The Revisionists

The Revisionists

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The Revisionists is a fine book with an inventive plot and an often brilliant probing of the complexities of history, of the trillions of dominoes that tumble to make history turn out the way it does. The plot introduces an agent from the future, Zed, who comes back to our present time as a hit man. He stops other rebellious time travelers from altering history.

By Allison Winn Scotch

Zed works to preserve a future, called Present Perfect, in which all problems have been solved. To have a perfect future, the Holocaust must wipe out 6 million Jews. The Kennedy assassination must wrench the nation. Little Boy must incinerate Hiroshima. If events happen any other way, the future changes … and Present Perfect will presumably be plagued by as many hideous Pandoran ills as present-day Washington. Mullen unfolds those ills in a tricky maze of a book, a spy vs. The plots and intrigues of Washington make les liaisons dangereuse of the Parisian courts of Louis XIV look, well, like a bunch of fops in leotards and lace collars clanking swords and swearing in French.

Zed must cover his tracks, of course, leaving no trace of the work he does. But how does a man leave history unchanged when he lives in it? Mullen entangles Zed with a beautiful high-powered Washington lawyer grieving over the mysterious death of her brother, a soldier, in Iraq. A converging plot portrays a young Indonesian girl held in slavery by a Korean diplomat and his wife.

Mullen subtly shows that beauty can change history, as beastliness so often does. Even more, Mullen succeeds in smartly presenting time as a kaleidoscope, where any simple twist of fate throws every future outcome into a new configuration. Mullen looks hard at some uncomfortable issues. Corruption in high places, for instance, and the domino effect of vice on lives and fates. The butterfly effect of one single love, or a single inattention, or a single knock on a door.

The power of grief to alter events, to change fates. As I read The Revisionists , I wondered about something. I salute him, respect him, and greatly admire his work. Or maybe Mullen would simply like to humanely trap King and release him in west Texas. It will be a shame if readers decide they only have time for one good read about time travel, assassination and intrigue this fall. And, while I admit that I am somewhat of a snob when it comes to thrillers, I suspect that I would not be alone in concluding that this is a fairly lacklustre thriller.

The characters are dull. Neither Leo nor Tasha are very good at what they do, and while I suppose they are likeable enough as far as people go, I never became emotionally invested in their stories. I think this issue would be a lot more interesting when explored through the lens of time travel. Attempting to sort through the machinations of Enhanced Awareness, Ltd.

As a straight-up thriller, then, there is very little in the way of purpose to The Revisionists. Rather, he has managed to construct a plot that can be interpreted in two ways yet fails to work on either level. Jun 25, Lou rated it really liked it Shelves: Within these pages you will find a complex cerebral thriller. A world of espionage, secrets and cover ups. Don't expect a visceral thriller, from the title and book cover I was expecting more of a cinematic kind of thriller instead it turned out to be a thinking mans tale of truth and power.

You have a couple of searches for truth here, one a dead brother in the army and secondly a diplo Within these pages you will find a complex cerebral thriller. You have a couple of searches for truth here, one a dead brother in the army and secondly a diplomat while is in the midst of deals with a foreign enemy, his maid has been the recipient of some abuse. It is a long haul to read and at times wanted a bit more accelerated pace, in the end I would say I found it was crafted together quite cleverly.

Oct 08, Catherine rated it really liked it Shelves: What is this book about? Maybe all of it and then some. Definitely more of a mystery than sci-fi, with twists and turns, additional pieces of the story around every turn of the page. I really, really liked Mullen's first novel, which was a fairly straight-forward narrative about the Influenza epidemic, logging and unionization. I was not so crazy about his second novel, whi What is this book about? I was not so crazy about his second novel, which was about bank-robbing brothers in the s, with a paranormal twist.

