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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I can’t explain why I loved this, but I really did. 4.5 Stars!
I love me some time travel so I was excited to have this one ready to go on my iPhone for my first road trip since last Thanksgiving.
After an interesting and engaging start my interest and enthusiasm started to wane. Quickly. The opening chapter introduces us to the four inventors of time travel in 1967: Margaret, Lucille, Margaret, and Grace, aka the Pioneers. And later on we are introduced to a fifth major character: Odette, a student who discovers a corpse in a museum, seemingly murdered, but in an impossible to explain situation. Odette devotes herself to finding the answer to the mystery surrounding the dead person.
As time goes on the plot starts going awry and the novel becomes more about the relationships of the Pioneers, their offspring and grand kids, and Odette. The plot becomes more and more preposterous as time travel becomes a business and more and more people start time traveling, forward and backward. There is a funeral (or was it a wedding?) where half the people in attendance were the same person, just from numerous different times all traveling to the same place to witness the event. Another thing people did was travel forward and backward in to time to have sex with themselves, there are even new names created to represent having sex with your former or past selves. People went to get copies of their death certificates, hung out with their past selves, and even played with toys that made objects time travel. Basically, time travel was used for monkey business. With time travelers interacting with their past and future selves, sometimes even multiple versions all at the same time, you would think this would strain society in a major way and at the very least create some serious personal conflicts. But all these complicated interactions over numerous lifetimes were just resolved with a hand wave.
The narrative jumps around in time as you would expect and eventually the plot just became too convoluted and nonsensical for me and I just stopped caring about the characters. I just left it run on my bluetooth as I was out of podcasts and the radio selections in central WI are terrible. The central mystery was eventually solved but by then I was just sick of everything by then.
One good thing: the cast is made up of almost entirely women which is rare in a science fiction book.
Was it just me? Looking forward to reading what other reviewers have to say about this.
After an interesting and engaging start my interest and enthusiasm started to wane. Quickly. The opening chapter introduces us to the four inventors of time travel in 1967: Margaret, Lucille, Margaret, and Grace, aka the Pioneers. And later on we are introduced to a fifth major character: Odette, a student who discovers a corpse in a museum, seemingly murdered, but in an impossible to explain situation. Odette devotes herself to finding the answer to the mystery surrounding the dead person.
As time goes on the plot starts going awry and the novel becomes more about the relationships of the Pioneers, their offspring and grand kids, and Odette. The plot becomes more and more preposterous as time travel becomes a business and more and more people start time traveling, forward and backward. There is a funeral (or was it a wedding?) where half the people in attendance were the same person, just from numerous different times all traveling to the same place to witness the event. Another thing people did was travel forward and backward in to time to have sex with themselves, there are even new names created to represent having sex with your former or past selves. People went to get copies of their death certificates, hung out with their past selves, and even played with toys that made objects time travel. Basically, time travel was used for monkey business. With time travelers interacting with their past and future selves, sometimes even multiple versions all at the same time, you would think this would strain society in a major way and at the very least create some serious personal conflicts. But all these complicated interactions over numerous lifetimes were just resolved with a hand wave.
The narrative jumps around in time as you would expect and eventually the plot just became too convoluted and nonsensical for me and I just stopped caring about the characters. I just left it run on my bluetooth as I was out of podcasts and the radio selections in central WI are terrible. The central mystery was eventually solved but by then I was just sick of everything by then.
One good thing: the cast is made up of almost entirely women which is rare in a science fiction book.
Was it just me? Looking forward to reading what other reviewers have to say about this.
I loved this. It’s genre defying, complex and very accurate on death, mental health and the psychology around these issues. The characters are women and this feels groundbreaking.
medium-paced
I went into this one not expecting anything, and I was really surprised! This one is part mystery, part sci fi, part psychological study. Lots of characters at various ages made it a little hard to figure out conversations, but it was highly enjoyable! I felt the rules around time travel were well thought out, and viable.
Wow!! This was a fabulous mixed-genre tale of mystery, romance, sci-fi and fantasy. The concept of time travel in this book is so accessible and brings to question the ethics and morality of time travel and how we treat people who struggle with mental health. Surprising twists and an overall great read!
mysterious
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is a book full of complex, mysteries, and focusses on science and mental health. There are a lot of different POV's to follow, which sometimes gets confusion, but also is really interesting!
