The great thing about time travel romance is that I can go back to it again and again. And I probably will!
There are oodles of different versions of time travel romances, and time travel stories in general. One variation that incorporates very cool elements of romance and conspiracy are time travel stories involving organizations that control time travel.
Think of the mob in the movie Looper, or the Time Lords in Doctor Who. The idea that time travel is not just possible, but that the technology is available and that there are groups manipulating time makes for tremendous conflict.
What war would be bigger than a time war? And wars create great love stories, don’t they?
In The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway, there are two warring factions that have the ability to travel the river of time. Of course, they both firmly believe that they are the ‘good guys’. Adding even more pressure to the story, there is something wrong with the time river they travel; instead of flowing ever onward, it flows backward, like a flash flood heading downstream and wiping away the history that they know.
One faction, the Guild, believes that the way to prevent the deluge is to withhold information on how to manipulate time from all the people who discover their ability to survive the initial ‘jump’ into the river. Their opponents, the Ofan, believe the opposite, that the best way to prevent the oncoming storm is for all time travelers to learn as much about their gifts as possible.
In the middle of this, there is a love story. One time traveler, Nick Falcott, Marquess of Blackdown in the 19th century, supposedly dies in the Napoleonic Wars and is mourned by his family. Instead, he time-jumps to the 21st century, where he is trained by the Guild to live a very cushy life. Then the Guild sends him back to his own place and time after they prove to him that everything they have ever taught him was a lie. They send him back to a century when honor and duty mean something, meanwhile proving that they have none.
Everyone is hunting for a talisman of great power, an artifact that will repair the river of time. The Guild wants to control it. The Ofan want to train with it. Of course,
no one understands that the savior of their universe is in the shape of a woman, the woman that Nick Falcott loves.
If stories of love, war, time travel and possibly changing history sound marvelous to you, you might also like Kage Baker’s The Company series, starting with In the Garden of Iden. Just imagine time travelers swooping into the original Library of Alexandria the night before the fire, with scanners, and copying everything!
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