I’m sorry - I must admit that I read this, and simply forgot to write a review. And now enough time has passed since I read it that I simply cannot remember it well enough to write a useful review. And frankly, while I’m required to provide a rating to clear this from my Netgalley shelf, it is only a “neutral” rating because of this.

I greatly apologize to the author & publishing team for this. I value my efforts to be a trustworthy ARC reader. The book likely deserves better.

This is a pretty good book for fans of time travel and alternate dimension stories. That's one of my favorite subgenres of scifi, so this was right in my wheelhouse. It's got a real hardboiled mystery noir feel to it, with lots of plot twists and mindbending stuff that works really well. Miriam is a well-written character who goes through quite an adventure. I really enjoyed this one.

If you're into time travel, go for it!
We follow Miriam "Myriad", time police officer, going through one of their cases with her partner, going back 1 week in th past to stop a double homicide. But it doesn't go as planned, and as her partner / lover gets shot on the same evening, she realises things might not be as they seem.
Be ready for twist and time travels mind fucks.


Light spoiler trigger warning :
child abuse, not on page.

*thanks to NetGalley and Angry Robot for the e-copy of theebook against honest review.*

This covers a number of themes and is told in an engaging way with some nice twists along the way. Good sci-fi and a good story.

Thanks very much for the free copy for review!!

This book explores the impact of scientific and technological advances on society, set in futuristic and alternative worlds. The author has done a fantastic job of dealing with themes such as time travel, space exploration, artificial intelligence, extraterrestrial life, and the human condition. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

A really interesting premise-Miriam/Myriad is a member of a private law enforcement agency which attempts to go back in time to prevent crimes occurring. There is a lot of back story to Miriam though and nothing is quite as it seems. I liked that the story did have a conclusion but found the middle section of the book quite confusing, and after a series of reveals it was hard to believe that the story being told was actually happening and I was waiting for yet another curveball to land.

Thanks to Joshua David Bellin, Angry Robot, and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader copy of this book!

Lots of unexpected time travel twists and turns to challenge thinking about time and possibilities. I appreciate the unexpected! Joshua David Bellin brings some new ideas and perspective to time travel and it's consequences.

So many twists and turns in this hardboiled sci fi noir thriller that is intertwined with time travel.
The characters are few but well rounded and supportable. The world is very real: it could be in 5-10 yrs.
Think Minority Report meets North by Northwest!

"Myriad" is a tightly crafted time travel thriller with strong noir and mystery elements that contains enough twists and turns to disorient all but the most intrepid readers. Although some of the technology and mechanisms associated with time travel are, disappointingly, not well explained this novel's primary strength is its portrayal of time travel and it's effects on Miriam the main protagonist. Miriam's journey through time is chaotic, complex and confusing as she jumps from one point to another often looping back to rewrite past events. As the story progresses Miriam comes to the horrifying revelation that seemingly unrelated trauma's from her family's past are deeply interconnected and she is stuck in the middle of an unfolding and perhaps unending process. This book is recommended for science fiction and mystery fans alike who are comfortable with dark and gritty plots.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Angry Robot, for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I feel like I need to do my own TW: this book opens with a scene of a school shooting. And there is of course talk of it through the story.

I will admit, that was hard for me to open on. But once I got past those feelings, I was completely immersed in this story.

Miriam simply cannot get past the loss of her twin in this violent crime. She’s got serious survivor’s guilt, blames herself, and just doesn’t understand why she lives. But live she does, often living the same time period more than once. In Miriam’s world, time travel is a thing, but only in very close proximity to the present. She and her partner Vax try to correct minor wrongs, trying to “right” their timeline, if you will.

Only nothing is as it seems, and Miriam’s most recent case is likely to send her down a path she won’t be able to undo. It’s intense, it’s incredibly high stakes, and it’s a very fresh take on time travel and chock full of mind blowing twists.

Bottom Line: Highly recommend this story not just for the excitement and cool take on time travel, but for Miriam’s story and journey.

Timecop has so much to answer for. Myriad has an intriguing premise, our heroine Miriam Randle is literally a Time Cop, she travels back in time to stop murders from happening, but as close to the event as possible so the perp can still be charged. These time jaunts are usually within days of the crime to try to minimise the effect of causality having massive ripples, though Miriam doesn't seem very interested in the existential outcomes of her job beyond how it makes her feel about herself (her work persona she has dubbed Myriad because she is split over timelines and it mainly sounds like Miriam). She's fucking her partner - which is very against the rules - has had a job just go wrong and she keeps getting haunted by the unsolved school shooting of her twin brother that happened IN THE PAST.

