The book starts off a bit slow for me, it paints a nice picture of the town, and house, and even this new thing called electric, but it takes a full chapter to do it. And in the end that isn't what the story is about. Chapter 2 picks up the pacing, while still giving some details about what is going on. Chapter 3 and 4 are where the main story picks up and really gets to the heart of the matter. For me while chapter 1 had some interesting background, and painted a very good picture of the simple villagers, and the stranger that moved in. It seem mostly un-needed. Chapter 1 was the real drag of the story for me - I got though it, but it took much longer then one would have hoped. I would have liked to have said it was a quick short story, but I can't. I will say the ending was setup in chapter one, while some what predictable because of the setup It would have also been easy to miss the clue until the end. Again I think this is because of so much detail work in the first chapter it's easy to start to over look important things that are really part of the main story. Over all it is a good story, if not a bit long winded. And a good first time travel story, that doesn't focus on how it works so much, But to some of the consequences it.