In the near future, the British government has commandeered a time door that they use to gather people from different points in history. The protagonist in this book (who is nameless) is tasked to serve as a bridge – to live, assist, and monitor Commander Graham Gore, a man who was fated to die during an Arctic expedition in the 1800s. During their time spent together, the two become friends and fall in love.
This was one of the books I heard or read about, and I thought it sounded interesting so I put it on hold at the library. But then when it became available to check out, I couldn’t remember why I had put it on hold. I think I thought this book was going to be super interesting and fun about time travel.
Unfortunately, this book was a bit of a letdown. It was fine; it was a bit boring and nothing much happened. I guess I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this book was not it. It was mainly about the main character and the Commander going about their day, smoking and riding bikes. There was some sort of cover-up in the governmental department for time travel but I thought that was a bit confusing. I guess I thought there would be more action or more of a plot.
I’m not sure what type of book this was meant to be. It was kind of a spy novel, kind of speculative fiction, kind of romance, and kind of science fiction. It felt like the book tried to be too many things and I think it would have been better if it just focused on one or two genres and done those really well.
I’m still confused about the ending and I don’t quite understand what happened. In my opinion, there were a lot of plot holes that never got explained. The time travel itself was never really explained. Additionally, the time-travelers are commonly referred to not by name but by year, specifically the year in the past they were pulled from. I found this to be super confusing and I kept having to go back to look up who was who. I really wish they were just called by their name because I could remember those.
This book won the Goodreads award for Readers’ Favorite Science Fiction book in 2024, and I have to wonder what other books were in this category for this book to be the winner. It didn’t work for me.
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