The engrossing fun of reading A Bridge of Years comes from starting out in the normal, almost boring world of the American northwest late 1980s, and then watching the layers peel back as the story shifts to something more supernatural with each passing chapter.

For a tale that literally spans years, as suggested by the title, the heart of it feels deceptively in the moment. A Bridge of Years is more personal than epic. ( )

This late eighties time travel SF is very sedate and careful, focused more on characters and mystery than anything directly related to the two main timelines. Early sixties and late eighties. The SF aspect and plot is actually rather sophisticated, building some nice rules and much better method, and the hints and descriptions of our future and even a much more distant future kept me going nicely.

But what was the best part of the novel?

It read like a thriller/horror. :) Lots of careful character build-up, curiosity, awe, and exploring new situations, if not times. Just with this aspect, I had a great time.

Yes, there is a lot of great time travel SF novels out there, but so many lack good characters and heart. This one succeeds on that level. :) It's not flashy, but it kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire time. ( )

Would give it a 3.5 if possible. Robert Charles Wilson is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. He always presents thoughtful perspectives/speculations, his characters have dimension, and his prose can at times be lyrical. I'm actually judging this book in light of Wilson's own later work, as (so we would expect) he has only gotten better with time.

I enjoyed the book, though in the wake of many other things that have been written since the employ themes of nanotechnology, the marriage of man-machine, not to mention time-travel, the story now had a certain sense of conventionality about it (might have been revelatory at the time of its publication date).

There is one thing that bugged me, though, as a resident of the Pacific Northwest: Wilson keeps talking about the pine forests that dominate the landscape. Shame! He should know better, given that at the time he wrote this book he was living in BC. The coastal Northwest forests are dominated by firs, not pines, and we're eager to point out to newcomers the difference. ( )

In 1989, fresh from a traumatizing divorce, Tom Winter moves back to his hometown, buying a house on the outskirts of the woods. He notices the house is in remarkably good condition, considering it's supposedly been empty for the last 10 years, but then he discovers stranger things - robotic bugs performing maintenance and a time-traveling tunnel that leads to the New York City of 1962, hidden in the basement. Escaping the present and shacking up with a nice 60's beatnik girl seems like a good idea at the time...
But the tunnel was jammed open by a Terminator-like AWOL soldier from the 22nd century and the 60's may not be the safe haven they seem to be. Toms ex-, a ghost-chasing real estate agent, and the original custodian of the time-tunnel may all have to try to get Tom back before it's too late
A definitely mainstream-thriller feel to this book, but quite entertaining. Not one of my favorite books, but not bad either. ( )

I liked the beginning, it had a super interesting premise. I had a bit of a hard time following some of the sudden jumps in perspective and I did not really fully understand the ending :/ . I noticed the "moral" of the story seemed really similar to Stephen King's 11/22/63 (I know it was written earlier). Basically that you should not try to live out of your time because no time is fundamentally different. ( )