Timebound: The Chronos Files, Book 1

I found Timebound while searching for best sellers to use as advertising targets for my own time travel novel Untimed (I’ve been experimenting with Amazon’s new do-it-yourself ads).I’m glad I did.At a certain level Timebound shares common DNA with Untimed. They both feature teen protagonists who discover they are time travelers and get dragged into a complex temporal war. There are other time traveling relatives and both mythologies even have “books” that to some extent chronicle/reveal/inform. But most of these similarities fall naturally out of the basic “teen discovers they’re a time traveler” idea. I will note that Untimed was published a year earlier, but even if Rysa Walker happened to read it, she has her own tale to tell.I should note that I half read half listened this this book, utilizing Amazon’s awesome Whispersync. The narrator is phenomenal too.Kate’s first person narrative is extremely compelling. She speaks in typical past tense in this first outing, but switches into a lightweight present tense in the second book. The voice is light on description, sticking mostly to people, clothing, time travel equipment, and necessary details. It’s longer on Kate’s internal processing, but uses this to deftly bring our plucky protagonist to life. While she superficially resembles many modern YA heroines, being smart, pretty, courageous, resourceful, and the like, Kate manages to maintain a unique personal feel. Namely, she feels real and essentially human. She acts consistently, and has her own constantly evolving opinion and a strong moral compass.The balance in this first book favors characterization and “world building” over action and even historical exploration. The opening stresses the family dynamics almost more than the time travel revelations. The inciting event (act 1/2 break) is a 1-2 punch as much about meeting her Grandmother and discovering she’s dying as the temporal shift that deletes Kate’s reality and parents (shades of Untimed as well!). There is a well handled but highly deliberate love triangle involving present day boyfriend and a time traveling past boyfriend who remembers her from another timeline. This is actually one of the better love triangles I’ve seen, because it feels both natural and has a natural pathos that flows out of the timeline shift. Book 1 concentrates on present boyfriend — and on the present itself as well as time travel mythos and mechanics. We don’t actually travel anywhere substantial until about the 75% mark. The romantic elements feel slightly injected at times, but are natural enough and not in the least melodramatic.This is not really an action book, although it is fast paced and tense. There is a lot of talking and planning and perhaps 75% of the novel occurs inside Kate’s house! The narrative and characters are compelling enough to overcome that locational limitation.Both boyfriends are well developed, although past boyfriend is mostly a child in this first book (sounds more twisted than it is). The parents, aunt, etc are well characterized. The villains are not as strong as the positive supporting characters. We have the time wrecking mastermind grandfather (barely seen but much heard), medium-bad prophetess aunt, the smirking thug Simon, bitchy Eve, and the creepy and effective 1893 serial killer Holmes (my favorite, as I love a good creep).The past, when Kate gets around to visiting it, is confined to Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition. The overall focus is more personal, involving the survival of Kate’s grandmother and the interaction of the time travelers, than largely historical. Untimed explores the role of the individual in big historical techno-socio-political currents, Timebound focuses on the relationships and cat and mouse between the travelers. Walker did a good job with her period research. Her 1893 feels like late 19th century America. It’s not highly descriptive, but the behavior of the people and general attitudes seem appropriate. It even smacks slightly of Bioshock Infinite, without all the steampunk and weirdness (although I loved that too). I’ll contrast this with a book like Clockwork Angel (gag me with a spoon) where everyone acts like a 21st century snarky teen in Victorian clothes (except the outfit on the cover is more Edwardian — sorry Cliff). As I mentioned before, I like the addition of the authentically creepy real-history serial killer. But part of my point here is that the “scope” of historical interaction isn’t huge in this first book, but it is a decently different era. This is no Tempest where all the time travel is within 15 years. It’s clear Walker loves history, but she concentrates her efforts more on the characters, time travel mechanics, and meta plots.Which brings us to bad grandpapy Saul and his evil Cyrist church takeover. Liked it. This was both a sensible take on world domination, a clever way to utilize the abilities of a time traveler for “gain,” and a felt creepy and realistic. Somehow, the Cyrists seem very American and perhaps makes me wonder if Walker is an apostate member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Or maybe she just really enjoyed The Book of Mormon (the musical).What follows now is a fairly technical discussion of time travel mechanics:Walker’s time travel mechanic is very different than in Untimed, and simultaneously easier to write and more complicated. It would never work, and doesn’t really make total sense (more on this in a second), but it serves up compelling time travel fiction. It falls into the un-predetermined category like Untimed (Time Traveler’s Wife featuring the predetermined