Categories
Review

“The Paradox Paradox”

Daniel Hardcastle

This… is one of the greatest books I have ever read. I’ll tackle the easy thing first: the comedy is sublime. Not surprising, given that Hardcastle is one of my favorite YouTubers, and has been for checks notes over a decade. He’s got this ‘entertaining people’ thing down.

Next easiest to tackle: the cast and setting. The cast is delightful, a wonderfully diverse mix of species, and watching them all interact is an absolute delight. Everyone is likable, everyone has a fascinating backstory, every last one of them I want more of. And the setting is absolutely gorgeous; it has that Douglas Adams feel of some of the details being played purely for comedy, but every last one of them still works. Like, towards the end, there’s a throwaway line about banana peels having been re-engineered to be edible centuries ago, and it’s meant as a joke about the fact that they still taste like the wrong kind of banana the same way all fake banana stuff does, but that works. Centuries of scientific progress, and of course we’d have some little detail like that that we’d hang on to for the sake of nostalgia rather than sense. The future won’t be shiny and perfect, but it will be shiny, and full of interesting decisions that people have made because they’re still people.

And now, the hardest bit to talk about, particularly without spoiling anything: the time travel. It’s named “The Paradox Paradox,” of course it’s about time travel. But this is, I think, the best-thought-out system of time travel I’ve ever seen. I’m not entirely certain that I’m grasping the whole of it, but it all works. And the way the book is put together makes it work even better – the chapter numbers are chronological, the chapters themselves are not. Because it’s a book about time travel, of course the sequence of events doesn’t follow the calendar! But, beyond that, the chapter numbers don’t match the table of contents. I was reading this on an e-reader, one that shows the chapter title up at the top of each page, and those don’t always align with the actual title card at the beginning of the chapter. You can’t trust the chapter numbers, but they are deeply meaningful. They just might be lying to you. And it is sublime.

I finished this book feeling a sense of awed delight. This is a masterwork, this is one of the greatest things I have ever read. I cannot recommend it highly enough; please read it.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores.
Categories
Review

“Signal Moon”

Kate Quinn

This is one of those stories that, going in, you know is going to hurt. Voice-only time travel does not a happy ending make, especially across 80 years. But it’s still worth reading—it’s quite short and to the point, and very effectively told. Spend an hour being sad.1

  1. This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do.