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This is a feminist punk queer tîme travel novel, which
will probably be enough to sell it for many readers.
A group of time traveling cis and trans women and
nonbinary folks Suspect a competîng set of cis male
time travelers are
trying to create a version of history
where women are never allowed to vote. Tess,
protagonist, is determined not only to stop them but
to make a world with strong reproductive rights. But
she gets a little sidetracked when she decides to try to
change part of her own
our
past.
In a time travel novel, there is a whole system of time
travel which must be imagined, explained, and then
accepted for it to work. For me, the book didn't wholly
Succeed in its effort. I appreciated how different
Newitz's system was, it doesn't feel like one
seen before. But when you get into a story where the
whole premise is changing the past, it can
a muck of explanations that aren't always worth the
trouble. You can
you've
dig you into
get a little stuck here, the time travel
mechanism and the repercussions never really gel into
Something that is easy to explain
or understand.
I actually find the parallel story of teenage Beth. Her
story intersects with Tess's attempts to fix her own
past, and the simpler story of Beth and what happens to
her was much more
emotionally satisfying for me.
While I like the overall aesthetic Newitz is going
for, I don't think this book played to her strengths
quite the way her previous novel did. She's great at
complicated, twisty, sci-fi plots. Here there isn't much
hard science at all, and with just philosophical questions.