This sci-fi isolated murder mystery follows January Cole - security officer at the Paradox Hotel. The Paradox is located a few miles away from the time travel portal (timeport) that takes the ultra-wealthy to different times and places in the past. Being this close to the timeport has some strange effects on the hotel including occasionally making the clocks run backwards and allowing ghosts to roam the halls (if the rumors are to be believed). January is no stranger to the oddities of time travel but the corpse in room 526 that is frozen in time and only able to be seen by her is odd, even by January's standards. A mysterious dead guest would be trouble enough but the US Government has decided to privatize time travel technology and they just moved up the bidding date. And to top it all off, a snow storm traps the guests, weathly bidders, and a murderer all in the Paradox. January is uniquely qualified to investigate this crime but when she can slip so easily between past, present, and future, it isn't always simple to keep the investigation on a straight path.
TW/CW: grief, terminal illness
This book was pretty close to perfect for me. I absolutely loved the setting, characters, and how Hart was able to blend the sci-fi/mystery/thriller elements together. That being said, I think like most genre-mix books that it doesn't really go far enough into either genre for real hard-line fans to be satisfied. So if you're looking for a super technical and detailed sci-fi read or a super twisty murder mystery, this won't really hit those ends of the spectrum. I've been explaining this as sort of a David Tennant-era Doctor Who vibe. It starts out a little campy and funny but as the story progresses it gets slowly darker and darker which I absolutely loved.
So I'd categorize this as a 'soft sci-fi' read. Time travel is a central topic but the story takes place inside the Paradox Hotel so it felt more grounded in reality. We don't really get an explanation of how, exactly, the time travel works and we never directly see anyone time traveling. We do get an explanation of how the scientific community pictures the concept of time (past/present/future) and how travel works inside that model. I found the description very brief but straightforward and then I just accepted it and moved on with the story. I also thought the story stayed within those pre-defined boundaries of how time travel works in this world. I don't read a ton of sci-fi so maybe someone with more experience reading time travel books would have a laundry list of questions but I personally didn't. This book is set in 2072 so pretty near future and I think that time period worked really well for the atmosphere and setting Hart built. We do see some technological advancements such as these little personal assistant floating robots (who I pictured as looking like Eve from Wall-E but with a sarcastic attitude).
I absolutely loved January as a protagonist but she's going to fall into the 'unlikeable' category for some readers. She's super sarcastic, irreverent, and has a huge chip on her shoulder. We find out in the first chapter that she's suffering from a degenerative disorder from traveling through time so often in her previous position as, basically, a time cop. This disorder is causing her to not stay grounded in the present and her mind slips suddenly to past or future moments where she feels like she's actually in that moment but her body is in the present. The disorder can be managed with medication but is eventually fatal and January has just been slipped to the next stage of this disorder. On top of this, she is also struggling to mourn a death of someone close to her that happened recently. She does come across as pretty harsh and even mean at times but I think she has a really great character arc throughout this story. I think she's a wonderfully crafted, complex character. She is a really great twist on the typical no-nonsense female detective we see in a lot of mystery stories. The surrounding cast of characters were slightly less developed than I would have liked but I think they each had a really strong voice and place in the story.
The narrative style, from what I saw from other reviews, is a sticking point for a lot of people and I agree it is probably the most divisive part of the book. I absolutely loved it and felt like it worked so well as a plot mechanic as well as allowing the reader to connect more directly with what January is going through. We get to see, directly, these time slips that January experiences and they are simultaneously jarring but also immersive. January will have these slips where she'll suddenly be in a past or future moment and they happen pretty suddenly and without much more warning than a ringing in her ears. In a similar way, Hart incorporates these slips into the narrative pretty suddenly and they are confusing the first few times they happen. It almost feels like a whole new scene was copied and pasted into the wrong spot, which is sort of exactly what is happening. These happen with increasing frequency as the story progresses and January's condition worsens. I can completely see how some readers would find this too distracting and these narrative choices could take them out of the story completely. For me, this was such as visceral and immersive way to really get across what these time slips that January experiences are really like and how serious her condition truly is.
I do think the murder mystery aspect is the weakest aspect of the book but I still found it interesting. There aren't really any big or unexpected twists like you might have in a straight-up mystery. Also, I think the whole aspect of the hotel being snowed in was really underplayed. Isolated mysteries are one of my favorite tropes because of the tension constantly flowing under the narrative that someone in the hotel is a killer. In this case, I don't think that tension was really built at all and, in fact, there were complete stretches where I forgot the hotel was snowed in until some character would mention checking the coffee rations or something like that. The investigation does get pretty tense since January is the only one who can see this dead body and when the severity of her condition is revealed, many of the other characters are quick to dismiss her as being confused by the time skips she's experiencing. The actual solution to the murder mystery was both really interesting and really basic at the same time. On one hand, I was a bit disappointed because I do love a good twisty mystery reveal but on the other hand, it was great because it goes to show that even with all this great technological advancement, you just can't always change some base human natures.
Overall, this was pretty much everything I could have wanted from a sci-fi murder mystery with great characters and an intriguing plot. I do think some readers may have a hard time with the genre-mixing and narrative choices but they really worked for me.
Thanks NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC
Expected publication date is February 22, 2022
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