The Grandmother Paradox (Place in Time Book 2)

I received this novella (as well as the first) from the publisher via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer Program.

This engaging sequel to The Continuum takes one of the side characters, Chandler, and gives him the starring role in a mission to the past. In the first novella, Elise traveled to the future to track down Chandler, a rogue agent living in a new technological marvel. It turned out Chandler wasn't such a bad sort, and that his employer, TUB, was the dark entity in the new time travel industry. Well, TUB blames Elise for some bad things that happen in the future, and therefore they aim to attack her very existence by trying to kill one of her ancestors.

This is where Chandler comes in. He's sent to protect Elise's distant relative show more Juliette during a vulnerable time when she spends the summer of 1893 traveling as the assistant of a sideshow magician. This allows the book to not only explore what magicians were like in this period, but also leaves room for some climactic action at the Chicago World's Fair.

This is a fun, fast read that brought to mind old favorite shows like Quantum Leap and Sliders. It's not aiming to be gritty and realistic, which is good, because I needed something light that made me smile. The romance within the book is a bit predictable, but the end still brought many twists and surprises. Nikel has created something delightful and fun in this series. show less

In this sequel to The Continuum, Elise's great-great-grandmother, Juliette, is in trouble. Because it would be too dangerous for Elise to meet her direct ancestor, Dr. Wells asks Chandler to travel back to 1893 to protect Juliette from harm. Juliette is a magician's assistant in a traveling show in the Midwest, and Chandler has to convince the show's owner to take him on as a hired hand.

I didn't like this characters in this sequel quite as well as those in The Continuum. I had hoped it would continue Elise's story. It did, but without Elise's participation. On the other hand, I like time travel into the past better than time travel into the future, so I enjoyed the setting more. The Chicago World's Fair provides the backdrop for the show more climactic scenes.

It's best not to think too deeply about the logic of time travel. Dr. Wells tells Chandler that “it's important...that Retrievers not cross paths with their direct ancestors.” Yet Dr. Wells later reveals that Elise had gone back into the past and became his grandmother. How is this any different from a Retriever crossing paths with a direct ancestor?

Like the first book in the series, this book has a cliff-hanger ending. I look forward to finding out how things turn out for Elise, Chandler, Juliette, and Dr. Wells.

This review is based on a complimentary electronic copy provided by the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. show less

This was an interesting and entertaining second book to the series. I was more caught up in the first of the series, The Continuum, and this one keeps a good pace with well-thought out and enjoyable differences. I’m looking forward to reading more from this author.

This book is a bit difficult for me to review. It's an intriguing premise, and I enjoy a good time travel story as much as the next nerd, but this one fell flat for me. Much of the story seemed rather formulaic, and the characters were fairly flatly drawn. I actually felt that this book was a step down from the previous story, which I felt had more originality and a more interesting plot. I do need to add a caveat: my reception of this book is inevitably colored by the authors choice to write in first person present throughout the book. I dislike the use of first person present as anything other than a tool used in a brief passage to provide immediacy to the description of a crucial moment or situation. I find its use as a writing style show more off-putting. If that bothers you as well, you probably won't particularly enjoy this book. If you don't mind first person present, and are in the mood for a light-hearted time travel story, this may be the book for you. show less

I cannot wait for the next book! I enjoyed this volume even more than the first. Time travel is tough to do and do well. This volume is less about Elsie and more about Chandler who becomes the main character in this episode. It is in this book you realize that maybe the series is in fact about Dr. Wells. I love the intricacies of the time travelers and how they meet up.

The book is well written and enjoyable within one to two days of dedicated reading. Perfect for vacation or air travel.

While I enjoyed the story and the playful whit between the characters I still feel like these books could be longer. There could be more mystery and suspense. They are so good that I want more.

This book and its proceeding book are actually novellas -- they both clock in at about 100 pages. They also follow different characters and have different settings. So it's not surprising that both books feel a little simplistic and predictable. I thought the character dynamics and the point-of-view writing was a little bit better in The Grandmother Paradox than in its predecessor The Continuum but the setting and the plot were more interesting in the Continuum (the future!). From what I can tell, this author is transitioning from writing shorter fiction to slightly longer fiction. I think that this try was more successful at capturing character, a critical feature for longer-form fiction, but it lost the special spark of interest that show more short stories often have. If you're interested in time travel and short stories, I would check out the Continuum, but I wouldn't check out this book unless the next installment is more interesting. show less

I think I liked the first book a little bit better, but this is still a pretty compelling sequel. It picks up shortly after Continuum and gives us a better look at Dr. Wells and Agent Chandler as well as introducing Elise's grandmother, who is definitely a fun character. I think it would have been better if it was a bit longer because the whole thing felt kind of rushed, but overall it was a fun story and I'm definitely interested to see where it goes from here because they kind of backed themselves into a corner with that ending. Still, a well done time travel story is hard to pull off and I can find no major flaws here.