RABBIT HOLE

In the first volume of the time-traveling Paradox series, a team of brilliant scientists and highly trained law enforcement officers fight to keep vigilantes from destroying history.

In the near future, Dr. Nora Hamilton is the gorgeous wunderkind of the Rabbit Hole Time Travel Company, the first corporation to corner the market on recreational time travel. While studying at MIT, Nora develops a working relationship with her equally brilliant professor, Marcus Locke. Together, they build Rabbit Hole up from nothing and become fabulously wealthy in the process. It is a dream job for Nora until New Year’s Eve 2024, when a trip goes wrong. Nora soon discovers that she’s been tracked for months by an ex-Marine named Nick Canton, and he has some news for her: A group known as the Rippers are blowing through history, changing what they please to suit their own agenda. To make matters worse, they’ve kidnapped Marcus, the one man who understands the intricacies of time travel even better than Nora. Nick works for Paradox Force, an underground agency tasked with keeping time travel safe, and now they need Nora’s help to stop the Rippers. As she and Nick grow close, Rippers alter the course of civilization throughout time, and Nick and Nora can’t be sure what is “real” history and what has been altered. They’ll have to work fast in the present—and the past—in order to secure the future. The novel moves at a quick clip, with short chapters and a snappy plot that keeps the pages turning. Certain clichés abound, however. The romantic relationship between Nick and Nora is predictable, and the book doesn’t add as much as it could to pre-existing time-travel narratives, focusing instead on the nature of the so-called butterfly effect. Nevertheless, readers with a cursory knowledge of history will enjoy seeing Nick and Nora struggle to remember what is fact and what is fiction.

A fast-paced time-travel tale that, ultimately, can’t escape the genre.