"An engaging SF tale whose cause-effect plotline takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Datta's formidable mainsprings of deep thought, causality, horology, music, and shameless romanticism help set up this first installment of an SF series. The book is closer to Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) in dealing with matters of the heart. But just when readers might have the plot strands all decoded, a concluding twist and a surreal-vision finale turn the storyline into a dense, snarled mesh of gears and escapements."Kirkus Reviews
"A story that pleasantly teases your ability to grasp and perceive information with every flip of the page…With a gripping and engrossing plot, Avi Datta adopts a complex style of writing, presenting his thoughts and ideas through random flashbacks and digging back and forth into the story…Time not just as we know it, but time that is painted in all its glory from the very beginning until the end, turning back on itself until the circle is complete."Keith Mbuya of Reader's Favorite
"An expansive, genre-bending story for readers craving romance combined with gripping sci-fi. The Winding succeeds in holding adventurous readers in thrall with a fast-paced storyline, a strong narrative voice, and polished prose that often is touched with beauty"Booklife/Publishers weekly
"Avi Datta spins an intricate and inventive sci-fi narrative that engages the mind and merges several interesting themes: loss, love, politics, fantasy, martial arts, orphanhood, friendship, racism, artificial intelligence, and more. The Winding does a fantastic job of portraying the emotions and thoughts of the protagonist through comprehensive internal dialogue."The Manhattan Book Review
"Suspenseful…Kept me glued to the book. The plot was arranged so perfectly that it was easy to understand, even when the author used flashbacks."Online Book Club
"Avi Datta has woven, a complex tapestry of possibilities surrounding the concepts of time and multiple existences, which may come across to some as a little daunting in some respects, given the paradoxes these theories can create. The true strength of this story, however, lies in the human drama that is brought to life in rich relief. All the characters are not only unique but also have a depth of personality that makes them extremely powerful magnets to the reader's emotions."Steven Robson for Readers' Favorite
"This is the kind of sci-fi story that like-minded readers will talk about in their circles for its intelligent plotting, stunning imagery, and larger-than-life characters. And for that, The Winding is an absolute must-read."Vincent Dudlado for Readers' Favorite
"The Winding captures you from the first page and keeps you hooked until the end. This feels like a solid start to what seems to be a promising sci-fi series. You find yourself glued to the pages as the reveals keep churning out with each turn of the page."Pikasho Deka for Readers' Favorite
"A compelling, extraordinarily readable book…The cliffhanger ending will raise readers' fervor for the next installment. Fans of morally serious hard SF will be greatly rewarded. Datta is an author to watch."The Prairies Book Review
"The book is both intriguing and meticulously executed, and Datta is skilled when it comes to employing the time-travel tropes. An intelligent, transporting time-travel tale brimming with music, ideas, emotion, imagination, and possibility. This is a stunner."The BookView Review
2021-12-28
In this debut SF novel, an academic/inventor struggles through decades of losing, regaining, and losing the loves of his life due to a mysterious phenomenon.
Datta’s tale envisions an Earth suffering rare but disruptive “time turbulence” events. As a brilliant youngster in 1990s America, Vincent Abajian is orphaned, bullied, and becomes an outcast at school. He finds solace with Akane Egami, a Japanese Dutch classmate and music prodigy. But this incipient love of his life disappears into a sudden time turbulence in 1991. By 2024, still obsessed with Akane and what-ifs, Abajian is in the forefront of artificial intelligence and robotics advancements, leading a university research team. He finds patronage in superrich Philip Nardin, who holds the patent for intreton, “an element absent from the periodic table,” which seems somehow tied to time itself. After the two men bond over a shared fascination with high-end watches, Nardin takes Abajian into his confidence, hiring the scientist to write his biography. Nardin has survived multiple time turbulences, emerging with insights into future and parallel timelines—which is vital, first because corrupt congressmen and military-industrial lobbyists seek to exploit and weaponize intreton. And second, because Abajian meets Emika Amari, a young, postdoctoral scientist and violinist attracted to him. Emika seems a parallel-universe incarnation of Akane, and, thus, Abajian’s true love and happiness reborn. But Emika can also be petulant, jealous, and flighty. Who is she really, and what is Abajian’s destiny in love and intrigue? Readers may find the leapfrogging, back-and-forth narrative chronology a bit turbulent itself. Datta’s formidable mainsprings of deep thought, causality, horology, music, and shameless romanticism help set up this first installment of an SF series. It is not a time-travel novel that trades in pulp thrills and fighting Morlocks (despite political shenanigans). The book is closer to Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) in dealing with matters of the heart. But just when readers might have the plot strands all decoded, a concluding twist and a surreal-vision finale turn the storyline into a dense, snarled mesh of gears and escapements. The knotty narrative is captivating in stretches, but the engineering of Doctor Who’s Time and Relative Dimensions in Space is more easily grasped.
An engaging SF tale whose cause-effect plotline takes a licking and keeps on ticking.