THE THIRD RULE OF TIME TRAVEL by Philip Fracassi – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip Fracassi
Published by Orbit on March 18 2025
Genres: Adult, Science fiction
Pages: 325
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: An intriguing mystery that focuses on the emotional relationships between the characters, The Third Rule of Time Travel is a different take on the time travel trope.

Philip Fracassi, who is known for writing horror, turns to science fiction in his latest, a twisty, thought provoking time travel story. Time travel is a tricky subgenre to tackle, so I was a little wary going into this story, but I loved the author’s take on it, especially the strong emotional elements.

Beth Darlow is a physicist who, along with her late husband Colson, invented a time travel machine that allows a “traveler” to revisit a moment in their past, but only for ninety seconds at a time. Through use of a powerful laser, the subject’s consciousness is transported through a wormhole, while the physical body remains in the machine. Several years before, Beth and Colson decided to sell their technology to a tech company called Langan Corporation, which gave them the opportunity to continue their work with salaries and benefits, not to mention that Langan would supply the funds needed for such an expensive endeavor.

But Beth’s life changed forever when Colson was killed in a car accident, leaving her to continue their work alone. Now, on the anniversary of his death, Beth is told by the company’s owner Jim Langan that funding for the project is running out. Jim insists on bringing a journalist in to write an article about the machine, hoping to attract investors.

Beth agrees to demonstrate how she travels with the journalist present, but when she returns from her trip, everything begins to unravel. She thinks she sees Colson in the park—impossible since he’s dead—and of course, no one believes her. Past memories are haunting her, but she can’t make sense of them. Beth needs to find out the truth about what happened to her before she cracks—and before Jim decides he doesn’t need her anymore.

Fracassi builds his time travel theory around memories, especially emotional ones, and every time Beth travels, the machine takes her back to a traumatic moment in her past—and she’s had a lot of them. One of the “rules” of time travel is that the arrival points are random and the traveler doesn’t get to pick where they go. I loved this idea because it gives the story a sense of uncertainty. Maybe you want to go back and experience meeting your husband for the first time, but instead the machine takes you to the day your father died, for example. One of the things that Beth and her assistant Tariq are trying to figure out is how to control the machine, otherwise it won’t have any value for commercial use.

This idea of memory makes the story very emotional, especially for Beth, who is the one doing the traveling. Fracassi knows how to tug at the reader’s heartstrings as poor Beth is forced to relive several very painful memories from her past. Beth’s four year old daughter Isabella is also central to the story, and there’s a interesting twist involving Isabella that makes the emotions run even higher.

Fracassi also includes some thriller elements, as Beth is pitted against Langan Corp and finds herself in danger. But don’t expect “thriller” on the level of Blake Crouch, for example, as the focus is mostly on Beth’s journey to find the truth.

The author does a great job of dropping hints about what’s happening to Beth, and you have to read carefully to catch them. Eventually he touches on things like alternate realities and dimensions, giving the reader lots to think about.

There were a couple of things that didn’t work for me, though. First, I didn’t believe for a second that Beth was a brilliant scientist who invented a time travel machine. The author doesn’t go very deep into the ins and outs of how the machine works or what sort of professional experience Beth and Colson have, and adding more technical talk about the machine and the process of traveling would have helped in that respect. Beth is an emotional wreck for most of the story, which doesn’t really say “brilliant scientist” to me, and she also gets angry quite easily, yelling at her boss and coworkers when she doesn’t agree with them.

The science was on the light side as well, and I would have liked more depth in that area to make the time travel more believable. Beth and her assistant Tariq are constantly “analyzing data” from her trips through time, but they never really do anything else. I also found it odd that such a big, important project wouldn’t have more people working on it. As far as I could tell it was just Beth and Tariq—Beth doing the traveling and Tariq monitoring her while she was hooked up to the machine. It just didn’t make sense to me.

I loved the ending, though, which wraps up Beth’s emotional journey in a very satisfying way. I had plenty of theories as I was reading about how the story would end, and I sort of got the the ending I hoped for, but somehow it was even better than I imagined. Even if you balk at time travel stories, Fracassi fans will not want to miss The Third Rule of Time Travel, and new readers should try this if you love emotional, character driven sci-fi mysteries.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.