So you might think the convolution of so many different themes and genres would turn me off even more, but it didn't. I liked these characters. Even Leo, the former CIA agent who reveals himself multiple times to be a selfish asshole, isn't without his redeeming qualities. All of the characters are confused who wouldn't be, when you don't know who's watching you or who you can trust? They have depth that I thought the Firefly brothers lacked. About pages from the end, Mullen throws a curve ball that left me stunned, but I liked it.

The ending is left rather open to interpretation, which I usually hate, but it didn't bother me here. I picked the version of the truth that suits me, and I'm good with that. Of course, that leaves the question of what actually happened all of the times when "Zed" believed he was killing hags and wiping out the evidence with "Flashers. May 19, switterbug Betsey rated it it was amazing.

Actually, both novels are ideal as bookends; in King's book, the protagonist goes back in time to try and alter history, whereas Mullen's protagonist, Zed, is an agent from the future employed to preserve history exactly as it is and prevent disruption or changes. If you add Orwell's constant surveillance and Farenheit destruction of historical documents , you have a riff of Mullen's themes.

Date unknown, but we have survived the "Great Conflagration," a period of warfare and global destruction that started in Washington, D. Yes, there is world peace, no hunger, and no religious wars and no religion , and race is essentially a non-issue, as everyone is mixed. But, at what cost this Perfect Present? For one thing, all history is sacred, yet exiled from citizens' knowledge. The past is considered dangerous, because it is psychologically and socially harmful to dwell on the events that caused wars and disasters.

The government forbids historical knowledge to circulate; moreover, when a loved one dies, all traces of them are erased in a haunting and treacherous manner. Zed is cybernetically enhanced with the power of GPS and superhuman surveillance skills. His "contemp" 21st century name is Troy Jones. Certain rebels or "hags" are anti-government agitators who believe that people deserve to know their history, and part of their job is finding ways to access hidden and confidential historical documents.

The hags travel back to the past and attempt to prevent specific horrors from occurring.

Revisionist Zionism

These time travels provoke cat-and-mouse chases between the Protectors and the hags. Zed's job is to eliminate the hags and protect the Perfect Present. This is as much a novel of ideas as it is a spy thriller. Characters wrestle with themes of protection vs power, of morality vs truth, and also grapple with identity, memory, and loss. In addition, the question of life's narrative is ubiquitous in the story--continuity, progression, recall, and interpretation.

Moreover, how do you preserve history, when you are standing in it? What happens if you get involved with a person from the past? Supposedly, some people count more than others, and minor changes with insignificant members of the population don't necessarily affect the future. But Zed is standing close to the precipice, facing a steep chasm of people and history, flirting with fissures. Tasha is a young corporate lawyer in D. She doesn't believe the government's story about what happened, which leads her to a mission of her own, and a potentially perilous breach of ethics.

She meets Zed at a demonstration. He is breaking the rules by consorting with "contemps," but figures that there will be no butterfly effect from his interactions with her. Leo is a former CIA spy now working for a morally ambiguous security company. While grocery shopping, he meets a beautiful Indonesian nanny, Sari, who works for a Korean diplomat and his wife. Her inscrutable air fails to conceal some ugly facial bruises, but she isn't talking. The twists and turns are about two steps ahead of the reader, but with a casual pace that burns slowly and effectively, allowing time for character building and depth, and for ideas to flesh out.

And, no matter how refined the technology, everyone is damaged and, to some extent, working with crude tools. And, as in life, not all questions can be resolved. But there's love, and a knock at the door. Will s he answer it? View all 4 comments. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book that I decided to read on a whim. A mix of time travel and modern-day politics? Okay, let's see how the author handles it. To my surprise, he handled it very well indeed.

What politics there are in the novel are not overt, which means you can sit back and enjoy the story, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book that I decided to read on a whim. What politics there are in the novel are not overt, which means you can sit back and enjoy the story, and it's a very good story. Basically, there is an agent "Z" from a future society whose job is to prevent a group of would-be revisionists from Z's time from changing the past and thus destroying the society of the future.

