The Thirteenth Month

The Thirteenth Month is a novel about Narine Anahid Khoren, a member of a magical order that monitors the timeline, advises world leaders, and manipulates time. Narine was taught that Seba Segal, the order to which she is a member does does so in order to obtain the best possible outcome for the largest number of people. Narine is a time traveler who has been working for the order since she was fourteen years old. There are some rules that must be followed. A traveler must never go forward in time and never travel during the thirteenth month of the Ethiopian calendar. It is the only time it is possible to change fixed points in history, which has been found to have disastrous consequences. At the beginning of this book, Narine and her fellow travelers feel a time shift during the beginning of the thirteenth month. No one but travelers even knows that it has occurred, it is up to Narine, a fellow traveler, an archivist, and an American man who had no idea that he also had the magical ability to travel through time to mitigate the damage done by this rift in the timeline and bring back the people they care about who had been eliminated by the time shift. Little does Narine realize, this is tied to a difficult mission that she had completed six years before.

I have never read an Elizabeth Hunter novel before, and I had no idea what I was missing. This was unlike any story I have ever read before. The author’s imagination crafted an entire society which functioned independently from the rest of humanity while still being very much a part of it. It took a little while to really get caught up in the story as there was a lot of groundwork to put in place for the reader to understand the community of which these characters were members. The author used flashbacks to other times to help the reader understand what had happened in Narine’s life. She spoon fed the puzzle pieces to her readers so that, by the end of the novel, every event that contributed to the crisis she was trying to repair was in place. While difficult to follow in the beginning, it was an excellent tool to help the reader understand what everyday life was like for a traveler, when they were constantly traveling to different points and places in history and then having to adjust to the shifts in the timeline which could eliminate a friend or a favorite restaurant without any warning or explanation. Elizabeth Hunter wrote a masterpiece of fiction, which had a logical stopping point, but left enough unresolved that the reader will be anxious for the publication of the next novel in this series, Child of Ashes, which is not due out until Summer 2024. Elizabeth Hunter has earned another fan who will be waiting as patiently as possible until this time next year. I strongly recommend this book to readers. It has a lot of fantasy, a smidgen of romance, and a lot of suspense and could appeal to a wide range of readers. I am voluntarily submitting this independent review after reading an advanced complementary copy of this book from Valentine PR.

Wow! Elizabeth does it again. I don't think she can write a story I won't enjoy. I love the mix of culture, location, and connection. Throw in some magic and the world is amazing!