30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2
Book 30/30
A poopy book to finish out the month on. For a while, I was actually enjoying this quite a bit, but as it went on, I just couldn’t with it anymore. The main vehicle for the time traveling was . . . laughable. There. I’ll say it. But more importantly, how can a book about time travel be so dull? Really, this just wasn’t for me, but I guess I’ll try and justify it down below.
This is a book about a dude, don’t remember his name, who is an ad man, and who is recruited for his “noticing” and “imagination” skills into an obscure government department that is trying to make time travel happen basically by wishing real hard. A lot of money has been put into this. They recruit him on a test-case mission, where his only goal is to see who delivered a certain letter.
Basically the first third of this book is them trying to make time travel happen with the pOwEr oF tHeiR iMaGiNaTiOnS. They build elaborate sets to make a person feel like they are in a different time, and then the like will draw to like or some bullshit and they’ll slip through time? Oh, and apparently the only thing holding us stable in time is the belief that we are living in 2022. You start believing you live in 1985 you’re gonna get there pretty soon, whoops! It literally makes zero sense from any kind of real-world perspective, and I love made up shit normally! For some reason though, everything about this time travel mechanism made me roll my eyes.
The plot is also slow as molasses, and nothing that interesting happens. The main character is such a non-entity I can’t remember anything about him, not even his name.
The only good bits in this story were the bits that are always good in time travel stories, when modern day people get to the past and start fucking shit up royally. There’s also a bit of a mystery in here, and I really wish that had been foregrounded, because it was by far the most interesting part of the book.
I will not be reading the sequel and this book is going straight to my PangoBooks storefront! (BTW I love PangoBooks so much; I wish I had known about it earlier. It’s like having a used bookstore in your pocket, but also you can get way more money for your books than the bookstore would ever offer you in trade. But also, caution: having a used bookstore in your pocket is perilous for your wallet.)
