Tag: Time Travel

The Book of Doors – Gareth Brown

‘Don’t let the world pass you by.’

The first thing you learn about Cassie is that she works in a bookstore. So, basically, she’s a kindred spirit.

It’s just beginning to snow as she’s getting ready to close Kellner Books for the night. Mr Webber, a regular, is mid coffee. He’s reading The Count of Monte Cristo again. Mr Webber loves the classics.

‘A good story is just as good the second time around.’

This is the night that Mr Webber gives Cassie a book. All books are special but this one is life-changing. I mean, more than other life-changing books. Cassie gets a glimpse of just how much when she gets home that night. You see, Venice isn’t usually in her bedroom.

This is the Book of Doors and the possibilities are endless. It’s one of the most coveted books in the world and many who seek it have nefarious agendas.

Hold it in your hand, and any door is every door.

The heart of this book for me was Mr Webber. He was an absolute sweetheart. He could have been on every page and I still would have wanted to spend more time with him.

I wasn’t a fan of the way two characters spoke at times. One of the baddies was misogynistic, racist and made light of domestic violence at one point. You can be the biggest Bad without resorting to any of this and, other than making me despise them more, it added nothing to the story. Neither did Izzy body shaming herself.

I’ve decided I should never live above a cheesecake shop. I am, however, ready to move in to the Shadow House.

This book contains a lot of magic. My favourite magic, though, was the ice cream that didn’t go off in ten years. Not that ice cream will ever have a chance of expiring in my home but I liked the idea that, if you were so inclined, you could go back and finish off that ice cream you started eating a decade ago. Although, now that I think about it, if you’re the sort of person who could leave ice cream unfinished for years, I’m not sure I trust you. This type of magic may be wasted on you.

I don’t know if you can read this book without thinking about how you would use the Book of Doors. I’d be walking through my maternal grandparents’ front door in the 90’s. They were my favourite people and there are so many things I want to tell them about: what’s happening in my life, stories they’d laugh at, movies and books I know they’d love. I’d want to hear more stories about their lives and have the opportunity to have random conversations with them about whatever.

I also thought about which book other than the Book of Doors I’d like to have in my possession. There are so many that wield enormous power, that could be used to change the world, for better or worse. I think the Book of Joy is the one for me, though. The possibilities alone make me smile.

‘It’s always about the books, isn’t it?’

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, Penguin Random House UK, for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Because some doors should never be opened.

New York bookseller Cassie Andrews is not sure what she’s doing with her life. She lives quietly, sharing an apartment with her best friend, Izzy. Then a favourite customer gives her an old book. Full of strange writing and mysterious drawings, at the very front there is a handwritten message:

This is the Book of Doors. Hold it in your hand, and any door is every door.

Cassie is about to discover that the Book of Doors is a special book – a magic book. A book that bestows extraordinary abilities on whoever possesses it. And she is about to learn that there are other magic books out there that can also do wondrous – or dreadful and terrifying – things.

Because where there is magic there is power and there are those who will stop at nothing to possess it. 

Suddenly Cassie and Izzy are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can help them is Drummond Fox who has a secret library of magical books hidden in the shadows for safekeeping, a man fleeing his own demons. Because there is a nameless evil out there that is hunting them all…

Because this book is worth killing for.

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Earthdivers, Vol. 1: Kill Columbus – Stephen Graham Jones

Artist – Davide Gianfelice

Colourist – Joana Lafuente

Letterer – Steve Wands

Cover Artist – Rafael Albuquerque

It’s Stephen Graham Jones. It’s time travel. It’s a sci-fi slasher.

Even if I wasn’t already convinced by those selling points, I would have only needed to take one look at Rafael Albuquerque’s incredible cover artwork to decide I needed this graphic novel in my life.

Welcome to 2112. It’s a good thing time travel exists so we can go back and prevent the apocalypse which, if I’m being completely honest, arrived later than I thought it would.

So, who in our group of outcasts are we going to send back in time to save the world? Humanity’s best hope is … a linguist with no fighting experience.

Go back in time. Kill Columbus. Save the world from America.

I hope Tad’s ready for a steep learning curve.

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This volume includes the first six issues of the series. I love the concept and am keen to find out what the world will look like if Tad succeeds in his mission. I think I need a reread, though, to remove some lingering questions marks above my head.

While I had no trouble following what was happening in 1492, 2112 baffled me at times. I ended up borrowing the six individual issues from the library but they didn’t include the helpful summaries I was hoping would help me fill in the blanks.