Initially Z is presented to us as a good guy defending an advanced, peaceful society from possibly devastating historical changes. As the story goes on, however, we learn that Z's society isn't as wonderful as we've been led to believe -- indeed, as Z has been led to believe. Increasingly, he questions his mission and the truth behind it, and through flashbacks we learn just how dark the future really is.

Paralleling Z's story is that of a former CIA agent in our own time who, like Z, increasingly found the ideals he was supposedly working for in conflict with the work he was actually doing. There is also a young Washington, D. Weaving all these different threads together would be complicated enough in a plain old thriller, but as it is a science fiction novel as well, I feared it would either be a mess or something resolved with some kind of deux ex machina. In fact, everything ties together quite well, and the overall tone of the novel does not even feel that much like a science fiction novel, more like a literary thriller.

This would be a good book to hand someone who likes mysteries and thrillers but not science fiction particularly. The time travel elements are so unobtrusive you don't even find yourself worrying about the sorts of things you usually do in time travel stories like the Grandfather Paradox, etc. There is some philosophizing by all the characters, each of whom is basically a good person who sometimes acts out of self-interest and has to weigh how much guilt and responsibility they can bear.

Overall, a good and somewhat intellectual read with a fast-paced story. This one really surprised me. Recommended for a change of pace for anyone who likes science fiction, and worth trying even by those who don't. Dec 14, Jonathan rated it liked it Shelves: I wanted to like The Revisionists. In our story, the protagonist Z pronounced as the English Zed is sent to protect a terrible war known as The Conflagration. This sets off my first bone with the story, so I'll just get it out of the way: I mentally counted down the days as Z stayed in our present, waiting for the Conflagration to begin, or to at least start building It seems as if halfway through the book, Mullen decided that Z was really there to ensure a series of events that would sort of touch off the Conflagration.

I won't spoil it, but the steps that lead to the war in this book are flimsy. If I wanted to prevent the war, there would seem to be a dozen more likely targets in that distant somewhere future in which he set the war. This drains the story of its urgency right before the important third act. I think this decision doomed the story to a fizzle of an ending. I don't know why he decided to do this, but it's disappointing. Pacing is this story's greatest enemy, but other problems creep in, as well.

Some reviews said that the characters are indistinguishable at the front of the book. They all seem to have their reasons for doing what they do, along with emotional landscapes. The problem is that almost all are entirely unlikable, such as the moronic former CIA agent Leo, who stumbles his way through the story doing selfish, stupid things and never learns from his - or others' - suffering.

I didn't buy Z's "redemption" either, but I think that's partially because of another problem with the story: We jump between the heads of four characters, some of which are only tenuously connected. I found myself frustrated as I settled into one POV only to be ripped into another, possibly in a different part of the story, making us catch up with events from which he cut away. In the case of Z, we never see the actual events that lead to his redemption, just a few hints when we're in his POV. Again, the plot had potential, but it seemed like he had trouble deciding which elements should rule: Combining the two is very tricky, but it can work.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work here. The romantic elements drag away the urgency as soon as they hit, and in the end the thriller elements feel sacrificed to those parts. The ending itself provides a big hint of what knocked the plot down a few pegs, as it focuses on the character at the center of the romance subplot It's never clear which is which. But it's not all bad. Good premise, at least one intriguing character, another character who has a complete arc and grows, and some interesting sci-fi elements. It desperately needed a rewrite. If you like dystopian fantasy it's worth checking out, but with the caveat of all of the issues mentioned above.

Jan 04, Lisa Wolf rated it really liked it Shelves: I have a soft spot for all things time-travel, and the basic synopses I'd read of this book seemed to put it squarely into that genre: Main character Zed works for a post-disaster society at some point in time several centuries from now. In the "Perfect Present", there is no war, no racial tension, no hate.