Myriad takes time travel tropes and runs with them, though its never all that sure where it sits with branching timelines, multiple worlds and causation. It can get away with that partly because we are trapped with Miriam who is experiencing this increasingly bonkers ride. But it does make a lot of its lore up on the spot: you can only travel back in time a few days until suddenly you can do twenty years. Odd family behaviour ends up being sold as necessary for the plot, and at some point Miriam gains an adaptive body suit that seems to be able to do anything, in particular be plot armour whenever something new turns up. And the book seems unaware that time travel stories really only have a couple of narrative places they can go, and if you start the book with a school shooting by an unknown assailant you can be damn sure that'll be called back to in a terribly ironic way.

Myriad is an OK popcorn read, if you haven't seen or read much time travel fiction. Th police procedural part of it worked pretty well, so that when it went off the rails and Miriam became the fugitive it lost its hook. The last half of the book is a breathless leap from paradox to paradox with the odd action scene and loving description of her super suit. It's a bit of a mess really.

A big thanks to Netgalley and Angry Robot for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

What. Did. I. Just. Read?

Myriad by Joshua David Belin is sci-fy thriller that follows Agent Miriam Randle, who works for the company TimeLife, which is responsible for eradicating crime with the use of short-term time travel. Haunted by the death of her brother, Miriam begins to think of herself as a myriad, a conglomeration of all the memories of her past self that was used to prevent crime. But when a simple mission goes awry, she is accused of a murder she didn't commit. With the help of her partner, Vax, she must travel into the past and declare herself innocent before TimeLife catches her.

Honestly, this book is so twisty and turn-y, the best way to go into this book is blind. So. READ THIS! Like now!

Myriad by Joshua David Bellin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time travel novels are notorious for being hairballs. Matted, tangled, half-digested messes. Don't get me wrong tho, they can be awfully interesting as the cat coughs one up, but what treasure we think we're looking for isn't always the one we really need.

It's a kind of time-cop novel with plenty of mystery, so this is pretty standard. What isn't standard is the core PTSD version of time travel. I think it's pretty clever, but it's not precisely easy to get through. For one, there are many different versions of our main character and she's a mess in almost all of them. It makes for interesting reading if you like hairballs, and doubly so if you like a truly tangled plot.

Fortunately, it does get untangled by the end.

Is it good? Yes. I think so, but manage your expectations. It's almost a bit like a Blake Crouch but heavier on the PTSD -- many multiple versions of it. It wasn't precisely enjoyable but thrillers usually aren't. The tension is real.

A twisty and turny exciting action novel. Time travel features significantly and is a thought provoking story. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

While I found the concepts gripping and thought-provoking, I could not find myself to care about any of the characters. Maybe this was purposeful, as Miriam's narration style does lend itself towards setting a noirish tone, but it made it difficult to relate or feel invested in their fates. It was overall unique but I found the twist completely predictable.

Thanks to NetGalley and Angry Robot for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review, which I've given here.

Tremenda decepción me he llevado con este libro, que pretende utilizar los tropos de los viajes en el tiempo para construir un thriller apasionante, pero que realmente se queda muy corto en su proyección. Y eso que el comienzo del libro es realmente espectacular, con un tiroteo en una escuela y un viaje en el tiempo para evitar un asesinato. Pero después la trama se disuelve y el autor hace y deshace las líneas temporales a su antojo sin una lógica aparente.


Si conocéis el libro de James Gleick, Time Travel: A History o habéis leído un poco sobre el tema, sabréis que hay múltiples interpretaciones sobre cómo podrían funcionar los viajes en el tiempo y según cuál de ellas se escoja la línea temporal será inmutable o cambiante o habrá realidades paralelas u otras muchas opciones. Reconozco que la vertiente psicológica que escoge Joshua David Bellin tiene un punto de originalidad en su concepción, pero luego el desarrollo no me convence en absoluto. El libro que empieza fuerte se va desinflando conforme va habiendo saltos temporales y las inconsistencias se hacen las dueñas de la trama.

Además, Myriad tiene otros problemas, principalmente que los personajes despiertan poca empatía, por no decir directamente que son malas personas de una u otra manera y no se salva casi ninguno. Si la trama no te convence y los personajes no te enamoran, poco le queda a la novela para conseguir resultar atractiva.

Lo que sí veo representado fehacientemente son las adicciones y compulsiones a las que puede llevar una vida truncada desde la infancia por una tragedia. Reconozco que esto está muy bien representado tanto en el personaje principal como en otros secundarios de menos enjundia pero que juegan su papel de forma acertada.

