Days Missing, Vol. 1

Stewart is a lonely immortal who for hundreds of millions of years has been trying to breed peers from the material available to him on Earth. Blessed with the ability to wind back time one day whenever calamity strikes, he has been guiding mammals toward intelligence and wisdom ever since his first choice—dinosaurs—were taken from him by an event so large even he could not reverse it. In the millions of years since hominids first appeared, Stewart has erased apocalypse after apocalypse from an unknowing humanity's past, steering us past extinction and folly toward near-godhood. This volume recounts five such interventions, ranging from a doomsday plague to nanotech research gone horribly right. Stewart's great power is tempered by its limitations, and his potential for arrogance is tempered both by empathy and the fact that he does not always win—even his victories come with bitter costs. Although Days Missing takes liberties with history and it's a bit Eurocentric, it's still a tolerable entry in the Secret History genre. (Mar.)