Zed's government agency works to keep the perfect present perfect, by sending agents in "The Revisionists" was not at all what I'd expected, yet I couldn't put it down -- hence the four stars. And strangely, that's not at all what this book is really about. Much more than anything else, I'd describe "The Revisionists" as an espionage-thriller set in DC, filled with intrigue, shadowy quasi-governmental intelligence outfits working against one another, multiple layers of pawns and spymasters, and a reality that slips and shifts from chapter to chapter.

This is not a sci-fi book, when you get right down to it. Zed's mission is the driving narrative, yet we get no information whatsoever about the mechanics of his time travel and only the barest of descriptions of some futuristic technology. Without saying anything that might inadvertently be a spoiler, I will say that the entire time travel premise is not necessarily what it appears to be, depending on how you choose to interpret certain events and passages. I was fascinated by this book, and it will probably take me some time to mull over all the twists and turns and come to terms with what may or may not have happened.

I do recommend "The Revisionists", although I worry that its perfect target audience -- people who enjoy a good spy thriller -- won't ever discover it if it continues to be described as a time-travel novel. Apr 03, Alan rated it liked it Recommends it for: Dupes of the system. Apparently, time travel is easy, once you stumble across the trick.

The hard part is making your past hold still , afterwards assuming that "afterwards" continues to mean something. The past you remember from yesterday may not be the past you will have had tomorrow, especially once your opponents start using their own versions of the same trick. This book could easily have been called The Santayana Inversion —those who can remember history are condemned to enforce it—though I'll admit that The R Apparently, time travel is easy, once you stumble across the trick.

This book could easily have been called The Santayana Inversion —those who can remember history are condemned to enforce it—though I'll admit that The Revisionists is a better title. Zed is an agent of a possible future which has learned the trick of time travel. The Perfect Present is a utopian society that arose from the ashes of the great Conflagration, an event slated to have occurred sometime in our near future—exactly when isn't specified, but it's a lot closer to our time than to Zed's.

Only by allowing the old order to burn itself away and then cauterizing the stump can Zed's perfect present—technically advanced, freed from nationalism and racism, orderly, and committed to a more sustainable, less materialistic way of life—come into being. His mission is simple, really: Zed is one of those who ensures that the Conflagration takes place, despite its cost to us, we "contemps" only one letter away from "contempt," which is telling living obliviously in our 21st-Century "beat. That must mess with your motivations. Even Perfection has enemies.

Historical agitators—hags—have stolen the government's time travel technology, and are using it to disrupt the very Events that Zed is dedicated to preserving. And even though time is surprisingly resilient, and even though Zed is carrying around a headful of helpful technologies, it's getting harder instead of easier to push back the hags. Eventually it starts seeming as if almost everyone is a revisionist of one sort or another The Revisionists is slow to get rolling, verbose, and—for a time-travel thriller—oddly uneventful.

This is understandable, to some extent—Zed's mission, after all, is to preserve the status quo against all comers. And plenty of things do happen eventually My other major problem with the book primarily involves how Mullen handles the technology he posits for his time travelers. Early on, for example, Zed takes a convenient blow to the head, which disables just enough of Zed's internal devices to make the story more interesting. That seems awfully contrived. Another bit of future tech, the "flashers" Zed and his colleagues use to dispose of inconvenient corpses, leave burn marks like spontaneous combustion or a mini-IED.

This is, after all, a thriller of sorts, and like all such is full of failures of imagination, replete with murders committed where persuasion might actually have worked instead. But surely the rash of such traces occurring in the D. Or are Zed and his fellow agents simply relying on no one ever connecting the dots? The technology really isn't the point, though. Unlike a more traditional time-travel novel, The Revisionists focuses on the small scale, showing us relatively little of the great sweep of history or of the consequences of Events gone awry.

Zed's lonely vigil and memories of personal loss lead him to try to connect with contemporary souls, in defiance of his own department's rules. Their own lonelinesses lead them to respond. It is in those small spaces where Mullen's novel really shines—when he's writing about 'Troy Jones' and Tasha Wilson, for example, or in perceptive lines like this one from p.

