I enjoyed this fast moving book that showcased the effects of a drastic change of society, with some time travel and a possible paradox thrown in for good measure.
As usual I went into this book almost completely blind, so what starts as a historical novel quickly branches out into the modern and then into the future. Like Cloud Atlas it moves one direction in time to a center point, and then moves back outward from there, creating ripples along the way.
Maybe because I have been reading pretty long books lately I felt that this one wrapped up unnaturally quick – I would have liked to see some more detail here. Years pass in just a paragraph or two, but those years must leave some kind of trace on our characters – it is left for the reader to imagine. I thought it was a missed opportunity, but better a shorter good story than a bad one.
There is also some meta in here – if the writer of this book goes on a book tour to promote her work, then she will be a writer promoting a book in a pandemic that has a writer promoting a book in a pandemic that features a pandemic. If you enjoy parsing that last sentence then I think you’d enjoy the references to the real world in this book.
Next I’m reading Sea State by Tabitha Lasley.
