Reviews and Comments

I was entertained throughout. Charles is ... delightful seems the wrong word, but I can't think of the right one. The humour was understated, which I appreciate, and as an entry to the author I am very pleased to have been able to buy the book and support him.

Oh, twisty and turny in all the right places, fabulously contrived and with lots of questions put to bed in unexpected ways. And a lovely final chapter that made me smile!
A few proofing errors and typos, which really annoys me with a big publishing house, but the story really makes up for it. Very much worth my time.

Every time I start one of these series I say I'm not going to get hooked. Then it's 4 in the morning and I have work but that's only a few hours away so why stop now? Not worth sleeping anyway, is it?

This was vintage Litrpg, of course, but with parenting! Seeing what the kids could do, having a badass mom running the show, the very idea that it's not just you or you and your pet was a nice twist. Very much enjoyed. Must read more!

Some of the humour was good, I was reminded of Mary from the TV show Ghosts. And there was a certain warmth and masculinity about our traveler, I enjoyed hearing his voice in my head in a sort of Churchillian growl.

That said, I didn't connect with the Bridge, and so didn't enjoy the story as much as I was expecting. I'd been looking for a Jodi Taylor or Jenny Colgan and got something a bit different.

It bothered me that this was an audible Original before it was available to read. Sawyer obviously wrote the words before people could perform them and, in an ironic twist as a blind person, I don't actually like audiobooks so that kinda got under my skin. Not a problem with the book, just its release.

Also, to spin the ironymetre further, I read this at a time after a particularly strong set of Coronal Mass Ejections have set the night skies ablaze, and given how many times they're referenced in this story I had a bit of a kick out of that.

Good story otherwise, as is typical with one of the grandmasters of science fiction. The interview style worked well, although nobody's quite done it like Sylvain Newvel yet. Some nice throwbacks to Asimov, too. Worth the read, but not the hype.

Captivating and slightly unnerving, I found myself turning the pages and rather addicted. The ending was a bit of a let-down in comparison to the buildup, but each of the previous cycles built interestingly on the former and I found myself coming away very satisfied overall.

This felt like something out of Peter Cawdron's imagination, it had a great first contact feel about it but with perhaps an extra layer of the mundane to add realism. Some pretty passages and thoughtful insights too.

I always say I’m not a big Litrpg fan, which is true; I don’t read much of it. But I do seem to very much enjoy the books in the genre I have read! I pre-orderd the second of these on the way to work this morning, so that holds true here, too. And great author alias to boot.

I think the shock reveal at the end of chapter 36 was my favourite. Connor as a character is interesting, and the whole idea is, if not quite a refreshing take on the genre, certainly a very nicely handled execution. I didn’t want to put it down, picked it up in my lunch break, and am not looking forward to wait an entire month for the next one!

I really wanted to enjoy this more, and there were great glimmerings, too. But a few things stuck in my craw, particularly the seeming disconnect between the younger people and the adults, the overused trope of 'things' in the 'timestream' and, of course, the reliance on the paradox of being in two places at once. It's unfair because these would work well if you weren't already saturated with the genre, but originality is hard to come by when you're pushing the bounds of theoretical time travel.

"It’s strange how the world can turn on dimes this banal. If history had any sense of propriety, exciting things would happen in exciting settings, preferably scored by John Williams."

I got into this eventually, although trying to read whilst a lot of festive things happens around one with a story of such breathtakingly short chapters with so cleverly put-together words is a struggle. I've enjoyed Peper's other works a lot and getting into the mindspace of the lead proved a bit of a jump here, but I'm very glad I did and am ready to pick up more of the books to see where things go, or have been. I caught the nod to Reap3r and found this a clever noir look into Peper's world.

EHO's become a staple of Doug's latter work and I really enjoyed the recruitment here. Things got a bit higgledy-piggledy when we started going all uber fast mental time and optical computers hosting people rather than AIs. The Genesis of these ideas has been present in other works and it's quite strong here.

The final reveal is masterfully done, if a touch obvious to a long-time Doug fan, and this is another fabulous entry in his chronicles.

Stories where some technology does weird stuff black mirror style can be quite compelling. The writing here had that odd, diffident British feel to it which made it a bit tricky to get into the headspace, and there is a lot of progress for the sake of the plot which stretches credulity on occasion. The names felt a bit weird at times, the twin thing in particular was a wrench and I was a bit disappointed that we never found out how she knew what she knew, if I can speak in circles to avoid spoilers.

Not a bad work, but with definite areas to polish.

I don't know where this fits into Graham's other works, it feels like it has the seeds of other things but also that it stands alone.
it was at once uplifting and quite horrifying. The Australianness shone through almost as strong as with Time and Tyde, and there's quite a bad picture of Humanity painted. Still, a lot of ethical considerations to ponder and very much a blow to the wow factor of transhumanity