sleepey's reviews
74 reviews

One of those reality-bending time-travelling stories that rarely puts you on solid ground, making you piece together the rules of the universe from context clues. You have to go with the flow, but also pay close attention. I know some people really hate that kind of thing but personally I can't get enough, especially when there's a silly dog at the centre of it.

Maybe I'm talking up the weirdness of it too much, I don't want to give the impression that this is an inaccessible book for scifi nerds only.

(Though expecting you to understand the significance of the Orion Nebula from an offhand comment 130 pages ago was pushing it a bit imo.)

The characters are lovely & complex, and their adventures are equal parts fun & harrowing, even if it's not always immediately clear how they got from one to the next.

When Summerhill cut out that part of himself & immediately broke down in regret I cried with him. Such an abrupt & bizarre & beautiful & visceral scene, it resonates with me in a way I can't explain. I'm welling up just thinking about it again.

I've seen some other reviews warning about loose ends but I can't think of any real burning mysteries you couldn't reasonably fill in for yourself.

Like we can just assume blue-eyes is an older version of Summerhill when he's reached his potential, right? Whenever he powers something up or someone manipulates time, it turns blue.

I don't know if there's a sequel coming or if it's intended as a standalone but I'd be very happy either way.

This book is very tightly structured, you can tell every chapter had a purpose & the author pretty much nailed it every time. The world is well-built, class-conscious without flattening the characters, which are fun & distinct (if a little sparsely described). I kept forgetting about the sci-fi elements & getting jarred out of the story a bit when there was suddenly a forcefield or something in the scene. But it didn't detract from the experience too much. This book is a little longer than I usually read but I flew through it easily, engaged the whole time - I can definitely see how it got so popular.

This is hard for me to rate because I wasn't impressed by the first few stories at all, but then the back half of the book really struck a chord.

A lot of it is just like, there's a supernatural thing, it's motivated/exacerbated by a societal thing, and there's a silly Goosebumps twist at the end that totally deflates whatever point you thought was being made. But as the book goes on, the spooky edgy stuff starts to fall away & the stories become more fabular, more earnest with their allegory, & there's just generally a bit more to chew on.