Time Tourist Outfitters, Ltd.: A Time Travel Adventure

by C N Jackson, Christy Nicholas

318 pages, Hardcover

Published April 17, 2024

Reviews

[Lori]

I originally gave this three stars, but as I wrote about it I began to wonder why I would even like this story that much.

You feel like some people are being introduced into the story because they’re going to play a pivotal role later. When your hunch is right that they’ll pop up, their role ends up being something very meh. Bryonie? Sir Algernon? Miss Prissy-Pants? Etc.? I still don’t understand why the whole genealogical mystery of the three Patient Zeros was even a necessary plot point. That ended up being a nothing burger. Maybe that just makes Wilda’s and Mattea’s investigations more realistic because it explores the boringness of chasing dead ends?? I also don’t know why Makenzie tried to take the baby, or what even happened to the baby. There were things that could’ve been explored and made interesting that just weren’t.

The ending felt anticlimactic and predictable. There was this catastrophic plague happening, but hardly any build up in the urgency about figuring it out except for Wilda and Mattea being told that people were in hospital/quarantine and that a few had died. The bulk of their adventures into the past were spent noting down fashion trends, collecting samples, and talking to people. I didn’t feel the urgency of their mission. It seemed like their last stop was set up to end with some potential exciting action, but then it was over. We find out what happened via a retelling of facts by Mattea when Wilda regains consciousness. The cause and solution to the plague was so tidy and boring in the end.

We finally find out Wilda’s big story, but then nothing comes from finding it out. Where is the big turning point in her character arc? Where is her personal growth and what are we supposed to expect will change in the future if we keep reading the series?

After all that, it just felt like a bit of a slog to get to the end. Even though there was a set up to have some intrigue with apartments being ransacked and plots to help the villain escape custody being discovered, the whole aftermath of the time-travel adventures and the criminal trial felt low-stakes and ho-hum.

The political commentary intermixed with the storyline was also meh. In real life, I agree with some of the points being made (hello, vaccine paranoia), but I didn’t like it in the story. Maybe it felt too true to life in some ways, and I like to read fiction to escape reality.

[Ian]

OK, but I am unlikely to read any more books in this series.

[Edwin Downward]

Overall, I thought this was a well written and compelling exploration of the whole time travel question with rich characters I could well imagine bumping into at each stage of the journey. My one complaint is the number of times I was feed information the author had already made clear to me with little effort to switch it up or add new details.

[Bill]

An older woman gets called back into service for the time bureau to find out what is killing time travelers.
Her younger female assistant falls in love with a tribe member many years in the past, while they uncover a smuggling ring and deal with a rogue time traveling policeman who is on the same mission they are

[Karl Schaeffer]

I enjoyed this book and am enjoying the series. An easy read.

[Linda]

The first chapter was so silly I almost stopped reading but after that it settled into a decent book.

[Ursula Fricke]

DNF @ 23%.