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tani's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted to like this more than I did. I thought Haldeman did a good job keeping the action going, and I liked some of the social commentary, but I didn't really care for the characters.
ppigg81's review against another edition
5.0
Fantastic quick read. Not hard sci-fi, but not unbelievabe either. Any sci-fi fan should read this.
newfylady's review against another edition
4.0
This book was a lot of fun. A great premise with some interesting twists along the way
tandemjon's review against another edition
4.0
Enjoyable, has dated quite well, but I didn't like the ending as much as the rest of the book.
garagehymns's review against another edition
2.0
I feel like this is an outline for a better book.
Vague time travel, vague protagonist's life, vague hinting at his activities beyond awkward time travel. Nothing about it was particularly interesting, the weird religious turn once he hit the past was downright unpleasant.
Vague time travel, vague protagonist's life, vague hinting at his activities beyond awkward time travel. Nothing about it was particularly interesting, the weird religious turn once he hit the past was downright unpleasant.
kaboomcju's review against another edition
3.0
Slow start, but it picks up some. Easy language to get through. The book doesn't bog you down with a lot of over-the-top physics etc you sometimes get in sci-fi novels, but the characters aren't exactly the most believable. The main character, while educated, seems a bit too naive.
phlegyas's review against another edition
3.0
3.5/5 seems fair.
The good bits first: this is a rather short book. It also reads very easily. Not so much because of pace and interest, but because the writer doesn't get lost into self-satisfying descriptions. The world building however, one of the superb elements that helped Peace and War be the wondrous gem that it is, only makes a timid appearance here. It's a lot less thought out and polished, but it is very welcome.
The not so good bits: at no point in the story did I connect to any of the characters. Maybe slight compassion to the main character in the first chapters that reminded me of university relations, professors, girlfriends etc. It was minor though and didn't carry over to the rest of the book. The character development and socioeconomic marvel that were solid and present in the whole of Peace and War were never really put on display here. All in all, once I got to the end, I realised what this book is. It's not entirely dissimilar to parts of Peace and War, but different enough to never pique my interest.
(there are no spoilers about the story in this review, but the following paragraph does comment on how the book ends)
This book is not so much a novel as it is what I feel would be an old man's last recount of his time jumping life. Without any interest to make it sound pompous or significant, the entire thing reads as a series of "and then this happened, and then we went there, and then I saw this and that, and then here's a paragraph that explains everything that happened once I stopped jumping around time; don't worry about having read 250 pages about a few days of time travel, this sentence is the entirety of the rest of my lifetime".
Honestly, it quite lost me. Not because it's a bad book. It's not. I've read some of the comments bashing this for things I didn't even register although I consider myself very sensitive to these exact matters they blame the story for.
All in all, it is a very fast and easy read and if someone is looking for something quick to kill some time, this here does that job nicely.
However, if like me, someone expects another Forever War, this is not it. What's worse is that I just found out that, like Forever War, the Accidental Time Machine is also part of a trilogy. I do not feel like there was any point in the story that I felt like *I hope there's more*. In stark contrast, when reading the last few words of the Forever War, I was largely saddened, even though I was reading it in the omnibus edition and would have hundreds of pages more to read.
3.5/5 is fair. I am not certain I will read the rest of the trilogy. My copy includes a few pages of Marsbound at the end of the book. I will read those and if it feels like I must, I will reconsider.
The good bits first: this is a rather short book. It also reads very easily. Not so much because of pace and interest, but because the writer doesn't get lost into self-satisfying descriptions. The world building however, one of the superb elements that helped Peace and War be the wondrous gem that it is, only makes a timid appearance here. It's a lot less thought out and polished, but it is very welcome.
The not so good bits: at no point in the story did I connect to any of the characters. Maybe slight compassion to the main character in the first chapters that reminded me of university relations, professors, girlfriends etc. It was minor though and didn't carry over to the rest of the book. The character development and socioeconomic marvel that were solid and present in the whole of Peace and War were never really put on display here. All in all, once I got to the end, I realised what this book is. It's not entirely dissimilar to parts of Peace and War, but different enough to never pique my interest.
(there are no spoilers about the story in this review, but the following paragraph does comment on how the book ends)
This book is not so much a novel as it is what I feel would be an old man's last recount of his time jumping life. Without any interest to make it sound pompous or significant, the entire thing reads as a series of "and then this happened, and then we went there, and then I saw this and that, and then here's a paragraph that explains everything that happened once I stopped jumping around time; don't worry about having read 250 pages about a few days of time travel, this sentence is the entirety of the rest of my lifetime".
Honestly, it quite lost me. Not because it's a bad book. It's not. I've read some of the comments bashing this for things I didn't even register although I consider myself very sensitive to these exact matters they blame the story for.
All in all, it is a very fast and easy read and if someone is looking for something quick to kill some time, this here does that job nicely.
However, if like me, someone expects another Forever War, this is not it. What's worse is that I just found out that, like Forever War, the Accidental Time Machine is also part of a trilogy. I do not feel like there was any point in the story that I felt like *I hope there's more*. In stark contrast, when reading the last few words of the Forever War, I was largely saddened, even though I was reading it in the omnibus edition and would have hundreds of pages more to read.
3.5/5 is fair. I am not certain I will read the rest of the trilogy. My copy includes a few pages of Marsbound at the end of the book. I will read those and if it feels like I must, I will reconsider.
ceelabee's review against another edition
3.0
After a grad school slacker discovers his latest project is a time machine, he jumps into the near future and doesn't find it to his liking. With no way to get back, he keeps jumping forward to find a future he likes better or a way back to the past. Along the way he meets an innocent yet nubile female graduate assistant and Jesus! The author has a great imagination and his ideas are often better than his prose. I thought the book was just so-so in the beginning, but once the story and the time jumping got really going, I quite liked it.