At the time I was so full of myself I took it as a compliment. Everyone in Mullen's world is a would-be revisionist, but no one has the perfect knowledge and detached perspective necessary to revise reality with a clear conscience. The Revisionists may founder from lack of focus—it's not quite thrilling enough to be a thriller, not scientific enough for a science-fiction novel, nor yet romantic enough to be a time-tangled love story—but I thought it picked up speed in the second half and ended up having some worthwhile things to say.

Even if it could, perhaps, have used a little more Jun 27, Ryandake rated it it was ok. Mullen's themes are intriguing--do we know how much we are truly free agents? Mullen put a lot of thought into this book, and it absolutely shows. Nov 30, Paul rated it liked it Shelves: This is an interesting time-travel story in that it is less concerned about the future, from whence the time-traveler comes, than with the present we live in. A "protector," an operative of some future government's security services, is sent back to present-day Washington DC to ensure that various calamitous events leading to a worldwide conflagration occur on schedule, thereby ensuring that the future is unaltered.

You see, other forces in the future society are also sending operatives back to This is an interesting time-travel story in that it is less concerned about the future, from whence the time-traveler comes, than with the present we live in. You see, other forces in the future society are also sending operatives back to our time, but these operatives are trying to undo key events, prevent the conflagration, and make a different future.

The glimpses we get of the future society are disturbing, and it is hard to believe anyone living in it wouldn't want to see it changed, even if it meant their grandparents had never met and they no longer existed But our operative, Z, is determined to do his job and do it well The story is told by Z and three present-day inhabitants of Washington DC.

The three contemps are important if unknowing actors in the key events the future government wants to protect. As Z gets more and more involved with them, he begins to doubt the importance of what he's doing, and to understand why others from his time time want to change the past. We never find out what happens to the future, and that's okay. The interesting action is what's happening today, with a burgeoning number of essentially uncontrolled and lawless clandestine contractor security firms operating in American society, spying on domestic citizens with impunity, all under the guise of the Patriot Act and the "war on terror.

That's not to say the science fiction angle to the story is slighted. In fact, the more you realize the pickle Z is in, the more you begin to suspect his future masters sent him back in order to be part of the events leading to the conflagration that makes their future totalitarian society possible The Revisionists is an involving and exciting read, right up to the last few pages, where it inexplicably begins to drag Frankly, I thought the romance between Z and Tasha detracted from the story, as did Tasha's quest to find out more about her brother, killed in action in Afghanistan his story, when Tasha finally learns it, is even more distracting and unsatisfying But these are minor quibbles.

I quite enjoyed the book, and if Mullen's intent was to make readers sit up and take notice of the out-of-control growth of the domestic American security apparatus, he succeeds in a most gripping way. Sep 14, Steve rated it liked it Shelves: This is a pretty good story in various ways. But as another reviewer has noted , "Without saying anything that might inadvertently be a spoiler, I will say that the entire time travel premise is not necessarily what it appears to be, depending on how you choose to interpret certain events and passages.

Maybe the most important paragraph is halfway through the book, when one of the supporting characters gives a somewhat random little speech about a This is a pretty good story in various ways. Maybe the most important paragraph is halfway through the book, when one of the supporting characters gives a somewhat random little speech about a president as "an unreliable narrator," which ultimately isn't really about presidents after all: And we fall for it, we read along with his story and let him construct the reality around us.

See a Problem?

We want to be entertained, soothed. Until one day, we hit that certain chapter, right, and suddenly we see the light and realize, Holy shit, we've been lied to the whole time. Reality ain't like that at all. His story was bullshit. But by then, it's too late. We've all been suckered, and we just have to follow along with his little plot. Consider this book if you're open to science fiction and time travel stories, but don't read it FOR the time travel aspect.