I expect my experience with this graphic novel will mirror that of the first volume of Monstress. At first I didn’t really get it. A reread converted me and it became one of my favourites. I’m looking forward to saying the same about Earthdivers.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and IDW Publishing for the opportunity to read this graphic novel.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

The year is 2112, and it’s the apocalypse exactly as expected: rivers receding, oceans rising, civilisation crumbling. Humanity has given up hope, except for a group of Indigenous outcasts who have discovered a time travel portal in a cave in the desert and figured out where everything took a turn for the worst: America.

Convinced that the only way to save the world is to rewrite its past, they send one of their own — a reluctant linguist named Tad — on a bloody, one-way mission to 1492 to kill Christopher Columbus before he reaches the so-called New World. But there are steep costs to disrupting the timeline, and taking down an icon isn’t an easy task for an academic with no tactical training and only a wavering moral compass to guide him. As the horror of the task ahead unfolds and Tad’s commitment is tested, his actions could trigger a devastating new fate for his friends and the future.

Join Stephen Graham Jones and artist Davide Gianfelice for Earthdivers, Vol. 1, the beginning of an unforgettable ongoing sci-fi slasher spanning centuries of America’s Colonial past to explore the staggering forces of history and the individual choices we make to survive it.

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Before the Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Translator – Geoffrey Trousselot

It takes courage to say what has to be said.

I recently ventured into a bookstore for the first time since COVID and proceeded to go into what can only be described as a book frenzy. I was only looking for one particular book but wound up adopting six. Half were this series. When I picked up this book I didn’t think it would be coming home with me. Then I learned it contained two of my very favourite things: coffee and time travel.

‘Please send me back to the past!’

Cafe Funiculi Funicula opened in 1874. It’s small, there’s no air conditioning and, at Nagare’s insistence, only serves mocha. If you sit in one specific seat, though, and follow a very specific set of rules, you can travel to the past.

The Rules

🪑 You can only meet people who have visited the cafe.
🪑 Nothing you do when you’re in the past will change the present.
🪑 You have to sit in a specific seat to time travel and you must remain seated when you’re in the past.
🪑 You have to drink the entire cup of coffee before it gets cold.

After my initial excitement at finding a time travel book I’d never heard of before, I settled in to read the first of the four stories contained in this book.

The Lovers had me questioning all of my life choices, primarily my rashness in buying three books in a series I knew nothing about other than their blurbs. Had I only read this story, I probably never would have wanted to read the other books. It made me so mad!

A week ago, Fumiko’s long term boyfriend, Goro, told her over coffee he was moving to America for work. When he was on his way to the airport! If he was my boyfriend I’d be incensed! No way would I want him back. Fumiko clearly sees this situation differently than I do because she’s our first time traveller. I questioned more than one of Fumiko’s life choices; she has a limited time in the past but decided to add milk to her coffee, making it cool even quicker and shortening her time there. Ugh!

In the first page it’s said that Fumiko is Goro’s “girlfriend of three years” but later it’s said (twice) that Fumiko met Goro two years ago. I wondered if three years was a typo. Then, because time was so important in this book, I questioned if the discrepancy was simply two people with different perceptions of time in their relationship. Maybe the relationship felt to Goro like it dragged on a year longer than it actually did?

Despite my early frustration, I persevered. I enjoyed the second and third stories more than the first and by the time I finished the fourth story, I wanted to continue with the series and reread this book to see what details I may have missed the first time around.

In Husband and Wife, Fusagi has a letter in the present that Kohtake hopes to receive in the past. I wondered if Kohtake received the letter in the past and brought it back with her to the present, would that result in there being two letters in the present? Kohtake tiptoes around her conversation with Fusagi in the past, which disappointed me.

In The Sisters, one sister goes back in time to speak to her sister one last time. I loved how the mystery visitor to the cafe in this story helps complete another story.

Mother and Child made me cry and is the main reason I’m remembering this book with fondness rather than my initial disappointment.

My favourite character was Hirai, who fascinated me. She seemed to openly delight in Fumiko’s misery and has a backstory I learned more about throughout the book. I most want to learn the full story of the woman reading the book.

I had some time travel question marks.

Some travellers returned to a time when their past self was at the cafe. Encountering yourself in the past is generally a time travel no no. None of our travellers meet their past selves so I wondered whether the future self replaced the past self in this world.

Why doesn’t everyone get the stick that sounds the alarm just before the coffee gets cold? That would be so helpful.

One of my big takeaways from this book isn’t the details of any one story but the concept of emotional gravity, which was explained in a beautiful way and holds such truth.

Water flows from high places to low places. That is the nature of gravity. Emotions also seem to act according to gravity. When in the presence of someone with whom you have a bond, and to whom you have entrusted your feelings, it is hard to lie and get away with it. The truth just wants to come flowing out. This is especially the case when you are trying to hide your sadness or vulnerability. It is much easier to conceal sadness from a stranger, or from someone you don’t trust.

