I wanted to like it, I really did. It’s trying very hard to be a freewheeling, time-travelling, action-adventure comedy, but ends up a horrible mess (which I guess is kind of fitting, given the zombies of it all).

The mechanics of the time travel don’t make sense. And, to be fair, it’d be far from the first time travel story not to properly think through its own premise, but an awful lot of space is given over to trying to make those mechanics make sense.

It’s a continuity nightmare, with pages and pages given over to explaining who this person is, why they know that person, how it matters, and why we’re now on Christopher Columbus’s ship. I’m not sure there’s a single original character in the novel.

Deadpool’s in it, though (a lot). I don’t like Deadpool. I like Ryan Reynolds. But Ryan Reynolds isn’t in this book.

There are a lot of fight scenes of the sort that are boring enough on screen and in comics, but here you can’t even see them. Perhaps that’s a mercy (I don’t know if you’ve seen Quantumania…).

And as for structure, well, if it were a school, the kids would be sent home and the local MP on the news. The story doesn’t so much end as stop.

A big tick in its favour is the focus on female characters; younger women are the fastest growing and frequently most positive section of superhero fandom, and it’s pretty tiresome how often comic books, movies and their tie-ins act like the only people watching are 36-year-old male nerds in MAGA hats.

I am sorry. I wanted to like it. It’s the sort of thing I really should like. But good intentions don’t make a good book. ( )