Read it instead for a story with some good plot twists, interesting characters, and brief narrative consideration of some worthwhile ideas. Or, you know, read something else if you want. I'm not saying it's magnificent. But it is pretty good. Mar 23, JBP rated it it was ok Shelves: The fact that it took me about three weeks to slog through Thomas Mullen's sort-of time travel book should tell you how much I liked it. A few nights, battling the desire to sleep, I forced myself to pick it up only to find myself about to drift off to sleep soon after. My reading pace was slow due to the book's meandering quality and the fact it doesn't have much action as it tells the story of multiple characters as they connect and disconnect with one another in Washington DC.

Characters that aren't really all that captivating. The false promise of one of my favorite sci-fi elements--time travel--also gets the short shrift. Mullen, I read online near the end of the book, isn't really a fan of science fiction and you know what? It's almost as if he put in the whole time travel aspect as a gimmick to put these people together in the story. Give me fun, action-packed, low-brow time travel story any day over a ponderously plotted dud like this.

I just didn't like it at all! Jun 17, Jennifer rated it it was amazing. I read this book twice- and I still can't figure out just who the main character really is. You think you know who he is, until nearly the end, and then a big curveball comes along. I found myself going through an internal debate- either he's really Zed from the future borrowing Troy Jones' identity, or he's really Troy Jones, from Philadelphia, who think that he's Zed from the future. The premise of the story is that the main character, Zed, has been tasked with making sure the future really hap I read this book twice- and I still can't figure out just who the main character really is.

The premise of the story is that the main character, Zed, has been tasked with making sure the future really happens the way that it happened. Other individuals or Zed believes that other individuals are attempting to make sure that the future doesn't happen the way that it happens, because that might jeopardize a perfect future in which humankind lives in perfect harmony- or so we're told. But it becomes apparent that the perfect future maybe isn't so perfect- if in fact, it is the real future.

Oct 05, Julie H. The Revisionists was positively brilliant in concept, but not as outstanding in execution. Admittedly, I brought to the encounter some very high expectations. Sadly, they were not met. If you're a sci-fi or alternative history fan, there are better books out there, but don't necessarily take my word for The Revisionists was positively brilliant in concept, but not as outstanding in execution.

By Emma Healey

If you're a sci-fi or alternative history fan, there are better books out there, but don't necessarily take my word for it. And that's not usually the way the shift from book to movie goes. Mullen is a good writer, and I'm not ready to give up on him just yet. I'll give him a second chance--and you should, too--but this one just didn't live up to the hype for me. Dec 08, Fred Hughes rated it really liked it. A soft ending, but other than that lots of action and thinking. Two groups from the future are trying to protect the status quo as they see it.

One group, the Revisionists, want everything bad that happened to contribute to happen. The so called hags want to fix all the bad things that contributed to the status quo. Which group is right? One of the Revisionists is starting to change his mind about what is right and wrong. But is it too late to change things? You'll just have to read it to see. Jun 26, Dwight Davis rated it it was ok. This book feels like if a sophomore philosophy major just discovered determinism and thought it was like, totally deep man and also liked James Bond and hated politics and especially hated liberals and millenials and decided to write a really bad novel.

It thinks it's brilliant and full of astute observations about human nature and technology and philosophy but really it's just a bag of potato chips: This is not exactly the most feel-good book of the year, but it is one of the most thought-provoking. And are we all just footnotes in something larger? I do have to say, though, that the first part of the second half of the book did get a bit muddled in politics and the turf wars between all of the different American clandestine intelligence divisions, as well as the question of the real identity of Troy Jones and why is he so important?

This is not an easy book to navigate, but it is very thrilling, and full of adventure. Once the pieces started coming together, it was really quite impressive, and I enjoyed myself even more. And I like that in my authors. Even with the minor confusion in certain points in the book, and the question of what the Perfect Present really is or how far it is from now never being answered, I really enjoyed this book.

This book is about the ones who go back to make sure history happens, and Mullen portrays that story well.

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