Joshua David Bellin

I loved the first ACCIDENTAL TIME TRAVELER’S COLLECTIVE and was so excited to see there would be another collection of stories! I enjoyed each and every story in this collection. I apologize if I have misspelled names or anything else. I was taking notes as I read and my handwriting is hard to read at times…

Status Green-Identical twins have a really fun training mission to 15th century France to prevent a timeline paradox by bad forces. This had some really great world building and I loved the idea of the training mission. Neat ending, too!

Lake Lorelai-Elizabeth is an engineer who witnesses a dam failure in the present day at Lake Lorelai and then goes back in time to when the dam is being constructed. Can she prevent the accident? I loved the historical aspects of this, especially when no one would believe she was an engineer. Also loved her connecting with the real Lorelai and this also had some great twists!

Muse-I loved the wonderful descriptions in this one, especially of the marketplace and of the potterymaking!

The Suitcase-Sully and Beryl are sent to retrieve a time tourist who has run amok in 1922 Paris. I loved Sully and Beryl right away, and this had all the elements that make a great story, adventure, a great villain, a great twist, and fun historical context! Loved it!

Professor MacBeth-Oh I really loved this! Tessa and John get to go back in time and have a little medieval adventure and the past is not all the fun it seems when you aren’t experiencing it without all the smells and upset stomachs. Tessa leads time travel tours and she takes John to Scotland. I loved the great descriptions and thought the author made it both perfectly gritty and also humorous!

For Her-This was a fun, quirky story with a twist I didn’t see coming! David creates a time machine to go back 30 years and save Tara from a doomed fate, but the consequences are not what he intends! This was fun!

Convergence-This story ripped my heart out. So well told. A young man has the ability to time travel in dreams and change the past, but when he’s forced to choose between saving a family member and altering time so that he never meets his spouse, what will he choose? I loved the paradoxes and interesting “what if” questions this one raised!

Plan V-Valentino Walker’s wife is going to destroy the world. What a catchy hook. This was a fun story. I really enjoyed it!

Timeout-This was a poignant story that was really well told. A mother and son are dealing with grief and loss and a timeout chair that can reconstruct brain waves. Good messages with a sci fi twist.

Swift to start-This was fun! Loved it!

Split Lives of Medusa-This was a really neat concept of split persons, where someone chooses to go down two different life paths and splits into two different people. I loved all the “what ifs” this raised!

The Third Christmas-I love Susan Hancock’s Anstey series and loved getting a glimpse into William Wrenn and Beth’s lives, William’s fears for Kat’s future as she comes of age and will she begin courting human men or her mother’s Aurigan kind? I loved seeing several different Christmases and especially a surprise visitor at the end!
5/5 stars… (lisätietoja)

Well, it took me ten years to read this, and it took me another ten years to review it, and here we are. I really don't have much to say. This was fiiiiine, but it was a really hard buy and it required a lot of suspension of disbelief.

And there was too much romance. Did I just say that? Is that even possible for me to say? Yes. Spoiler alerT: Cam falls in luuuurve. Why? I wasn't sure. I'm still not sure. Because Sofie has nice eyes, it seems.

I'm honestly sad I didn't like this because that premise. I love hearing about classism in dystopian environments. They did some very fascinating things with this classism (creepy things, too. Creepy things that I could buy.) However, the ultimate ending required a lot of suspension of disbelief. Too many things just magically fell into place.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

--

TOO. MUCH. ROMANCE.

Wait, did I just say that? Who am I?

Review tk (it's only taken me ten years it's fine we can wait another ten)… (lisätietoja)

This one just didn't quite hit it for me -- there are some great elements -- an all too believable dystopian future of have and have-nots, a wildly imaginative off-world experience, and a quick pace, with adventure piling on adventure.

However, some of the key plot points just weren't believable to me, and I found the romantic angle troubling at best -- from the protagonist's wildly extravagant attempts to engage with the object of his affections, to the extreme objectification of Sofie, who at least doesn't quite obligingly fall in line with Cam's romantic overtures, but is still just troubling. She's a prize to be won. She's a love interest that never shows any of her real personality. She's a betrayer of a relationship that never existed outside of Cam's mind. If you're looking for a chilling depiction of young male entitlement in our society, then I think you might really enjoy this book. She seems to be considering falling in love with him at the end, so I guess there's hope for the obsessed and unrequited.

Sorry, man, I'm pretty sure I missed the whole point of the book, but it gives me the ick.

Advanced Reader's copy provided by Edelweiss.… (lisätietoja)