When I am watching TV or film and there is a particularly bizarre scene, our family has a humorous tradition of saying, "This would make a lot more sense if we were high." I have never applied it to a boot before, but I might in this case. Rest assured, this is not me placing my own issues on top of something I am reading. In the front material, the author thanks cannabis for helping him to tell this story. While learning about the potency of edible gummies was a minor way this played out in the story, the biggest concern I had was that the "Write drunk. Edit sober," advice of Hemmingway was applied without enough emphasis on the latter. The dialogue as exposition is relied on too heavily in this story and the author gives you (in my opinion) too much details when a summary would do. For example, when a main character could have summarized a key report, he instead read the entirety of it out loud into the record, as it were. All these extra detail caused us to spend 30% of the story wading through backstory to get to the time when the characters would enter the simulation of the past Talk about "anticipation".

And when they did travel, each chapter was like a short story in and of itself, with all the research and background needed almost for a novella. You smelled, tasted, heard, felt and saw everything (this is where, I imagine, the cannabis came in). And, in case you're wondering, when living in a simulation of the past, everyone gets busy and there''s plenty of detail there to (quite a bit too much for my taste). I also wrested with the conclusion, but the author did suggest a sequel.

In short, I was fascinated by the premise of this book, but it felt like it could have been cut by a third and been a perfectly good tale.

This book was okay. I did not enjoy the writing style, and I feel like the author is lacking in details and writing. I do enjoy the premise of this book, but the way the author was being so dull made it hard to get through.


Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complementary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

Did not finish book. Stopped at 2%.
The premise of this book sounds cool, but I can't take the writing. The story is very much being told by a narrator, and this level of telling and not showing is too much for me. It feels very amateurish.