This was a real Boys and Their Toys kind of a book: Giant mechs, hoverboards, pirates, highspeed firefights, killer dinosaurs, even Marvel-level Quantum-handwave superpowers/supervillains. There is a note from the author at the end, about how this book evolved out of playing Legos with and telling bedtime stories to his son. It shows, and not always in the best of ways. There is a lot of imagination. But there is also a lot of male-insert fantasy, including some annoying tropes, like the trophy girlfriend.

There were some odd, disturbing, Conservative messages in the story. An angry black girl from a rough neighborhood who lost her brother due to gang violence is told - by a former slave - that she doesn't have to live with anger, and can just choose to keep positive. A "strong female lead" - read as, "a girl who threw a punch one time" - who dreams of becoming a pilot, never once flies a plane in 600 pages, and instead resigns herself to a life of domesticity, even defending her father's choice for her arranged marriage as what's right for her station and her family. The protagonist, Diego, is told that camaraderie and innovation are the only tools for peace, violence is never the answer... but then adults repeatedly arm Diego (not with sci-fi blasters, with actual handguns) and Diego shoots multiple people in order to end the central conflict of the story. The villains themselves are "evil" for wanting to turn back time, which would retcon a bunch of pregnancies, and our heroes pick up the very Pro-Life mantra of "What is made shall never be unmade."
Yeah... One or two moments, I might have cringed and moved on. But after 600 pages, and repeated messaging, I'm concerned. Good guy with a gun, happy slave, child housewife... Not to mention, the overly neat even split of 2 boys, 2 girls, no LGBTQA representation, everybody pairs up like we're planning for Noah's freaking Arc over here!

Possibly one of the most upsetting messages, for me, was what this book considered "civilized" versus "uncivilized" culture. A loooot of white scientists, or at least modern melting pot Americans, got to be heroes, while Asian and Indigenous peoples were treated like violent, lawless tribes, and were excluded from society. Their territories on the map are even called "The Savage Divide" and "The Badlands".

I am being very hard on the book, because I have high standards for what "representation" entails. I can see that the book tried. I can see that it tried to be multiracial, multi-class, multi-gendered, and address hurdles that all of the protagonists would have struggled with. But the book also had a weird tendency to use pity more than sympathy to try and get the audience to relate to the character. Instead of having the character take actions, or have dialogue, there would instead be a lore drop along the lines of, "Oh, that character has a tragic backstory. Care about them, now."

Instead of endearing character moments, I got a looooot of details on battleships, fighter planes, army vehicles - you name it. It was a little upsetting to see so many technical details, names of models, guns, engines, etc. and which wars these vehicles were relevant to. It was like reading through a museum manifest. "A guide to the world's most famous wars for children!" In the beginning, the details added flavor, to show the clash of timelines. But around the middle, when the children were manning gunner stations, I felt disturbed. If my son develops an encyclopedic knowledge of weapons and war machines by the time he's 13, I will have DEEP deep concerns!

Many times this book felt like a regular action movie, but with a 13 year old protagonist. Fires a gun, drinks wine, drives an amphibious car, punches a punk and earns a kiss... This a middle grade book or a James Bond movie? There are ways to mimic action movies with a sci-fi twist that makes it safe for a younger audience... This book pulled no such punches.

So.... yeah.... a beautifully illustrated, highly imaginative, sci-fi adventure that tried to be inclusive and inspiring in some ways... but that ultimately rubbed me the wrong way, and made me feel like the author was inserting WAY too much of himself into the story.