Hey!

So I just finished a book called Pathfinder, a story set in the future but also past. Like my other reviews, this WILL include spoilers so if you want to read the book before reading this, please do!

Anyways, this review is not about the plot points and characters of the book, but more about a single plot hole kind of thing. It really isn’t a plot hole, but more of a mini-story that I would to have explored.

Before talking about that, however, I need to add some background knowledge to those who have decided to read this blindly or those who didn’t understand the time traveling in the book.

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In Pathfinder, the story follows two people: Ram and Rigg. These two people are technically in different timelines but Ram’s story helps give clarity to Rigg’s story and vice versa. Ram was selected as the pilot of a spacecraft that will perform a “leap” across time to get to a distant and faraway planet to colonize it. He, along with androids called “expendables,” will make a choice whether or not to go in the fold in time to skip thousands of years and get to the planet straight-away. The plot continues with Ram deciding to go through the fold, and end up being split into 38 different alterations. All of them were sent back in time to around 14,000 years ago, when the target planet was at that location. However, 19 of the alterations were sent moving backwards in time, while the other 19 were sent moving forwards, in other words normal, through time. The first Ram that the story follows was one of the one that got sent backwards, meaning that he will see history all over again but in reverse. The next time Ram was shown, it was a different one. The Rams in the normal acceleration of time all think that they are the original ones, and order the expendables to kill every other version of Ram except for themselves. Because one of the Rams gave a shorter order, that Ram was the one that lived while the others died.

Now, the rest of the story follows the Ram that lived, showing his decisions and such. But what I really want to know was what happened to the first Ram. I consider him as the original Ram because unlike the other two shown, he seems to have the most unique interactions with everything. He figured things out faster, he has a pretty good relationship with his expendable, and he overall just seems more like a character. Not to mention how every other Rams’ expendables basically murdered them while the first Ram’s expendable said that he could not do that, even if Ram were to order him to. I would have love to see how the first Ram was able to achieve something even while going backwards in time and show how he’s actually the original one (but sadly he gave up and after trying to help all other Rams, he labels himself as the useless version: the version that can’t influence the past, present, or future).

I really think that the first Ram should have been the original one since the story of Ram before the fold happened was following the first Ram. I am only on the first book which means that there IS a chance that the first Ram will make a reappearance. Rigg and his group are basically at the time where Ram’s spaceship is about to start the time leap. (It’s complicated.. The main storyline, Rigg’s story, actually takes place BEFORE but also AFTER Ram’s story).

To explain that a tiny bit more, because Ram’s spaceship was sent back in time, they are now 14,000 years before 0, with 0 being the year Ram’s spaceship leaped through the fold. Rigg’s storyline takes place after Year 0, meaning that Ram’s spaceship has lept through time and is heading for their planet. Rigg’s group also does time traveling, and they just so happened to travel to 14,000 years ago and back to the present. This means that in actuality, a new timeline was basically created, one where instead of Ram finding a planet without sentient living beings, he will instead find a planet already occupied with humans.

To summarize this all up, Ram’s story first took place 14,000 years before Rigg’s story but present Ram’s story will take place with Rigg’s story.

Bye!