El libro contiene imágenes bastante fuertes, pero son casi más preocupantes las que se insinúan sin llegar a hacerse patentes. Los crímenes de todo tipo desfilan antes nuestros ojos orquestados desde las sombras por un personaje misterioso del que poco a poco iremos descubriendo sus motivaciones.

No puedo recomendar esta obra de Joshua David Bellin porque creo que falla en lo que quiere conseguir, relatar un thriller con viajes en el tiempo. Para eso, mucho mejor The Shining Girls de Lauren Beukes.

I always find stories involving time travel an enjoyable challenge. It is always interesting to see how the author handles the potential for paradoxes, as characters travel back and potentially change the course of history. Myriad doesn’t disappoint in this regard, with the rules and consequences of time travel slowly revealed as the plot progresses.

This is a plot driven book, and the action keeps up at a good pace, while the central mystery of who is pulling the strings remains a compelling thread throughout the story.

The title character, Myriad, is likeable enough, but I didn’t find the characterisation particularly deep or moving - which is a shame, given the importance of the relationship with her brother and mother.

And, while this is a book about time travel, I found some of the rules and consequences of time travel inadequately explored or explained - and this was a shame, as the book has an interesting perspective on some of the rules and consequences of time travel that I hadn’t previously come across.

While these issues prevented me from giving a higher rating, they did not stop Myriad from being an enjoyable read, and the final reveal and conclusion I found satisfying.

Thank you #NetGalley and Angry Robot for the free review copy of #Myriad in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Myriad is lots of things, a mystery and thriller and also a sci-fi time travel story. Generally it’s a pretty good story within all of those genres and does bring together all of the story threads nicely. I never cared about the main characters very much but the method of time travel and the plot were interesting and kept things moving along at a good pace.

Note: arc provided by the publisher via netgalley in exchange for honest review

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)

Joshua David Bellin’s MYRIAD is one of those books that feels like several different things, but that defies being placed into any one box. It’s a near future science fiction novel. It’s a thriller. It’s a mystery. It’s a time travel story. It’s an introspection on trauma, coping mechanisms, and PTSD. It’s all of these things. What this book is also is *entertaining*, even if I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it was I took from this book. It opens in a jarring, gripping, horrifying way.

If you are squeamish about one of America’s great national shames (spoiler: school shootings) then perhaps this is not the story for you. But after the formative moment in the life of our protagonist, Miriam, she finds herself ultimately as an agent of LifeTime, a private police force of time traveling operatives who jump back in time to prevent murders. The book is punchy and fast-paced, and almost immediately she has a case go horribly wrong. When it does, Myriam finds herself at the center of a conspiracy that reaches to the top of LifeTime, back to the roots of her trauma and forward to the very end of her life (and kinda back again in an ever-tightening braid).

I recently read another forthcoming book that shall remain unidentified that aimed for a similar voice--the cynical, first person, gritty narrator. Humphrey Bogart, Harry Dresden, a protagonist carved from stone left behind by Dashiel Hammett. The other book failed, the voice felt forced and strained and unnatural. This is quite the opposite. The voice of this book owes much to the voices that have come before it, but it's compelling, fluid, natural...

... except for at least some portion of the narrator's fixation on her sexual relationship (or, perhaps lackthereof). There's a long and storied tradition of men writing women and doing so poorly. I'm not quite sure MYRIAD fits into that tradition, but somewhere in the middle of the book, the female narrator's processing of her relationship began to grate on me. It wasn't enough to put down the book by any stretch of the imagination, and it is all roughly in line with the narrator's voice, but it was a thing that I noticed that nudged me out of the narrative.

Ultimately, MYRIAD stands on its plot, and the (ugh) myriad plot threads that keep getting woven tighter and tighter until the third act is a series of very satisfying revelations about the characters we knew (or thought we did) and how they relate to one another. Time travel stories demand tight, satisfying explanations, and this book delivers.

The other thing that time travel stories require is a resolution to the inherent complications and paradoxes that time travel by its very nature tend to create. Scientific (or SF/pseudo-scientific) explanations, philosophical explanations, internal and external resolutions to the conflict need to be tethered to the central premise of time travel, and again this book provides that payoff.

At its core, MYRIAD is about trauma. It's about how trauma can bleed through to stain every aspect of a victim's life and how they experience it, their relationships, their past, and their future. It's about coping, mourning, and moving on. It's about failing to do those things. And, in its final pages, it's about asking the reader what, if anything, of the story truly happened.

After all, when the entire premise is based on empowering someone to travel back in time to change the past to prevent trauma and then dealing with the fallout of those change, it's easy to look at the final pages and wonder what exactly real is. It’s the spinning top at the end of INCEPTION, and in my opinion, the answer is up to you.