FUTURE’S DARK PAST: Time Forward Trilogy, Book 1 by J.L. Yarrow – Sci-Fi, Time Travel, Action & Adventure

A time travel epic, Future’s Dark Past is the creative endeavor of J.L Yarrow, husband and wife duo of John and Leanne Yarrow. The time-hopping action begins in the year 2355, in a world virtually uninhabitable outside a few city pods where food is scarce and violence a certainty.

Caught sneaking into a city pod with nowhere else to go, Kristen Winters agrees to join the Time Forward Project, a group from which no volunteers have ever returned. Kristin’s new superiors send her to fight a deadly battle for the fate of humanity. In 2025, Hunter Coburn becomes an important piece of the puzzle after he gets accidentally connected to Kristen’s time jumps. Initially on opposite sides, they must figure out how to work together as the plan to save the future becomes increasingly unstable.

John and Leanne do an excellent job of creating an immersive world from the beginning, with many characters who develop and grow with the story as it unfolds.

This book’s brief chapters make for easy binge-reading as the feeling of “just one more chapter” hits after each ending hook. This fictional world starts off strong, with well-established details, and the central characters join the story with compelling introductions. The Future’s Dark Past delivers a complex and winding time-travel plot, although sometimes the story loses focus on its main characters in that complexity, and sudden plot developments leave some other characters underdeveloped. Despite its chaotic sense of direction, Future’s Dark Past has a lot to love, and the following books in this series have many questions left to answer, and intriguing characters to pursue them.

Future’s Dark Past offers exciting action as its characters struggle to change the past, and in doing, change their future.

Kirsten and Hunter travel back in time both to prevent events set in history and to put plans in motion to help save the future. Their mission to stop the JFK assassination in 1963 will in particular will have readers swimming in suspense. As timelines branch and change, the characters try to parse which parts of their memory are even true anymore, creating fascinating dynamics between them.

The concluding arc of Future’s Dark Past will surprise readers, with an unexpected antagonist. This intense ending leaves the characters with a complex and dangerous job ahead of them. Humanity’s survival depends on it.

Future’s Dark Past by J.L. Yarrow won Grand Prize in the 2017 CIBA Cygnus Book Awards for Science Fiction. Available now!