The Sometimes Spurious Travels Through Time and Space of James Ovit — Garry Kilworth

James Ovit is a naive and slightly-lost maverick son of an elderly serial monogamist mother, whose mundane life is suddenly kick-started into headlong travel through time and space by a group of ruthless and callous scientists.

His journeys first take him spuriously into the near past and thence into the far future where, expecting to enhance his career, instead he finds other-worldly love. Finally, after tragedy causes him to cast off his loyalty to his superiors, he rejects the diplomatic corps for work as an assassin and is sent into the past to eliminate an illegal time traveller and a monster. However, things never do work out the way James believes they will and, when he finds himself researching the strangest biography of all time, he knows the authorities who gave him another chance will once again shake their heads in disbelief at his ability to ignore their orders.

"A subtle, poetic novel about the power of place - in this case the South Arabian Deserts - and the lure of myth. It haunted me long after it ended." (City Limits on Spiral Winds)

"Full of hope, irony and despair and as moving in its understated way as Riddley Walker, the last post-apocalypse novel worth paying hard cash for." (Time Out Magazine on Abandonati)

"This book is wonderful, representing as it does, good fun without complications, and joy without debt." (David Mathew, Interzone, on Shadow-Hawk)

"Kilworth's enthralling writing transforms myths into reality." (Sharon Gosling, SFX, on The Princely Flower)

"This is a great, great, great book." (Roger Swift, Black Tears, on The Princely Flower)