One of the great things about reading (and reviewing!) books is that every now and then you get a complete surprise – one of those books that you know little about before reading but then it goes above and beyond what you expect.
This was one of those.
To give context, although the book is not out until June 2026, it arrived for review in March 2026 (So, as this review has been held back until now – June 2026 – this makes the review a bit of a time traveller in itself!) . As is usual (please note: not complaining!) the to-be-read pile here is huge, so in March I got ready to add it to the pile, for later reading and for a review nearer the publication date.
As is often the case, I decided to read the first couple of pages, just to get an idea, although I nearly didn’t as I was slightly annoyed that the book kept its American spelling of ‘Traveler’ on the cover (as I am in the UK.) Nevertheless, I thought I would look at it – “after all, it is set in America”, I reasoned with myself. The result? I read half of it in one go, only stopping because it was 3am and I needed sleep!
I do not do that very often these days.
The teller of the tale here is Scott Treder, who seems like nobody particularly special; a normal kind of guy with a nice wife, young child, lives in a duplex, steady job, all doing well. One morning he finds himself heading to work in his car when something very odd happens. He instantly travels forward exactly 24 hours, for no apparent reason. He is obviously worried, so too his wife and child. Then it happens again, at 7.52 am the next day. This time he disappears for 2 days. This pattern continues, each day at exactly the same time but with the time lapse doubling each time. It becomes weeks apart, then years…
The effect on Scott, his wife, his own family and in-laws is life-changing. Scientists are mystified, despite recording the shifting happening. Each return, to exactly the same place but at a different time, shouldn’t happen, according to physics, and yet it does. And there is always the mystery – why Scott? Why now? Will it stop? Who, if anyone, is causing it?
I’m not quite sure what it was exactly that hooked me in. I liked the main character as a ‘Mr. Anybody’. and the key concept was intriguing. The chapters are short, the details sparse yet precise. Although there is always the possibility that Scott is an unreliable narrator, there is no denying that the impact of this on him and in particular upon the relationship between him and his son is emotional. The book is one of those that uses science-fictional elements but is really about people and emotions rather than the SF. (I’m thinking of something like The Time Traveler’s Wife, for example.) To emphasise this more, the more I read, the more The Traveler made me think that it was like an update of Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man* (and that’s not a bad comparison, in my opinion!)
As we head into the future in the narrative, with time jumps becoming years, then decades and even hundreds of years, things take a bit of a left-turn and it all felt a bit like Iron Man to me. (I’m not going to explain why, but you can probably work it out.) By the time I got to the latter part of the book it all went a bit cosmic, and I was again reminded a little of the ending of Matheson’s novel. This part didn’t quite work for me as much as the first, as the conclusion seemed to wrap things up a little too conveniently and left some elements unresolved.
Nevertheless, it should not surprise you that I enjoyed this one. The Traveler felt like one straight out of The Twilight Zone, and that’s a good thing. It hooks you in and keeps you reading. It doesn’t quite hold together for me at the end, but the journey to that point is quite something.
It’s not often these days that a book keeps me reading into the night, and makes me want to pick it up straight away the next day, although it is wonderful when it does! This is one of those rarities – an unexpected surprise that as you read becomes more than you thought it was going to be, that you will want to know how it is going to end. Recommended,
*It may be a coincidence, but I doubt it – the name of the ‘Shrinking Man’ in Matheson’s book was Scott Carey….
© 2026 Mark Yon
Hardback | TOR UK (Pan Macmillan)
THE TRAVELER by Joseph Eckert
June 2026 | 376 pages
ISBN: 978-1035 084 074
