Twisty sci fi through time!

⏳ Kindred by Octavia Butler

⏳ We follow Dana, a Black woman who is unexpectedly portaled back through time to the antebellum South alongside her white husband. She has to figure out her link to the past before she gets trapped in time, and her journeys get more and more dangerous.

⏳Octavia Butler is a genius, and this novel feels just as relevant now as when it was written in 1979. It is absolutely terrifying, and doesn’t shy away from trauma - please see the content warnings at the bottom - but it’s brilliantly crafted. You’ll experience the echoes and impacts of white supremacy on each page.

🤖 The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart

🤖We follow January Cole, the head of security at a luxury time-travel hotel. Any job where you’re providing customer service to the ultra-wealthy can be a nightmare, but add in advanced tech, dinosaurs, and murder … and you’ve got a tornado. On top of all that, January is “Unstuck”: aka, she’s losing her place in time, snapping between past and future moments.

🤖January isn’t the most likable protagonist. She’s snarky and sometimes cruel, and makes some decisions that you as a reader probably won’t find relatable. But she’s grieving - and she’s got a decent sense of humor & playfulness about her - so at least in my case, I was rooting for her all the same.

🤖This was FUN! Anything that includes velociraptors is a win for me.

🌊 Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

🌊 We follow three timelines across time and space in a story with lyrical, dream-like writing and complex questions. We journey from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a colony on the moon far in the future. The characters create art, fall in love, and flee from plagues.

🌊 We cross huge spans of time in this novel, but I wished the writing style would have varied more between centuries. I really enjoyed the weaving together of the stories (though it became a little cliche by the end). This can be read as a standalone, but it does contain references to Mandel’s other works.

Content Warnings for Kindred: slavery, torture, racism & slurs, sexual violence, rape, graphic violence, child abuse & death, mutilation, self harm, attempted suicide, grief

Content Warnings for The Paradox Hotel: blood, grief, death, terminal illness, chronic illness, murder, gun violence, drug use, injury, animal death, transphobia, homophobia, psychosis, dysphoria, classism, addiction, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts, war, antisemitism (there’s a trip back in time to Nazi Germany), fire injury, cultural appropriation

Content Warnings for Sea of Tranquility: chronic illness, confinement, death, colonisation, murder, gun violence, suicide, war, alcohol, pandemic, sexism

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