Here and Now and Then
From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood
A Goodreads Choice Awards 2019 Semifinalist
One of BookBub's Best Science Fiction Books of 2019
One of Book Riot's Best Books of 2019 So Far
One of The Nerd Daily's Best Debut Novels of 2019
Featured in The Millions "A Year in Reading"
One of Entropy's Best Fiction Books of 2019
He'll go anywhere and any when to save his daughter
Kin Stewart is an everyday family man: working in IT, trying to keep the spark in his marriage, struggling to connect with his teenage daughter.
But his current life is a far cry from his previous career...as a time-traveling secret agent from over a century in the future.
Stranded in suburban San Francisco since the 1990s after a botched mission, Kin has kept his past hidden from everyone around him, until one afternoon, his "rescue" team arrives--eighteen years too late.
Their mission: return Kin to 2142, where he's been gone only weeks, not years, and where another family is waiting for him. A family he can't remember.
Torn between two lives, Kin's desperate efforts to stay connected to both will threaten to destroy the agency and even history itself. With his daughter's very existence at risk, he will have to take one final trip to save her--even if it means breaking all the rules of time travel in the process.
"Heartfelt and thrilling... Chen's concept is unique, and [his characters'] agony is deeply moving. Quick pacing, complex characters, and a fascinating premise."--Publishers Weekly, starred review
A Goodreads Choice Awards 2019 Semifinalist
One of BookBub's Best Science Fiction Books of 2019
One of Book Riot's Best Books of 2019 So Far
One of The Nerd Daily's Best Debut Novels of 2019
Featured in The Millions "A Year in Reading"
One of Entropy's Best Fiction Books of 2019
He'll go anywhere and any when to save his daughter
Kin Stewart is an everyday family man: working in IT, trying to keep the spark in his marriage, struggling to connect with his teenage daughter.
But his current life is a far cry from his previous career...as a time-traveling secret agent from over a century in the future.
Stranded in suburban San Francisco since the 1990s after a botched mission, Kin has kept his past hidden from everyone around him, until one afternoon, his "rescue" team arrives--eighteen years too late.
Their mission: return Kin to 2142, where he's been gone only weeks, not years, and where another family is waiting for him. A family he can't remember.
Torn between two lives, Kin's desperate efforts to stay connected to both will threaten to destroy the agency and even history itself. With his daughter's very existence at risk, he will have to take one final trip to save her--even if it means breaking all the rules of time travel in the process.
"Heartfelt and thrilling... Chen's concept is unique, and [his characters'] agony is deeply moving. Quick pacing, complex characters, and a fascinating premise."--Publishers Weekly, starred review
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Community Reviews
Writing a time travel novel is kind of like writing a vampire novel - there are certains rules that must be followed, but other than that, the only thing an author must do is create a world with internal cohesion. Mike Chen has definitely created a world that holds together. His time travel agents have strict rules they must follow in order to prevent the timeline from corruption, and even the more technical explanations (of things like the "grandfather paradox") are eminently understandable.
Unfortunately, his characters and their relationships don't get the same attention. At first, I thought the lack of depth in the future was deliberate, to reflect Kin's initial feelings of disconnect when he returns to his own time, but I didn't begin to feel more connected to those characters as he apparently did. We're told that his feelings return for his fiancee return, but never really shown it. On the other hand, the present-day characters felt much more fleshed out, but we don't actually have much interaction with them once Kin returns to the future.
So, it's a plus for world-building, a negative for characters, and there's another plus for the actual action of the story. Kin's various attempts to reconnect with and then save his daughter shine through with his intensity, and Chen's determination to stay within the rules that he's created add a sense of urgency and truth to his actions. If you do the math, world-building + action - character development = an eminently readable book, if not one of the best time travel books I've ever read.
Unfortunately, his characters and their relationships don't get the same attention. At first, I thought the lack of depth in the future was deliberate, to reflect Kin's initial feelings of disconnect when he returns to his own time, but I didn't begin to feel more connected to those characters as he apparently did. We're told that his feelings return for his fiancee return, but never really shown it. On the other hand, the present-day characters felt much more fleshed out, but we don't actually have much interaction with them once Kin returns to the future.
So, it's a plus for world-building, a negative for characters, and there's another plus for the actual action of the story. Kin's various attempts to reconnect with and then save his daughter shine through with his intensity, and Chen's determination to stay within the rules that he's created add a sense of urgency and truth to his actions. If you do the math, world-building + action - character development = an eminently readable book, if not one of the best time travel books I've ever read.
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