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saerryc's review against another edition
4.0
I read this following Sherwood Smith’s review and I liked it a lot. I think I was most impressed by the prose and the pacing. There’s a lot going on but the structure is fairly concise, giving it a thriller-like feel. I also liked that there was more to the premise than just “time travel!”; the cannibalistic and rather creepy Hunters are a highlight, especially how, despite all appearances, they’re not entirely unsympathetic once you get to know them. This small-press book deserves more than the <20 goodreads ratings it currently possesses.
errantdreams's review against another edition
4.0
Time travel. Ah, time travel. It’s so hard to do right, and often best when kept simple. The author has clearly put a lot of thought into it, but it definitely isn’t kept simple. It isn’t bad, and mostly makes sense. But when a Timewalker creates a new timeline, and that timeline only exists because they do, it becomes difficult to see any high stakes in the threatening of bystanders. After all, can’t the Timewalker just create a new timeline in which they’re all alive? So does death of a character even matter when you know there are potentially infinite variations of that character? Ultimately wouldn’t there end up being so many Timewalker-dependent timelines that none of them could be considered to really “exist” without the Timewalkers? It’s hard, as a reader, to buy into life-or-death struggles when they’re so easily undone. Also, since it seems fairly easy to split off a new timeline, it’s hard to understand why it doesn’t seem to happen more often, and it’s hard to see how the Timewalkers can so reliably find their way to exactly the right timelines.
Some of the side characters don’t have as much depth as I’d like. Erik is close to being a one-note psycho; Ms. Y pretty much is a one-note psycho; Mr. X at least gains some interest toward the end of the story. X and Y do find some unusually clever ways to interfere with the Timewalkers.
The story is interesting and clever, but it falls short of being amazing.
Original review posted on my blog: http://www.errantdreams.com/2019/04/review-unraveling-timelines-lise-breakey/
Some of the side characters don’t have as much depth as I’d like. Erik is close to being a one-note psycho; Ms. Y pretty much is a one-note psycho; Mr. X at least gains some interest toward the end of the story. X and Y do find some unusually clever ways to interfere with the Timewalkers.
The story is interesting and clever, but it falls short of being amazing.
Original review posted on my blog: http://www.errantdreams.com/2019/04/review-unraveling-timelines-lise-breakey/
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