I haven’t read many books that have been translated from Japanese but the ones I’ve encountered have a gentle quality to them. They don’t seem to be in a hurry to get where they’re going and I don’t feel any urgency when I’m reading them. It’s like I’ve been invited to witness a snippet of someone’s life and I leave with a sense of calm, regardless of how emotionally charged the content is. I’m not sure how that works but I’ve started seeking it out.

About the cover image: The seat that transports you through time is upholstered in moss-green fabric on the seat and back. I wish that had matched one of the seats on the cover.

Handy hint: Pay attention to the background characters and the details of what’s happening outside of the main storyline. They may be relevant later in the book.

But Kazu still goes on believing that, no matter what difficulties people face, they will always have the strength to overcome them. It just takes heart.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

What would you change if you could go back in time? 

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold …

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

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Someone in Time – Jonathan Strahan (editor)

Self confessed romantiphobe here. So why did I put my hand up to read a romance anthology? In my defence, there’s time travel, one of my very favourite things to read about and do. Shh! You’re not supposed to mention that bit.

Also, there are contributions by two of my favourite authors, Alix E. Harrow and Seanan McGuire, so it was kind of inevitable that this book would find its way to me in every timeline.

Roadside Attraction by Alix E. Harrow

When Floyd approaches the pillar of sandstone covered in graffiti, he’s certain he knows what he’s searching for. 

“Did you find your destiny?” 

The Past Life Reconstruction Service by Zen Cho 

Rui is using the Past Life Reconstruction Service because he’s seeking inspiration. 

“Your dream won’t affect anyone or anything else. The most it can do is change the world inside you.” 

First Aid by Seanan McGuire 

Taylor has been preparing for her one way trip to Elizabethan England for years. 

There was no going back. There never had been. 

I Remember Satellites by Sarah Gailey

When you work for the Agency, a short straw trip means you’re not coming back. 

Everybody draws the short straw in the end. 

The Golden Hour by Jeffrey Ford 

Mr Russell is trying to write his novel when he meets the time traveller. 

“Past or future?” I asked.
“Where the clues lead, young man. Where else?” 

The Lichens by Nina Allan 

There’s something important in the past that’s not accessible in Josephine’s time. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here fantasising about the idea of books being able to be transported to the past. 

So you know about lichens?

Kronia by Elizabeth Hand 

So many fleeting moments, finding one another over the course of lifetimes. 

Unrecognized: I never knew you.

Bergamot and Vetiver by Lavanya Lakshminarayan 

To save the past, this time traveller is willing to destroy their future. 

“To thirst is to be alive, but to devour is to be monstrous.” 

The Difference Between Love and Time by Catherynne M. Valente 

Loving the space/time continuum can be complicated. 

Be my wife forever, limited puddle-being. 

Unbashed, Or: Jackson, Whose Cowardice Tore a Hole in the Chronoverse by Sam J. Miller 

It all comes back to this moment. 

“Walk me home?” 

Romance: Historical by Rowan Coleman 

Communicating through books is probably the most romantic thing ever. 

Beth steadied herself; after all she had spent her whole life in training for this moment, preparing unreservedly to believe in the impossible.

The Place of All the Souls by Margo Lanagan

In that realm, they’re perfect. In this one, they’re happily married … but not to one another. 

Whatever came of the discovery, there was at least a moment’s peace to be enjoyed, now that she knew. 

Timed Obsolescence by Sameem Siddiqui

Two time travellers meet throughout time. 

“Was discovering random historical factoids what drew you into this line of work?” 

A Letter to Merlin by Theodora Goss 

Guinevere loves Arthur in every lifetime. 

“You’re going to be dead in twenty-four hours. Would you like to save the world?” 

Dead Poets by Carrie Vaughn 

The love of poems and poets. 

The study of literature is the process of continually falling in love with dead people. 

Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages 

Sara Baxter Clarke has been Dr. McCullough’s hero since she was a child. 

“I’m offering you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” 

I have four favourite reads in this anthology: the two I was here for in the first place (no big surprise there) and two by authors who were new to me. 

Rowan Coleman’s story made me tear up. It was also the only story that made me interrupt the reader sitting beside me (who was partway through a chapter of the book they were reading), declaring that they need to read this right now. In case you’re wondering, I was forgiven; they loved it as much as I did. It’s just such a beautiful story.

Ellen Klages’ story, where heroes can live up to your expectations, had me railing against injustice even as I was feeling all mushy about the growing love between the protagonists.

The bottom line? If a romantiphobe can find so much to love about this anthology, then the rest of you are in for a treat.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing, for the opportunity to read this anthology.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Anthology of inclusive tales of people through time looking for one another and for ways for the world to be better.

