Tag Archives: Time Travel

Paper Girls vol. 1 (review by Ms. Pelman)

October 18, 2019 mspelmanlibrarian Leave a comment

Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Looking for something to fill the time until Stranger Things comes back? Look no further.

Set in the late 1980s, our heroines are a motley crew of newspaper delivery girls. The story begins when the girls band together for their rounds the morning after Halloween night (it’s still kind of creepy out and at 4 in the morning it’s best to work in pairs). When some boys who appear to still be in costume steal their walkie-talkies, they abandon their newspaper rounds. The mission to recover their communication devices sends them on a wild goose chase, triggering a series of events that will mire them in an inter-dimensional alien war. This time-travel-alien-invasion graphic novel is thrilling, funny, and suspenseful. -Ms. Pelman

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A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee’s Guide to Saving the World by Rachel Cantor (review by Fiona W. ’21)

June 7, 2018 mspelmanlibrarian Leave a comment

A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee’s Guide to Saving the World by Rachel Cantor
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Leonard is a man who works for the international fast-food chain Neetsa Pizza’s customer support hotline. He takes his job oddly too seriously, to almost an occultish extent. One day, Leonard gets a call from a man who claims to be from the 13th century, and soon falls deep into the rabbit hole of ancient cults and time traveling.

I really wanted to like this book. The concept felt like a parody version of 1984, and I was all for it. However, the execution was just wrong. Halfway through the book, the plot began to fall apart, and by the end of it, I was completely lost. It pained me to read it all the way through, and I felt like I was just reading a random string of words rather than a coherent story. It was as if the author woke up in the middle of the night and furiously wrote out a dream she had in one go while she was still half-asleep. I’m not sure how this book got published, but it definitely serves to show authors what they shouldn’t do. – Fiona W. ’21

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To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. ’17

August 24, 2015 mspelmanlibrarian Leave a comment

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To Say Nothing of the Dog is perhaps Connie Willis’s most humorous Oxford Time Travel book, set mainly on the outskirts of Victorian Oxford. The novel features two main characters: Verity/Kindle, who is sent back in time by the frustratingly persistent Lady Schrapnell to help figure out the location of the Bishop’s Bird Stump, and Ned Henry, who is sent back to help right a supposed discrepancy caused by Verity. Willis often pokes fun at aspects of Victorian life through Ned’s nonchalant humor (he is the narrator). The story reads much like a mystery novel as Ned and Verity attempt to understand the nature of their first time discrepancy while simultaneously trying to prevent more time-travel disasters. The final solution is amusingly explained but leaves some unanswered questions. To Say Nothing of the Dog is certainly worth reading for its humorous, science fiction, and historical fiction aspects, but those who are not interested in the Victorian era will be disappointed.

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Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. ’17)

August 18, 2015 mspelmanlibrarian Leave a comment

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Doomsday Book, Connie Willis’s first Oxford Time Travel novel, is one of her most famous, featuring young time traveler-historian Kivrin on an expedition to medieval England. Shifting between modern and medieval times, the novel combines first person “journal” accounts and traditional narration. Like many of Willis’s novels, Doomsday Book is (in comparison) relatively slow moving for a good half of the book (though certainly not uninteresting) and speeds up to an incredibly moving ending. The book makes the horrors of the Black Death devastatingly real, and continuously questions the role of religion in our lives. While perhaps more interesting to those who have some background on the middle ages, I had little interest in medieval times but still found the book hauntingly captivating. I found myself pondering Doomsday Book for days after I had finished reading it.

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All Clear by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. ’17)

July 15, 2015 mspelmanlibrarian Leave a comment

All Clear by Connie Willis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All Clear is the second half of the time travel Blackout/All Clear duo by Connie Willis, set in World War II. While I found Blackout a bit frustratingly repetitive in places, All Clear was a whirlwind of plot twist after plot twist, with an emotional range of unfathomable despair to shock to tentative joy. Willis will leave you gasping aloud in both excitement and frustration as the three main characters attempt to return to 2060 from WWII. Willis leaps back and forth between different times, places and characters, thus weaving in an element of mystery (pay attention to the date printed at the beginning of each chapter). Blackout and All Clear are must-reads for any time travel or historical fiction fan, but as a message about the strength of the common person undergoing unimaginable hardship and sacrifice, these two novels would be enjoyed by anyone.

