BOOK: Stamping Butterflies by John Courtenay Grimwood

When someone tries to assassinate the US President the intelligence services are puzzled. No-one seems to know who the shooter – dubbed Prisoner Zero – is or where he comes from. Elsewhere in time, a young emperor waits alone in the Forbidden City for his own assassin. The two share a connection, but both may only have days to live...


Stamping Butterflies blends the stories of three main characters together, merging late 1970s, with today’s world and the far future. This could be confusing for readers but the clever use of symbols at the start of a chapter lets you know where you are and which character is the current focus. It’s reminiscent of Peter David’s Star Trek novels based around time travel, where different timelines are labeled as Track One, Track Two, and so on.

For much of the book the future world isn’t that different from our own, except the character of the Emperor rules over 148 billion souls in 2,023 planets instead of just one country. His lifestyle is a bastardization of today’s reality television programmes, with the inhabitants tuning in to watch his privileged habits as a way of consuming less themselves.

Grimwood’s writing style flows nicely. His descriptions of scenes and characters are short enough not to halt the flow of the story, but in-depth enough to give you a real flavor of the people and places. The time travel ideas are also fairly subtle, as the different stories and characters begin to merge together.

Overall, a well-constructed tale spanning past and future, that expertly blend together the stories of its main protagonists.

Buy Stamping Butterflies by John Courtenay Grimwood at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com