Wednesday, February 22, 2017

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai- Book Review

It isn't often I get to start a book review with a disclaimer. The disclaimer is this- I received this book for review from NetGalley, but I had already purchased the book from Amazon just a few hours prior to getting the ok to review it. So, I wound up reading the finished version of the book rather than the galley, but I wanted to be up front that I had received a copy free for review as well.

 When I had read the description of this book, I got really excited about it- time travel, disjointed time lines, and a person living in our world even though it should be a different world. What I wasn't prepared for was how technical this book can get, which was kind of fun, but might not be for everyone. I'll give you an example, our protagonist early in the book explains time travel and stated that movie time travel is impossible because the Earth is also spinning as well as going around the moon, so jumping backward in time in the movies doesn't account for the world's rotations. Except the protagonist continues to explain this using math and science.

This isn't the only instance of this in the book, but I wanted the reader to be prepared that this tries to be a very scientifically based in reality book on time travel and it takes a bit of getting used to.

 The book is divided up into three acts, essentially:

 Act 1- Is Tom Barren, who lives in 2016, but a much advanced 2016 due to a science experiment in 1965, is a stand in for a group of time travelers who are going to go back in time to witness this great experiment. Act 1 is his story in that time period. Something goes wrong, no spoilers, and Tom makes the jump back in time.

 Act II- Tom has gone back in time, made a mistake (again no spoilers), and now is in a different timeline when he goes back- namely our 2016. Since he was never born, due to his mess up, he now inhabits John who has a different life than Tom's. The difficulty is John is still a part of Tom's consciousness.

 Act III- Is where things get super messy, like really super messy and might lose a few people. Without spoiling, Tom/John must go back and try to fix the mistake. The problem is both Tom and Tom/John both exist now and a second mistake will happen which will create a new personality all trying to inhabit the same body/consciousness.

 Going into it, I wasn't aware of these three acts which is why I wanted to lift them up into the review as they read like three separate books. It got a tad bit confusing since the book is written as a journal, so you don't know who is writing as the book progresses.

The book also gets a bit messy at the end, but not so much that I got lost, but I could see people quitting toward the end IF they hung on through the second act, which is also messy.

 I really enjoyed that this tried to be as scientifically accurate as possible. It reminded me of the movie Primer in that sense. Yes, there is time travel, which is fantasy, but the very idea that one tiny mistake really can create a butterfly effect makes sense. This also might be the detriment of the book to some. I enjoyed it though.

 I gave this one 3.5 stars.  

 Here is your Amazon link- All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

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