THE CHAOS LOOP

A young time traveler decides to “go big” with his ability by killing Hitler.

Corey, 13, learned in trilogy opener Throwback (2019) that changing the past has unpredictable consequences both historical and personal, such as the small but real chance of returning from a jaunt transformed into an animal. Nevertheless, he figures it’s worth the risk. Much as she disagrees, fellow traveler Leila tags along, serving as both voice of reason and translator as the two repeatedly hop back to the early 20th century. For better or worse, though, the past turns out to have a certain resilience…to the point that Corey’s efforts to kill Hitler in Munich in 1939 or at least kick-start his artistic career in 1908 Vienna utterly fail. In the end Corey does manage to work a lesser change by saving the lives of a group of Polish resistance fighters, including his own great uncle, in the last days of World War II—at disturbingly great cost. In this fast-paced follow-up, Lerangis brushes on a light wash of credible period detail based on actual events. He also casts Hitler as a lost (but resolutely anti-Semitic) young man who winds up in a final, lurid encounter as a mad-eyed monster, demonstrating that writing him as a character may be as hard as stopping him. Corey is of mixed European and Puerto Rican heritage; Leila’s is European Jewish.

A provocative scenario with twists painful and droll make this sequel worth the…time.