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Blackout by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. ’17)

July 8, 2015 mspelmanlibrarian Leave a comment

Blackout by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was the first time I read a work by Connie Willis. Blackout is, at its core, historical fiction, though laced with elements of sci-fi in the form of time travel. The premise of all of Willis’s time travel novels is that in the near future (2060) Oxford University historians will conduct their research by traveling back in time to their periods of study. In Blackout, several historians travel to England during World War II, disguising themselves in various locations including London during the Blitz, Dunkirk during the evacuation, and a countryside manor house. However, something has gone wrong with the historians’ return mechanism (called the drop), and our heroes are trapped. At first, I found Blackout to be immensely interesting, as the story exuded all the emotions and attitudes of WWII life and at times even made me feel slightly panicked. However, 500 pages of nearly the same phrase (“Where is the retrieval team? Why is my drop not working?”) began to get frustrating. I will be reading the sequel, which essentially is a direct continuation from the 1st book with hardly a transition at all, but only because I’m curious to find out how/if the characters return to 2060. In the end, I would recommend this book, as the story is extremely immersive, but don’t attempt it unless you’re ready to read 1000 pages of WWII historical fiction.

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Timebound by Rysa Walker (review by Catherine H. ’17)

June 22, 2014 mspelmanlibrarian Leave a comment

Timebound by Rysa Walker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rysa Walker’s Timebound, the first installment in the Chronos Files, is a very thought provoking read. Kate’s grandmother, Katherine, comes to town and announces that she is terminally ill and would like to spend more time with her granddaughter, which seems like a reasonable request. However, Kate’s mother insists that her grandmother is selfish and that she shouldn’t go. But Kate notices a strange medallion that glows a brilliant shade of blue that her mother can’t see but her grandmother can. Upon confronting her grandmother about it, she learns that her massive headaches have been caused by shifts in the timeline and that her grandfather is stuck in a different time, trying to create a religion and change history to benefit himself. Kate also finds out that this medallion is a CHRONOS key that lets her travel back in time. Before she can start training, another shift occurs and her parents disappear from the timeline, having never met each other and never having had her. She must now carry the key with her at all times or else disappear forever. It becomes her mission to go back in time and warn her grandmother so that she can restore her timeline. This book made me think about time travel in a different way. Even though there are several timelines that are mentioned, the story is straightforward and easy to follow. I recommend this book to anyone interested in time travel. – Catherine H. ‘17

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Night Watch by Terry Pratchett (review by Andrew R. ’17)

November 4, 2013 mspelmanlibrarian Leave a comment

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As Commander of the City Watch, Sam Vimes is one of the happiest, wealthiest, and most powerful men in Ankh-Morpork. And he owes all his success to his mentor, John Keel, who taught him all he knows nearly thirty years earlier. Today, as Vimes chases a dangerous murderer through the streets, both men are sucked through a time portal and land in the Ankh-Morpork of thirty years ago. It’s bad enough that Vimes is stuck in one of the darkest periods of the city’s history—but the situation is made much, much worse when the criminal kills John Keel before his time. While writing a time-travel novel, many well intentioned writers fail to come up with a convincing theory for how to send their characters to another era; Pratchett avoids this trap entirely by intentionally putting forward the least convincing, but most entertaining, argument I’ve ever read. Science-fiction purists may have a hard time swallowing his theory (which includes monks with brooms, quantum physics, and the Baked-Bean Tin of Universal Oneness), but any other fan of the Discworld will enjoy this City Watch novel as much as the rest of Pratchett’s series.

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When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (review by Mrs. Vaughan, Harker librarian)

May 1, 2013 mspelmanlibrarian Leave a comment

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Stead’s book accomplishes what I like best in a novel. The story of twelve-year-old Miranda is beautifully simple, yet littered with moments of wonderful insight.
Miranda is not especially anything — not suffering some great injustice nor blessed with exceptional intelligence or beauty. Maybe it is her ordinariness that makes her and her story so hypnotic. When the story opens she’s inexplicably estranged from a life-long friend and neighbor Sal. In the void, she ends up making some surprising — and yes, even magical — discoveries elsewhere. L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, a favorite of both the author and Miranda, provides a subtle time travel motif.
While When You Reach Me is at home in the genre of young adult literature, somehow it doesn’t read like Stead was writing it just for teens. Adults should read it, too. This book is a lovely and perfect small miracle. – Mrs. Vaughan, Harker librarian

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