I can't remember the last time I was so captivated at the start of a book only to loose interest with both the characters and plot, and had to actually struggle to finish it.
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Whew! It took me a year (with many breaks to read other books) to finish reading this novel! Lots of characters with their own mini-plots to keep track of, and perhaps it could have been shorter and more evenly paced, but in the end I enjoyed this dimension-and-time-jumping web of stories thoroughly.

It's interesting to learn that this was launched with an app that would enable readers to change the order of some of the story threads. I didn't know about this at all while reading, but I did really wish some of the early chapters were arranged differently, just so I could get comfortable with one setting and point of view before shifting to the next!

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Mind-bending fun. Great characters. A little confusing time/universe travel. ( )

Not a good fit for my tastes, because I dislike the dystopian universe in my fiction reading escapes. The story has three threads going on consecutively, because of course: time travel is involved. For most of the book, each chapter changes time periods, which the author accomplished quite nicely.

My favourite thread was the one set in the 1960's era of life in Britain. The dystopian thread was more the backbone of the plot, having a strong George Orwellian flavour (1984) and Brave New World (Aldous Huxley). The 3rd storyline was pure high fantasy but not well-developed at first although this evolves over the plot's trajectory. The fantasy was okay but didn't progress much beyond the "cardboard" 2-D stage. Given that it was a pretend world in someone's mind, that wasn't surprising. I liked how this third world took on a life of its own. The book's ending flatlined, although the dénouement in the high fantasy threw a twist which I didn't expect and made me laugh out loud. Iain Pears seems a very capable storyteller, and if you like a mix of genre, I say give it a try, even if this story feels a little unpolished. ( )

Confession up front: Separating my enjoyment of a book from my enjoyment of the reader when I listen is sometimes impossible. John Lee is so accomplished that this is the case here, certainly. I enjoyed the story hugely, so I think it would be a 4 star read, but if you only read print, I can't say.

The story starts with Professor Lytton and his cat-sitter Rosie, a bright fifteen year old nearby neighbor. Lytton teaches at Oxbridge (I can't remember which) and on the side has been creating a world and meeting with other like-minded friends for years. He never really gets around to the story, but he has made up characters and the world he has invented is very romantic drawing from classic 'fantasy' literature from Shakespeare to Tolkien.

The second thread is far in the future in a grim world utopia where compliance and control are the number one goals, compliance leading to the least violence and disorder. There are rebels, of course, living separately. On the island of Mull there is a small research lab where the resident genius, a very complicated brilliant woman, has been working on a device that might lead to access to other universes. Or maybe not. The plot revolves around this question. And it is a terrific plot, by the way. The woman disappears just when "Oldmanta" the corporate gazillionaire crook/CEO of pretty-much-everything-that- matters gets wind of what she's been up to and wants her machine. The thing is that the woman has discovered a big problem.

Rosie throws a wrench into everything when, while searching for Lytton's missing cat, she steps through an old pergola in his basement, stored there by this rather odd but fascinating woman he is friends with, into . . . well . . . into . . . I can't really tell you any more than that. ****1/2 ( )