Spoilers for Time’s Legacy by Barbara Erskine
These were my problems with the ending:
- The story seemed to be wandering round in search of a conclusion. It wound down slowly instead of reaching a climax.
- Flavius – he seemed two-dimensionally evil for most of the book and then suddenly develops a conscience – I wasn’t convinced.
- Abi telling him to kill himself! Never mind her being a priest, even a regular Christian shouldn’t do this! But she thinks it’s fine because Justin does. Justin and Abi would have a lot of differences to reconcile, to say the least, and here, rather than blending, their different philosophies should have clashed with a sickening crunch. Abi seemed like a strong woman throughout and I couldn’t believe she would abandon some of the most basic tenets of her religion just because she’s met a new man.
- Also, I didn’t understand why Flavius needed to die. If he had to be killed before he got to Jesus, then how could Christianity exist in the first place? Yet it did seem the idea was that they were changing the past rather than confirming what was always going to happen.
- Then Justin and Mat making up their differences – it seemed a very abrupt ending to such a long estrangement for no apparent reason.
- Abi is really descended from Jesus…hm. It can’t be easy to write about the historical Jesus, and I liked the way he was portrayed, but this plot twist lost a lot of its surprise value from over-familiarity due to the ubiquitous Da Vinci Code.
