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booksthatburn 's review for:
The Unintentional Time Traveller
by Everett Maroon
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
THE UNINTENTIONAL TIME TRAVELER is an exploration of love, identity, and gender through mental time travel. The rules of this particular version are that Travelers can affect the times they visit, but there’s no time machine involved. Jack/Jacqueline uses he/him and “Jack” for himself throughout the majority of the text, even when jumping bodies, so I will do the same for simplicity’s sake.
The worldbuilding was both detailed and slow to make sense, the timeline weirdness meant that I didn’t totally understand what was happening until about halfway through. This is perfectly fine (and almost required) for this kind of time travel story and overall it works very well, especially towards the end. I like Jack, especially when he's dealing with showing up in his future just to find out that some iteration of him had behaved very differently than what he would do himself. I like the ending, it's a good solution to the problem and it's achieved rather elegantly.
I am disappointed that, seven years after its publication, there don't appear to be any sequels, because the ending definitely is trying to set up that they'll have more time travel adventures to follow in future books. I'm writing this review in 2021, so it's possible that this will change but I'm not hopeful right now.
The worldbuilding was both detailed and slow to make sense, the timeline weirdness meant that I didn’t totally understand what was happening until about halfway through. This is perfectly fine (and almost required) for this kind of time travel story and overall it works very well, especially towards the end. I like Jack, especially when he's dealing with showing up in his future just to find out that some iteration of him had behaved very differently than what he would do himself. I like the ending, it's a good solution to the problem and it's achieved rather elegantly.
I am disappointed that, seven years after its publication, there don't appear to be any sequels, because the ending definitely is trying to set up that they'll have more time travel adventures to follow in future books. I'm writing this review in 2021, so it's possible that this will change but I'm not hopeful right now.
Graphic: Animal death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma
Moderate: Ableism, Death, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Dysphoria
Minor: Suicide, Vomit