Lucas can now aim well enough and one doesn't just survive a century, one gets to keep something in it, and Lucas has spent two books learning that keeping things is the one skill history never taught him. Then a Venetian noblewoman grabs his hand, and steering stops being theoretical. From a royal tiger hunt in seventeenth-century Siam to an earthquake tearing a Bronze Age palace down around his ears, from a Scottish stable-yard where a governess and a stable-hand aren't allowed to know each other, to a fire that costs more than anyone in the room understands yet, Lucas and Chiara keep landing in places built, one way or another, to keep two people apart. They get very good at closing the gap anyway. That's the trouble. The better they get at it, the more it costs when the gap turns out to be real. Because Chiara isn't just along for the ride. She's a woman from a Republic with an ending already written down, and the closer she gets to Lucas's loud impossible century, the harder it becomes to ignore the one thing the orb can never fix: some doors don't stay open just because you love someone. Some choices are hers to make, not his to arrange, and Lucas spends this book finally, painfully, learning the difference. The fellow in the faded cap turns up again too, and for the first time he isn't just watching. He's got a warning, and it's got Lucas's name on it, and it's got nothing to do with Chiara at all. Surviving history was the easy part. Loving someone across it is the part nobody warned him about. This is for readers who like their time travel funny, their history properly lived-in, and their romance the kind that doesn't pretend everything works out just because the feelings are real. Between Lives is the third book in this series, following Between Things and Between Moments.
