Book Review: Impossible Times Trilogy
I think George RR Martin, the writer of Game of Thrones, said that there are two kinds of writers; there are ‘architects’ who planned the story from the start, and they are ‘gardeners’ who planted the seed for the story and tended it till it grew. I think the writer of the Impossible Times trilogy is the former, because the trilogy wrapped around itself quite nicely. The story came around full circle and the last book answered most if not all the questions from the first book.
It is impossible to review the whole trilogy without giving away the end of the first and the second book, but what can be said about the book is the main character is a smart guy who manages to time travel. And like most time travel stories there’s always a love story in it. It reminds me of the Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which I like a lot. What’s different is this book has villains, AND it goes a lot of the details of the time travel, or at least seem to make the main character clever enough to appear it’s possible to invent time travel. This are the weak points for the book. Firstly, the villain is a crazy kid who simply have an unyielding will that made him so powerful and feared. There’s no other power than that, but the main character and his friends can’t even beat him and goes through hoops and loops to beat him. This happen with even the latter book where the villain changes but the main character still can’t stand up to these baddies. It feels like the writer just want to progress the story through showing how the main character “cleverly” defeats the bad guy. Just shoot them already, is what my reactions normally are while reading this.
Secondly the book tries way too hard to humblebrag how the main character is so clever and all. It also doesn’t help that the side characters are all one sided, and barely develops over 25 years of the books. The writer even symbolises these characters through them playing a dungeon and dragon games where the main character is a wizard (because he is smart), the playboy friend as a knight (because he is more flaunt and brawn, and less brain), his savant friend as a thief (I guess because he likes numbers?) and the love interest as a cleric (because cleric = nurse?). To add to that, in every book, the real situation that they face in real life, is somehow mirrored in this D&D game. I know this is a science fiction book but to ‘mysteriously’ link it to games that they incidentally were playing, seems to make the story feels a bit cheap, and contrived. I frankly fast-read sections where the story describe about the role-playing game.
Other than that the book is quite interesting with some unique and funny concept in time travel. There are some bombastic words that detracted to the reading but bar that, these were easy readings. Would not exactly recommend the books for fans of science fiction but they’re not too bad.
Thank you for reading.
