Book Log 2014 #23: The Adjacent by Christopher Priest

A photographer returns to the UK from abroad after the death of his wife at the hands of terrorists. Her death came from the use of something called a quantum adjacency weapon, which obliterates everything within its triangular field. It's even being used within the UK, where the Islamic government can't stop it (or the extreme weather that's tearing up the country).

Meanwhile, during World War I and II we see the first ideas leading to the development of the weapon (a magician has an idea about adjacency as a way to camouflage planes). Many of the characters have similar names to those of the characters in the future story line, and you start to get the idea that the weapon doesn't so much destroy as relocate.

Not that this is ever made clear, as the book is happy to let you sort out how all of these story lines - and one set in a country that may be on Earth, but just not the Earth we're on - fit together. In fact, not much about any of the story lines is explained, underscoring that the important thing is really the characters and how they seem to find each other across the timelines. I enjoyed the inventive structure of the book, and as this is the first book by Price that I've read I'll have to start working his stuff into the rotation.