isabellarobinson7's reviews
730 reviews

Rating: 4.5 stars

Yes, I picked up this book based purely on premise. What can I say, most things involving the words "time travel" are like a siren's song to me. And I seem to have had good fortune with this picking-it-up-because-time-travel recently, because The Time Traders was awesome!

Basically, it is about Ross Murdock, a felon with a criminal record, who "volunteers" for Operation Retrograde, a covert government operation. You can guess what this operation involves: time travel. The Soviets have snuck into an uncharted period of history and, using some outdated technology, created formidable new weaponry. At first unwillingly, but with growing determination, Murdock joins the team engaged in this timey-wimey Cold War conflict.

Now from that description you probably assume it was written in the past 20 years or so. Nope, far from it. This book is the most sneaky classic I have ever read - it was published in 1958! Honestly, I read through all 500 of those pages without even the slightest clue. "Intro to classics" is written all over this book. It should be its tagline: The Time Traders: Read This If You Thought Classics Were Impossible To Understand. No classic author I have read has ever come as close to modern prose as Andre Norton did. And that's not to say either old- nor new-style prose is bad, just that I get how Tolkien's writing can take a bit of getting used to, and some people are reluctant to touch him or his peers with a ten foot pole. But The Time Traders was published literally four years after The Lord of the Rings, and yet it feels more like four decades.

So get ready. As many Time Traders books I can get my hands on, I will be reading.

Rating: 2 stars

On principle, I should not have read this. I am trying my best to ignore the fact that J.J. Abrams exists, and with him all the damage he did to the Star Wars franchise (and Star Trek, for that matter). I just hope that one day I can wake up in a universe where the only modern Star Wars TV show we get is Andor, and the last Star Wars movie made was Rogue One. Anyway, on to the mini reviews:


Rules of the Game by Saladin Ahmed
This one is meh. Naive dude gets duped, but then duper is kind of nice. It was too quick and neither character felt like they embodied the archetype they were supposed to. I don't want this to sound rude or anything, but in my opinion this was not the best story to start the collection on, because it was by far the weakest. It's still better than anything J.J. Abrams has made, but the bar is in literal hell there, so not much of a compliment.


The Wine in Dreams by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire)
There is this wine that it just so damn good that it makes everyone lose their minds with how great it is, but the winemakers are very particular as to who they sell it to. This boss lady wants the fancy wine and she wants it A LOT so she sends her "servant" (who is, for all intents and purposes, a slave) to negotiate with the seller ladies and get the wine at all costs. Though I have tried for many years, I don't really like wine, so it was hard for me to picture these people's intense desire. I mean if it was chocolate or especially ice cream then I would understand, but sour grape juice...? Either way, this story was pretty good, though I honestly expected more from a big name author like Seanan McGuire.


Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing by Rae Carson
A single dad is a masseuse and he loves his adoptive daughter a lot. His daughter gets captured by some dudes and the dad will do anything to get her back, even if it means leaning back on skills he had acquired in a previous life... This was probably the best story in the collection. It has the heart and actual proper emotional beats that a lot of modern SW lacks (take notes J.J.), even if they weren't always the strongest. Nonetheless, the attempt was made, and it moderately succeeded.


The Ride by John Jackson Miller
This guy is a compulsive gambler, and he finds these alien dudes who he thinks are good luck when they are apart but bad when they are together (or it might be the other way around, I just finished this story and I've already forgotten). Shenanigans ensue. I can think of no better explanation. This one is totally a screwball comedy in a sci fi setting. In fact, on premise, it sounds like something Connie Willis would write (though I would argue Willis would execute it better, but that's just my bias speaking).


In terms of how this all relates to The Last Jedi... I honestly cannot comment on because I have not watched that movie in years. I saw it in the theatre like everyone else, and then I rewatched it when the abomination that is The Rise of Skywalker came out, but I haven't (intentionally) seen a frame of it since. I just remember that the throne room scene was cool and Rey's parents being nobodies was a nice change from the regular Star Wars formula until that idea was retconned and we got the Palpatine nonsense in TRoS. And yes, I am still salty that The Last Jedi has a higher IMDb score than both Darth Maul Movie and Jedi Mullet Movie. That fact alone proves that site is not trustworthy.

Rating: 2 stars

This books is too big brain for me.

Rating: 2 stars

Lost in Time was good, but it had obvious flaws. It was entertaining, it was never a chore to read, but it had major draw backs that kept it from being a "good book", in my eyes at least.

The premise was cool: in the future, there is a quantum physicist called Sam Anderson, and due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, his daughter is about to be wrongly arrested for murder with all the evidence needed to convict. So Sam decides to confess and go to jail in her place. But he doesn't go to jail. He goes to the dinosaur age (more on the "dinosaur" part of "dinosaur age" later). You see, by 2027 humanity has found a way to send people back in time, and it is used in place of the death penalty to send criminals 201,320,641 years in the past (why it is so specific, I have no idea). It is no secret that my Whovian-ass loves time travel - it was really the only reason I picked this book up - and that part of Lost in Time was quite good, but everything else let it down.

While the fact that this book was so fast paced made it compulsively readable, it was also what lead to one of its biggest issues: the characters. The pacing was so balls to the wall that there was very little time (bar the first few chapters) to get invested in the characters and their relationships. There was a major twist about halfway through (that I won't spoil) and we really needed to sit with this character and unpack the implications of this knowledge for the rest of the narrative to land emotionally. But the twist didn't feel legitimate for a very long period of time, all because we rushed through this important reaction. The character just accepted it and treated this life shattering, world altering event like it was just a Tuesday. Sure, we can guess they stewed and fretted about it for days, but all we actually see (i.e. all that is actually written) is them learning the information and spewing up (literally) in response, but then next page we skip forward in time and they have fully processed the information and are moving on with their goal. This was supposed to be the twistiest twist of all the twists! Outlander lady even even praises it in her author blurb on the front cover! And we don't even get to unpack the impact of this highly venerated twist in the actual book?! WHY WAS IT INCLUDED AT ALL THEN????!!!!!!

