Description
Some post-editing changes were made -- especially correcting Caracas to Caracal.
Tweaked the section on the aquaculture to reflect more accurately growing duckweed.
This Point in Time
We were left with more questions than answers at the end of Flight to Oz, Book II, but one of the most puzzling mysteries JW Krych left us with was on par with something along the lines of an Oz-themed conspiracy theory: how did Jonathan and Ozma enter orbit with one Bravo but return with a different one?
In Part Three of Book II: Anusha of Oz, Jonathan goes into orbit around the planet that Oz is a part of and he takes Ozma as his co-pilot. The mission went without a hitch for the most part and they even got to catch some zzz’s in Zero G. It wasn’t until they got back on the ground when they found some things out of the ordinary: it was weird enough that the ship’s computer recorded an hour of missing data; but not only did the Bravo’s clock read 15 years fast, it wasn’t even the same Bravo they had departed in! What happened on the mission? Leave it to Krych to give us a mind-blowing sci-fi twist in an Oz book.
This is where JW Krych’s brand-new novella comes in. This Point in Time recalls the events that unfurled during that missing time, and to confirm what you have all been hoping, it involves wormholes and time-travel.
In that time, the Bravo ends up getting sucked into a wormhole that spits them out back into orbit, but they’re not in Oz anymore…they’re above Jonathan’s Earth! As luck would have it, they are rescued by the crew of the ISASRV Golda Meir. Fans of the Flight to Oz series will recognize this as the name of the Israeli ship whom Jonathan and his crew had been good friends with in their pre-Ozian past.
They are taken to the Israeli moon base, Base Esther, where Jonathan is given the one-in-a-billion chance to catch up with old friends whom had feared he and the Haley crew had died after their disappearance. As for Ozma…she makes the acquaintance of Chatulah, the solemn, serious resident gardener with family secrets that the readers quickly link to Oz and Ozma!
Krych uses this novella as a way to dabble into other genres to tell a compelling Oz tale. Biblical fiction, historical fiction, and even traces of horror are all elements used to create this narrative and this genre-bending cocktail is mixed successfully. Krych continues the themes of feminism that L. Frank Baum once started by referencing Hebrew women from the Tanakh that anyone who is familiar with Judeo-Christian stories will know and invokes inspiration for Ozma and the audience. Visions of the Holocaust from Ozma’s nightmares are painted with vivid detail that offer a taste of how the most innocent of choice can have the direst of consequences.
Jonathan and Ozma are handed the opportunity to turn the guilt, fear, sorrow, and grief of others into closure and forgiveness as well as seek it for themselves. These strong emotions play into the greatest theme of the story. Even though the two characters pursue two separate plotlines, they aim for the same goals and find ways to form lasting bonds with old and new friends that extends beyond the barriers of time and space.
Instead of writing a “fun” novella to hold his readers down until the next comes out, he wrote a novella that continues the story that he started and will continue to connect us to past events and those yet to come. I know for one thing, this isn’t the last we’ll hear about the point in time Jonathan and Ozma visited. And as for the initial question asking about the Bravo; I’ll let you read that for yourself.
5/5 Stars
Erica Olivera
The Naughty Nerd of Oz