A time-hopping dramedy that’s often fun and insightful.
In Blaisdell’s debut SF novel, time travel becomes commonplace—and then unexpected flaws emerge.
With the invention of “digitime™” in the 2020s, traveling into the past becomes possible, as well as widely accessible. Transportation services called TimeLiners take passengers to various times in history, although no further back than 1850. The trip can be personal—one may see one’s late mother as a child, for instance, or watch one’s first kiss; alternatively, some wish to see a particular historical moment unfold live, such as a notorious criminal’s shootout. For some people, the nostalgia quickly wears off, as visits to the past tend to put its worst elements into sharp relief, such as racism and sexism. For others, though, the past offers a place to hide. Purple-haired stand-up comedian Casey Clement, for instance, has dealt with her share of turmoil in her life, and, in order to avoid her ex-husband, she escapes into yesteryear. Around the same time, Guy McGee, after learning a secret about his parents, goes on a quest to 1955. Much of Blaisdell’s story has a tongue-in-cheek tone, as when time-travelers experience turbulence when passing through “turbulent years.” However, the ensemble cast is seriously engaging; it includes Casey’s physicist mother, who searches for her missing daughter; fans who literally chase after such celebrities as Albert Einstein; and the Timemaster, the creator of the time-travel tech, who has a personality and social-media presence that the public generally despises. Many readers will appreciate when characters reluctantly acknowledge that memories don’t always accurately represent the past. The author aims to simplify the story’s time travel elements, essentially disregarding the famed butterfly effect to allow for mass, worry-free travel. “Disruptions,” however, remain possible, which raises questions than aren’t satisfactorily answered. A plot turn in the final act, although predictable, begets a fantastic ending.
A time-hopping dramedy that’s often fun and insightful.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798307134436
Page Count: 402
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
One small step, no giant leaps.
Weir (The Martian, 2014) returns with another off-world tale, this time set on a lunar colony several decades in the future.
Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara is a 20-something deliveryperson, or “porter,” whose welder father brought her up on Artemis, a small multidomed city on Earth’s moon. She has dreams of becoming a member of the Extravehicular Activity Guild so she’ll be able to get better work, such as leading tours on the moon’s surface, and pay off a substantial personal debt. For now, though, she has a thriving side business procuring low-end black-market items to people in the colony. One of her best customers is Trond Landvik, a wealthy businessman who, one day, offers her a lucrative deal to sabotage some of Sanchez Aluminum’s automated lunar-mining equipment. Jazz agrees and comes up with a complicated scheme that involves an extended outing on the lunar surface. Things don’t go as planned, though, and afterward, she finds Landvik murdered. Soon, Jazz is in the middle of a conspiracy involving a Brazilian crime syndicate and revolutionary technology. Only by teaming up with friends and family, including electronics scientist Martin Svoboda, EVA expert Dale Shapiro, and her father, will she be able to finish the job she started. Readers expecting The Martian’s smart math-and-science problem-solving will only find a smattering here, as when Jazz figures out how to ignite an acetylene torch during a moonwalk. Strip away the sci-fi trappings, though, and this is a by-the-numbers caper novel with predictable beats and little suspense. The worldbuilding is mostly bland and unimaginative (Artemis apartments are cramped; everyone uses smartphonelike “Gizmos”), although intriguing elements—such as the fact that space travel is controlled by Kenya instead of the United States or Russia—do show up occasionally. In the acknowledgements, Weir thanks six women, including his publisher and U.K. editor, “for helping me tackle the challenge of writing a female narrator”—as if women were an alien species. Even so, Jazz is given such forced lines as “I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed.”
One small step, no giant leaps.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-44812-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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