Review: Transgression by Randy Ingermanson

Published: March 2000

Pages: 370

Synopsis: “What if you were studying for your Ph.D. in archaeology and decided to take a break from your crummy life for the summer by working on an archaeological dig in Israel?

What if you met a great guy in Jerusalem who happened to be a world-famous theoretical physicist working on a crazy idea to build a wormhole that might make time-travel possible … someday?

What if he had a nutball colleague who turned the theory into reality — and then decided to use YOU as a guinea pig to make sure it was safe?

What if the nutball had a gun and went on a crazy, impossible mission to hunt down and kill the apostle Paul?

It’s A.D. 57 when Rivka Meyers walks out of the wormhole into a world she’s only studied in books. Ancient Jerusalem is awesome! Rivka can’t believe her friend Ari Kazan’s theory actually worked. But when she runs into Ari’s wacko colleague, Damien West, in the Temple, Rivka starts to smell a rat.

When Ari discovers that Damien and Rivka have gone through a wormhole that’s on the edge of collapse, he has to make a horrible choice: Follow them and risk never coming back — or lose the woman of his dreams forever.”

Rating: ****

---

Initially I thought this was going to be a novel in the vein of Dan Brown, but I was quite wrong!

Friends and colleagues from the Archaeology and Physics department as a University in Jerusalem have created a wormhole and a time machine, but Physicist Damien wants to use this for his own ends and travel back in time to assassinate the apostle Paul.

I love books such as this where I actually learn something! And I learnt SO MUCH while reading City of God. Points were always explained well, often using a religious or theological debate between friends as a way of informing the reader about different opinions. Between reading, I spent a lot of time on Google, which I felt enhanced my understanding of the book as a whole.

I did feel that the last third of the book and the ending lost momentum somewhat and was more action based than information based. This did however even the plot out nicely.

I would definitely read the subsequent 2 books in the series, as I would love to find out how Rivka and Ari adjust to their new lives, especially regarding their relationship with one another and their differing religious opinions.