but not a lot of time is spent on detailed science fiction elements of the plot. The pace at the beginning is even, but it does pick up quickly later in the novel. Rabbit is an interesting, fully realized individual. There are action scenes and plenty of danger mixed into the narrative.

This is an imaginative action story, but is mostly a historical fiction novel set in Constantinople in 535 CE. I liked the novel, but all the historical details bogged me down at times. Those who love the history of ancient Rome and can enjoy a time traveling tale will likely also appreciate this novel. Thanks to St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via . My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.