Book Review: Typhoon Time by Ron S. Friedman

Review by Susan Forest: Typhoon Time is Ron S. Friedman’s debut novel, following hard on Escape Velocity, a collection of ten short stories, all of which were finalists for Writers of the Future. Typhoon Time is a fast-paced, big-cast science fiction thriller that reads like a blockbuster movie.

The story centers on Eric Sobol, an eighty-one-year-old billionaire and survivor of World War II’s holocaust. Diagnosed with brain cancer and given 24 months to live, Sobol turns his vast resources toward taking advantage of a wormhole hidden within a hurricane in the Caribbean Sea, that opens out into 1938. As a child, Sobol was robbed of his mother during a Nazi roundup, and he is determined to use any means possible to prevent World War II.

To this end, Sobol assembles a Mission-Impossible-like team with a computer nerd, historian, forger, Navy Seal, and a brilliant femme fatale, onto a Typhoon-class Russian nuclear submarine armed with two hundred nuclear warheads. Things first go wrong when the team is followed by a Colombian pirate intent on stealing Sobol’s hoard of gold. The entanglement of the pirate’s small ship with the technology that keeps the wormhole open as the submarine passed through to its destination alters Sobol’s plans from the get-go.

From there, the novel takes the reader repeatedly into new territory. Most time travel stories are highly concerned about travel to the past affecting—and destroying—the timeline that is familiar to the story’s characters. From page 1, Typhoon Time is unconcerned about this taboo and instead explores multiple dilemmas and alters history in continually surprising ways. If you think you know anything about the events of World War II—and if you don’t, Typhoon Time catches you up—be prepared to have it turned on its head.

To say more would give away too many spoilers; however, one of the key delights for me in this book was the juxtaposition of modern and historical attitudes, particularly around the agency of women and minorities.

Ron S. Friedman is well-positioned to tell this story. Born in Israel, Ron served in the Israeli army, and understands the military mindset. He has clearly done his research—as a reader who has just finished reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I can see much that is factual, or intentionally altered—but his research is subtle in its influence on the book, providing necessary background for an understanding of the events, but never sidetracking the story.

More than the science fictional expectation of cool technology and a debate over big ideas, though, Typhoon Time is a nail-biting thriller. Chases, explosions, the mafia, Nazis and even cameos by Roosevelt and Einstein fill this novel, and take you from the debauchery of pre-Castro Cuba to Hitler’s eyrie.

Were there elements of Typhoon Time that could be improved? Yes. An occasional key scene was reported from off stage, and the point of view character of the historian lacked agency, but such quibbles did not interfere with the logic chain or the story telling. None of this gets in the way of enjoying the adventure and surprising twists of Typhoon Time.


Three time Aurora finalist, Susan Forest, is a writer of science fiction, fantasy and horror, and is an award-winning fiction editor for Laksa Media. Her novel, Bursts of Fire, will be out in 2019, followed by Flights of Marigolds. She has published over 25 short stories, most recently in Analog (March/April, 2018) and Intergalactic Medicine Show (Issue 62). She has appeared at many international writing conventions. Visit her website at https://fineartemis.wordpress.com.