Along with the stunted characters, the writing could be a little on the weak side at times. This book is the king of only telling and refusing to do even a little bit of showing instead. This is a direct quote:

Well, no kidding! This is a pretty obvious conclusion to draw from the actions that have taken place! We don't need you to spell it out for us! This was hardly the only instance of this; it was a staple of this book's prose to overly explain and under demonstrate plot points and character beats. It did make everything move rather quickly, so maybe that was the intent all along, but sacrificing proper character development for speedy pacing is not a worthy trade in my eyes.

I don't know where to put this, but there was also a Star Trek joke, which I greatly appreciated, though you would think a Doctor Who joke would be more thematically appropriate, but I'll take what I can get.

Also, if anyone tells you that you should read this because you like Jurassic Park DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM. There are dinosaurs in the background and mentioned for the first half of the book, but then the narrative shifts and we do not hear about them. At all. I'm not exaggerating. I don't know all if this would be considered a spoiler, but I have receipts: the last appearance of a dinosaur in this book is in chapter 43 out of 80. There is no mention of them in the second half of the book at all. This is not Jurassic Park, regardless of what the marketing will tell you. To illustrate this point further, we "see" the first dinosaurs in chapter 17 and their appearances end at the aforementioned 43. Out of these 26 chapters, thirteen take place in dino time. That's thirteen chapters out of the entire book; barely 61 pages. Percentage wise, only 16.25% of chapters and just 13.53% of pages directly involve dinosaurs. PLUS, if you want to get really anal and overly granular, (which as it appears I do) most of the time spent in the Triassic is taken up by flash backs to the non-dino world! Did I spend way to long on those stats and made writing this review a weeks long project? YOU BET I DID.

For me the first half of this book was part Interstellar part Castaway (note: neither of these movies have dinosaurs in them- OK SHUT UP ABOUT THE DAMN DINOS NOW.) The second half I'm not going to get much into because of spoilers, but trust me when I say it was another book. Totally different tone, different atmosphere, different characters (effectively), different setting, almost a different world even (figuratively)... and I'm verging into major spoiler territory, so I better stop now. All I want to say is that it is a book of two very distinctive halves, and whether that is a good or bad thing is really up to interpretation.

All that being said, Lost in Time is the perfect popcorn read. I know it seems like I hated every minute of this book, and reading this review back I have kind of sort of maybe ripped it to shreds, but this is truly not the worst thing in the world. It is a perfectly serviceable thriller. The only thing I'm really mad about is the misleading marketing around thE STUPID DINOSAURS. I MEAN IT'S ALL OVER THE COVER AND I-

Rating: 5 stars

I mean, of course it is 5 stars. Of course it was incredible. But was it leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor, like I was lead to believe...? Mmmm, maybe not quite.

Rating: 5 stars

This is the first real, proper, whole hearted, non-reread-or-franchise-related, five stars I have given out in a long, long time. And man, does it feel good. And MAN, does Jade City deserve it.

I knew it was good from the first few chapters - I was hooked almost straight away by Fonda Lee's vivid descriptions and addicting authorial voice - but then THAT THING happened and my jaw was. On. The. Floor. I did not see that coming. At all. I thought I had a pretty decent idea of what the story was going to be about, the roles each characters would play in the narrative, but I wasn't too mad about the (seeming) predictability because I was really enjoying myself. But then around the 50% mark this one event threw me for a loop and I was just dumbfounded. And we still had half the book left! From that moment on I was well and truly invested in what the book and world had to offer, and was well and truly along for the ride where ever the sequels might go.

And something happened I wasn't actually expecting: I was concerned about the characters. As a largely plot driven reader, I rarely find books where the characters are the main draw-in for me. But the characters in Jade City were so interesting, that I found myself actually wishing that the sequel was more of the same. I just wanted to read about these characters going through in- and external clan strife, and being involved in minor skirmishes, not an actual conflict that would do anything to wider world or story! I know this is a ludicrous demand, (and I knew that when I was making it) as if this actually happened it would probably get old real fast, but that's how absorbed I was by the made up lives of these fake people Fonda Lee was creating with her mind.

It was strange for me, because I related very specifically, but also very differently to all three of the main Kaul siblings. Impulsiveness has, like Hilo, often been sited by others as one of my defining characteristics; but Shae's trepidation when it comes to responsibility, and her running away to just study like a default mechanism... mmmm, I felt that on a personal level. I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but while I enjoyed reading about Hilo and Shae, the character I initially latched onto was Lan. Maybe it's because I am also the eldest child, but I was rooting for him. In whatever he was doing, I wanted him to succeed. With all of them, I was deeply invested in their lives and actions, so when that spoilery thing happened (of which I will not disclose any further details) which greatly impacted all the characters' trajectories, I felt that. And the implications of this event... oooooooooo I can't wait to find out more.

I finished the second half of Jade City so fast, I don't have the greatest grasp on the pacing of that part of the story, because my own pacing (as such) was so out of whack that I couldn't hope to keep track of the passing of in-world time. I forgot that events were happening days apart for the characters, because to me it was only hours. I may have also been binging it as an escape to real world problems... but no psychoanalysis today thank you.

Upon finishing Jade City, I think I lasted about an hour and a half before running to grab Jade War from the library and starting it. Now I'm a quarter of the way through it. I'm really patient like that.