Thoughtful and sublime, The Ether by Ken Decato is a superb blend of genres that provides a compelling and shocking read. An otherworldly debut thriller of time travel, mystery, and romance, Decato's quick moving and pithy writing has an intriguing literary quality that helps spin this adventure into a dark masterpiece. In the small town of Sheldon, Massachusetts, there is a curious anomaly. Curious in that the outlying area is pocked with eddies that a person-willing or not-can be transported through time. As other eras await unsuspecting victims, one local named Cy Hill enlists two friends, Lexi and Dave, to use the eddies to target times, approximate dates, and set out to put right just a few injustices of the past and future. Ultimately, they will take on the twisted experiment that caused the time glitches in the first place. What they learn is that sometimes doing the right thing means sacrifice, but while it hurts to give in, it does not necessarily mean giving up