I loved Mandel’s Station
Eleven and The
Glass Hotel, but this novel was a disappointment for me. I also generally love time travel novels,
including Stephen King’s 11/22/63
and Scott Alexander Howard’s The
Other Valley. In this
book, however, I was never invested in the characters, and the plot was just
too complicated. If ever there was a
novel that demanded a reread, this is it.
About halfway through the novel I realized that Gaspery, born in the
2400s, is the main character. He grew up in a domed colony, nicknamed Night
City because the lights were too expensive to repair, on the moon. His sister Zoey works for the mysterious Time
Institute on Earth, and Gaspery secures a position as a time traveler for the
Institute. Zoey warns him that the job
is dangerous, since the Institute will not tolerate interference in the
past. The characters whom he visits in
the past are introduced in the first half of the book, and by the time
Gaspery’s visits take place, I had forgotten the details of these characters’
lives. The author does not address how
Earth survives global warming nor how life is different on Earth four centuries
from now. In fact, everything is about
the same, except for colonization and travel to and from our moon, as well as
Saturn’s moon, Titan. Of course, the
time travel is futuristic, if you believe that we will be able to do that
someday, but Mandel really has something else in mind with the time travel, and
I didn’t buy that at all. My favorite
incident in the novel is when Gaspery learns that his cat is an unwitting time
traveler who came from 1985. Gaspery is
stunned by that revelation, but as Zoey says, “Honestly, Gaspery, what
difference would it make. A cat’s a
cat.” Priceless.