Even time travel can’t unravel love.

Time travel is a way for writers to play with history and imagine different futures – for better, or worse.

When romance is thrown into the mix, time travel becomes a passionate tool, or heart-breaking weapon. A time agent in the 22nd century puts their whole mission at risk when they fall in love with the wrong person. No matter which part of history a man visits, he cannot not escape his ex. A woman is desperately in love with the space/time continuum, but it doesn’t love her back. As time passes and falls apart, a time traveller must say goodbye to their soulmate.

With stories from best-selling and award-winning authors such as Seanan McGuire, Alix E. Harrow and Nina Allan, this anthology gives a taste for the rich treasure trove of stories we can imagine with love, loss and reunion across time and space. 

Including stories by: Alix E. Harrow, Zen Cho, Seanan McGuire, Sarah Gailey, Jeffrey Ford, Nina Allan, Elizabeth Hand, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Catherynne M. Valente, Sam J. Miller, Rowan Coleman, Margo Lanagan, Sameem Siddiqui, Theodora Goss, Carrie Vaughn, Ellen Klages.

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The Astonishing Future of Alex Nobody – Kate Gilby Smith

Spoilers Ahead! (marked in purple)

It’s always just been Alex and her Uncle Henry. That is, if you don’t count the consistent groups of strangers who have been trying to sneak a peek at Alex her entire life. There are actual coaches full of them. But, hey, maybe this is normal. It’s not like Alex has any friends to compare notes with.

Until she meets Jasper on her twelfth birthday. We love Jasper, although we don’t really know a lot about him for the longest time.

For a boy who loved asking other people questions, he was an expert at avoiding them himself.

We do know he’s a sweetheart, though, and he’s a really good best (and first) friend to have. We adore him, even after he suddenly disappears before Alex’s eyes. Fortunately, Alex likes Jasper as much as we do so she’s determined to find him. No matter what.

‘And this time I don’t think logic is the answer.’

I spent the entire book trying to figure out what I could possibly say about it that didn’t give away the whole time travel component, which is one of my all time favourite things to read about. I needn’t have worried; one look at the book’s blurb and I discovered that what I thought was a secret is well and truly out of the bag. I probably would have read this book sooner had I known. All I had to go by when I decided this was the book for me was the title and Thy Bui’s incredible cover illustration.

Speaking of design, something so simple yet so appropriate accompanied the chapter titles. Remember how I mentioned the literal coaches full of people who want to catch a glimpse of Alex? A coach starts appearing in the first chapter and slowly makes its way across the page, chapter by chapter. Brilliant!

Besides loving Alex and Jasper, I also wanted to get to know Uncle Henry, whose ideas on learning were all I needed to know to want to hang out with him forever. I also really liked Gerty, who Alex meets when she’s searching for her missing friend.

I adored the way time travel is explored in this book. There were a couple of time travel related head-scratchers, though. The Laws of Time all made sense to me but I had trouble believing, based on my extensive time travel experience with Marty McFly, that a Time Tourist hadn’t inadvertently rewritten history by now. Although, if Timeless is to be taken as time travel gospel, then maybe only the people personally involved in the rewrite would remember how things used to play out.

The time travel quandary that remains for me is why the bazillion Time Tourists who not so secretly spied on Alex as she was growing up didn’t immediately recognise her in the future. Sure, it’s not like she was expected to show up there unannounced and oftentimes we don’t recognise the obvious right before our very eyes when we don’t expect them to be there, but … someone should have been pointing at her and whispering to the person next to them, ‘Hey, look! Doesn’t that girl look like Alex when she was young?’

I figured out fairly early on who future Alex was going to be and why she became famous. If kid me had read this book, though, it would have been your job to pick me up off the floor once I’d made it to the reveal.

Although the time travel is absolutely wonderful and it made me want to do it even more, my take away from this book is going to be the friendship between Alex and Jasper. It made me feel all warm and squishy inside. In a good way.

‘Never underestimate the power of a best friend. A friend who loves you for who you are, who believes in the person you will become even when you don’t. Who believes you are stronger, smarter, better than you believe yourself to be. A friend who can put you in your place when you need it. More than talent, more than success, friendship is what matters most.’

Book in a book: Jasper gives Alex a copy of The Secret Garden, one of the many reasons I loved him.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

On the day Alex was born, crowds surrounded the hospital. On her first day of school, people spied from the gates. And recently, strangers came to watch her perform in her school play … as the llama.

But why? Alex has always been a nobody.

Then a mysterious boy named Jasper starts at school and he alone seems to know the answer. But before he can tell Alex, he disappears … into the future. Can Alex brave traveling into the future to discover what’s happened to him and to unravel the secret of her own astonishing destiny … before time runs out?

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