Reviewed by Charles Remington for Readers' Favorite

For those aficionados of entertaining, optimistic sci-fi, who have been avidly waiting for another Time is Irreverent adventure - your wait is over. Erstwhile heroes Marty Mann and Nellie Dixon have become embroiled in another scramble to manipulate time in order to save planet Earth. This time they have their own ship, a nippy space cruiser with time-jumping capabilities that they happened to be testing on behalf of the Krichards, a space-faring civilization which manipulates timelines to encourage war-like races to develop into peaceful, loving societies. A fundamentalist Krichardian faction has reversed the changes made by Marty and Nellie in their first adventure and now they must find a way to stop a lunatic US president from instigating a nuclear war. Time is Irreverent 2 by Marty Essen follows their complex jumps through time as, together with Chrissie and Tina, their respective Krichard paramours, they race to rid the planet of the misguided president. In order to achieve this, they will once again call on the assistance of Jesus Christ, but can they possibly prevail against an incestuous, corrupt and hugely powerful church, state, business hierarchy?

It was a relief to read for a change a sci-fi novel not mired in the hopelessly depressive, dystopian formula that seems to be the fashion these days. Marty Essen has cleverly structured his novel to present a mildly humorous look at aliens, time travel and politics while at the same time examining some of the crucial issues that confront society today. He takes a sideways look at the close relationship between supposedly Christian churches and political parties, the shady connections between politicians and big business, and the resultant plundering of our planet’s resources. He makes one of the most intelligent comments I have come across regarding American gun control where he observes that when the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment, they could not have known that muskets would eventually be replaced by modern semi-automatic assault rifles. Whether the observation is original or not, it got this resident of Scotland, who has never handled a gun, thinking on the issue. Marty Essen has produced a fine follow-up to his first time traveling escapade and I hope that the likeable characters he has created will get many future outings. A great addition to a currently gloomy, pessimistic genre. I do not hesitate to recommend it.