David McLain

The Time Travellers Resort and Museum is a wonderfully bizarre mystery suspense time travel adventure (how many genres can I get in one phrase?) with beautiful illustrations by Felix Eddy, and a gorgeous cover. What’s inside the cover is pretty good too.
The start is a little clunky, since we travel with Alice from New York to London (something I’ve done many times), where she is to meet her friend Malcolm, then travel up to Cambridge to give a joint presentation to the Royal Astronomical Society – a huge honour. She does get there, eventually, but we have numerous switchings between other, earlier times, as a historical artefact is lost, found and lost again. The author chooses to have the mediaeval monks speak a kind of cod Olde Englishe — having never been inflicted with studying Chaucer, I reckon it’s cod — which is at first off-putting, but then you realise that if you say it how it’s spelt it’s perfectly understandable. Clever.
It is a very clever book, mixing in a huge number of alternate timelines, and introducing Fictional Realism, in which alternate timelines feature people and places to whom our own time line has ascribed fictional status. That means that in some worlds Sherlock Holmes, Sidney Carton, Ishmael, Huckleberry Finn and probably even Harry Potter, live just as you and I do in this one. Thus the story of this book brings in all sorts of characters you know, and may love.
Since Alice gets into a scrape early on, which means she gets chased by the police, from whom she is rescued by the mysterious Keith Quick, there is plenty of action and bewilderment for Alice to contend with, and the reader is taken along at a hectic pace to learn as she goes. There are some wondrous artefacts, some of a steampunk type, others existing in contemporary London, including mobile phones. The use of mobile phones when Alice has a temporal accident which lands her in the Regency age is handled beautifully. The action darts around in time and space, and the author has done a good amount of work to make the historical settings feel authentic.
Now, when you read ‘contemporary London’ in my reviews, the alarm bells ring. Yes. Full of bad contemporary London facts. Fake London, even. Most of these were in the first 20% of the book, which also included the odd typo and several grammatical errors, but returned near the end, too. I stopped to check whether the book was indie published (no, small press), whether it was an ARC (I don’t think so), and whether the author was British (no, Canadian). Which brings me back to something I’ve ranted about in the past about getting your details about places you don’t live in right. Use your social network. Check your facts. Don’t invite your contemporary Londoner readers to rant about things that aren’t right. Laughable, even. Okay, so the London Eye is ‘fairly near’ the Thames. So near, in fact, that you’d find it difficult to slide a credit card between it and the river without getting wet. Things mentioned earlier mixed up the detail of different types of Tube train lines, and put locations cited in the wrong places. I find myself wondering whether I’m turning into one of those old men who complain the insignia on the shoulder of a film actor belonged to a regiment that never went near the D-Day landings (or flew Lancasters not Spitfires, etc). I digress.
The detail did spoil the first and last 20% for me, but the middle 60% was excellent, and for the general reader I’m sure they’ll be delighted with the details. It’s bizarre and pacey and hugely enjoyable – in fact I even thought it was nearly as good as M T McGuire’s K’Barthan series, which from me is praise indeed. It has that same slightly bonkers air to it, not surprising since the author lists Dr Who as one of his favourite things. And that was also a surprise to me – he’s a man. And Alice was a woman of the type I like, full of can-do, engineering common sense, and who can change her own lightbulbs (or invent them if necessary). A normal one, in fact.
And the cover is wonderful – I love the way the typeface moves through different eras on each line. Details that I love.
And if you’re wondering about the blue triceratops — he’s the best thing there, especially the way he comments “Nark!” in the most appropriate places. I think he has a big future to play in this universe. I hope so, anyway.
I’m looking forward to more in this series, and I am always available to check scripts for details of contemporary London – and other places I know well.
Despite the London problems, I may well look for a sequel. What better praise is there than that?… (mehr)

This is seriously surreal (intentionally, I believe), especially at the beginning when Alice is being dragged in to...well, everything. Unfortunately it's made a little more surreal than intended (I think) by many instances of not quite the right word. Would someone accused of murder really cry out "Incredulous!", even (or especially) if he was? I spent some time googling to see if perhaps it was a regionalism...but not as far as I could see. So I was somewhat distracted from the story by that, and several similar things. The digression about coincidence annoyed me, but it really was necessary for the next bit. I started enjoying the story more when things settled down (for very odd values of settled down), when Alice is on her own, more or less - before that I could barely keep things straight and felt as dragged-along as Alice did. It ends... pretty well, though still rather surreally. Also on a cliffhanger. I don't know - interesting, and I guess I'm glad I read it, but it didn't really work for me. Too confusing, on many levels.… (mehr)

Disclaimer: I received this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers in return for an honest review.

Astrophysicist, Alice Anderson, has been accused of murdering her ex-boyfriend Malcom. With the help of the strange Keith Quick Alice is forced to travel around through time to clear her name. Alice also discovers that she is the mother of time and the inventor of time travel. But who is the angry Eleanor Dragon? And why is she following Alice? What does she have to do with Malcolm's murder? What does King Arthur, Sherlock Holmes, and Professor Moriarty have to do with the story? And how did she invent time travel?

Overall I really enjoyed this book. It sucked me in within the first few pages. It includes a variety of sub-plot that do not appear to have anything to do with the main storyline. However all the subplots tie into the story in the end in the way that makes sense and adds to the story. The only thing I was not a fan of was the epilogue. Without spoiling anything it ends in a huge cliff-hanger. Personally I prefer story that end in a smaller cliff-hanger. That being said I still really enjoyed the story and would recommend it to all readers.… (mehr)