Scan barcode
A review by sch91086
Time Was by Ian McDonald
3.0
Time Was is a quick little novella. I feel that the blurb is really misleading though, and the actual blurb on GoodReads contains a spoiler, so avoid it if you can. While this is in part Tom and Ben’s story, it’s actually more about a bookseller, Emmett, who stumbles onto their secret and becomes obsessed with finding them.
Much less exciting right? The buddies I was reading this with all agreed- we wanted more about Tom and Ben! The romance was lovely, but it was maybe 25% of the whole book.
The writing was sharp, concise, and atmospheric, as is typical of McDonald. He’s very good at forcing you to read between the lines, so at times I became a little lost. Especially the opening, which talks about digging around in a dumpster in LeBoutins for books, because I was still under the impression we were in WWII (thank you misleading blurb) and some of the POV/setting shifts weren’t incredibly obvious to me in those first couple chapters.
Some of the buddies I read with guessed the ending (I did not) and were disappointed with that. There’s also the time travel aspect, which was not explained at all, highly unscientific, and left us confused.
In the end, the writing was great, and romance was wonderful, but I was left wanting more. I had questions I wanted answered, () and was sometimes bored with the main narrative. If you’re interested in reading McDonald, while this won’t take too much of your time, I’d still recommend starting with New Moon. I appreciate McDonald’s versatility, but this didn’t feel like a great representation of his ability.
Much less exciting right? The buddies I was reading this with all agreed- we wanted more about Tom and Ben! The romance was lovely, but it was maybe 25% of the whole book.
The writing was sharp, concise, and atmospheric, as is typical of McDonald. He’s very good at forcing you to read between the lines, so at times I became a little lost. Especially the opening, which talks about digging around in a dumpster in LeBoutins for books, because I was still under the impression we were in WWII (thank you misleading blurb) and some of the POV/setting shifts weren’t incredibly obvious to me in those first couple chapters.
Some of the buddies I read with guessed the ending (I did not) and were disappointed with that. There’s also the time travel aspect, which was not explained at all, highly unscientific, and left us confused.
In the end, the writing was great, and romance was wonderful, but I was left wanting more. I had questions I wanted answered, (