It's funny how one work can be read so many different ways. On the one hand, this is an inventive romp through 1600s & 1800s in England and Egypt with magic, the concept of the pre-destination paradox and a whimsical explanation for some of the poetry of the time. On the other, it's tedious, self-congratulatory nonsense that is really excited about giving an elitist, whiny and essentially useless main character his best ever life.

CONTENT WARNING:

Spoiler

motorcycle accident, body horror, torture, casual misogyny, attempted rape, rape as motivation, medical experimentation, clowns

Things to appreciate:

-Predestination Paradox. This is probably one of the better time travel books in that the author took the time to work out how to make the timelines consistent with what's actually happened, and explain how the timeline corrects.

-Poetry in scifi. It's not often, and it could be of interest to fans of Lord Byron.

-Gallivanting fun. If you can get past the uselessness of the MC, there's all sorts of adventures in interesting locations!

Things off which I bounced so hard I bruised my desire to read:

-Does not age well. The g-word for the Roma diaspora is EVERYWHERE and just makes me wince. Also every woman is literally just a sex partner for the men, and all the tired things that just exhaust me thinking how hard so many of us had to just grin and bear if we wanted to read any fiction at certain points in our lives.

-The bad guys. Okay, so they're annoying, especially when they start rhyming, but I also never understood what they wanted, how they started or why, by the time we meet them, their power has waned.

-The good guys. Doyle grated on my every nerve, from his lengthy dissertation on his favorite Scotch, his whinging on a plane about his substandard scholarship and subsequent reviews, his complete lack of survival instinct in a bad situation, the number of times his butt gets saved and he's a total wretch to everyone around him...just man oh man! This guy is a mess! A mess who ends up getting every one of his dreams fulfilled, and a pretty new wife even while he's still dreaming about his former wife's brains all over the highway. Gross. I don't know why he was immune to the effects of the situation that caused his good fortune, either.

-A bit messy. So, some of this might be because of my skipping around a bit once my interest finally gave out. But I felt like we put certain things down and picked new things up and added new named characters and explained things waaay too late.

In short, this wasn't for me, I do not like time travel books, and I'm glad I can delete this off my Kindle now.