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silver_valkyrie_reads's review
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.25
For most of the way through the book I anticipated giving it a three star rating--not particularly great, but entertaining enough to keep reading and find out how it ended. I even really enjoyed a few of the historical tidbits I picked up along the way. The combination of a few smallish annoyances made me drop the rating:
*Though it's indirect, the author seems to imply that Christianity is going to peter out in the future and no longer exist as a religion.
*There's a 'scrum meeting' in a 'scrum room' that seems to bear almost no resemblance to real scrum practices. Angelo is referred to as being 'in charge', which makes no sense for a scrum meeting. Best guess is he's meant to be the product owner, though if he is, he should be making final decisions about the 'product backlog' (i.e. priority of the jumps) rather than letting one person on the team push him around. There are also doesn't seem to be a scrum master present at all. Probably the failure to use scrum in this scrum meeting explains why all the characters seem to hate the meeting and think it a waste of time.
*I found the big reveal explaining the source of the time discrepancies more vaguely irritating than actually compelling.
Most of the book was a reasonably interesting time adventure, but I have no interest in continuing the series. (One good thing about the book is no big cliffhanger about the main plot! There are obviously some deeper mysteries to explore, but I'm fine with letting those go.)
There are no graphic content issues, but between the violence including some blood spatter and such and references to abuse, and the handful of passing references to sex including one (not extremely detailed) sex scene, I wouldn't recommend this one for younger readers. (There are also a number of references to racism and racial violence, as you would expect given the 1960s setting for parts of the story.)
*Though it's indirect, the author seems to imply that Christianity is going to peter out in the future and no longer exist as a religion.
*There's a 'scrum meeting' in a 'scrum room' that seems to bear almost no resemblance to real scrum practices. Angelo is referred to as being 'in charge', which makes no sense for a scrum meeting. Best guess is he's meant to be the product owner, though if he is, he should be making final decisions about the 'product backlog' (i.e. priority of the jumps) rather than letting one person on the team push him around. There are also doesn't seem to be a scrum master present at all. Probably the failure to use scrum in this scrum meeting explains why all the characters seem to hate the meeting and think it a waste of time.
*I found the big reveal explaining the source of the time discrepancies more vaguely irritating than actually compelling.
Most of the book was a reasonably interesting time adventure, but I have no interest in continuing the series. (One good thing about the book is no big cliffhanger about the main plot! There are obviously some deeper mysteries to explore, but I'm fine with letting those go.)
There are no graphic content issues, but between the violence including some blood spatter and such and references to abuse, and the handful of passing references to sex including one (not extremely detailed) sex scene, I wouldn't recommend this one for younger readers. (There are also a number of references to racism and racial violence, as you would expect given the 1960s setting for parts of the story.)
harmony's review
2.0
As interesting as the premise was, I found myself mostly extremely confused trying to keep all of the characters straight. They really don't have much in the way of individual personalities and since their timelines intertwine it's even harder to distinguish them. No one stood out enough for me to care what happened to them and by the end I was so lost with the timeline itself that it failed to capture any tension.
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