type with a single complex timeline). She does support an endless changing “leading edge” or five dimensional meta-timeline like Untimed, but it’s probably closer in spirit to Back to the Future’s system. Causality loops back endlessly in a way that would be very difficult for the Universe to actually compute. Essentially, changes are percolated forward, recomputing everything that is not protected by a technological field (maintained by the Chronos Medallions). This recompilation is apparently instantaneous and continuous as things leaving the field will “correct” (disappearing photos or people and the like) and that new computation will percolate forward. Where it breaks down is that there is no clear elucidation of the relationship between 5th dimensional time in normal 4th dimensional advancement. Let me (partially) explain.If Kate were to change something in the past, then hop forward to her home time. Another traveler uptime of the change, say Pru, protected by her Chronos field, would notice. Kate and Pru are both free to react to this change and proceed with their next meta-temporal move. But who gets to go first? Well in this case, whoever the author feels like it. Say this attempted change is far back in the past. All (or many) uptime versions of the effected individual would have the opportunity to notice the changed timeline and decide to take action. But which one does? Is it 1:28pm Kate or 2:05pm Kate who takes action? Clearly they all can’t. In practice, while writing the book, there is a “current” narrative version who reacts. But the time travel mechanic doesn’t appear to actually narrow this down. This is why Untimed‘s system allows only one actual version of a time traveler in the timeline at any given 5th dimensional meta-moment.Timebound also allows loopbacks, self changes, dual memory headaches and the like which don’t make total computational sense. How does the Universe even keep track of all that? Does it have unique IDs for every molecule? Some kind of object tracking system? Computing the loops is a form of the Halting Problem and has been proven (by genius Alan Turing) to be unsolvable in the general case. But none of these technical problem really matter in a work of fiction. From a storytelling point of view Timebound offers a very compelling time travel system with lots of interesting characteristics, limitations, and powers. Book 2 explores it more fully too.There is also a fairly consistent but loosey goosey treatment of the “butterfly effect.” In this book, things tend to mostly play out the same way if the people basically do the same thing. There doesn’t seem to be a huge sensitivity to minute changes. I.e. slightly altering the timing and whereabouts of the young Katherine in 1893 doesn’t seem to drastically alter her later life and its relationship to the time modifications. People also tend to mostly be preserved, with their circumstances changing around them. This is people centric and I did basically the same thing in Untimed when repurposing the same people in Philadelphia 1.0 and 2.0 (British America 2012). It makes for better storytelling.All in all, a great novel, and a fabulous addition to the time travel genre (which clearly I have a positive bias toward). I jumped right into book 2, read that, and am sad I have to wait six months for book 3.Andy Gavin, author of Untimed and The Darkening Dream

Summary:Prudence Katherine Pierce-Keller (she likes to be called Kate) is a relatable 16 year old girl dealing with her parent's divorce and what has been wrongly diagnosed as panic attacks, living a fairly normal life until her grandmother drops into the scene from out of nowhere with what seems to be a magical amulet and a crazy story that both raise more questions in Kate's mind than answers. As the book progresses, all of those questions lead to more questions but along the way she learns about her grandother's mysterious past, and a threat to her own existance is posed-- which Kate herself must thwart with her natural talent, quick intellect, and martial arts skills (She has a brown belt in Karate. In the timeline that she actually exists in, anyways). During her adventure she makes the acquiantance of two young gentleman-- one from our present day and one from the past. The potential for romance is there for both of these guys-- basically they Can Get It. Their relationships with Kate unfold very differently. However, both have a pretty significant impact on the story and get their action moments with her. READER, IF YOU DO NOT LIKE LOVE TRIANGLES, PLEASE STILL GIVE THIS BOOK A CHANCE. I don't even like love triangles (I am very exhausted of the whole trend and ready for something else as a main emotional plot) and I kind of like this one. If you want to know why, keep on reading.TLDR Summary: In this YA novel about a teenage girl from a time-traveling family, a relatable, funny, and deep main character is tasked with going back in time to save her grandmother so she and her mother can actually exist and there are also two really cute guys and a crazy cult and the threat of an apocalypse and..... wow there is no way to TLDR this. Just read the book okay.Review:I literally just finished reading this book a couple of minutes ago and I immediately jumped on Amazon to post a review. I'm still processing how I feel about this book so if it seems a little haphazardly put together I apologize.First of all, let's talk about Kate. I really, really love Kate, for mainly one reason-- she's very relatable. A lot of times the line between a relatable main character and one that you kind of just slide yourself into can be blurred (example: Bella Swan. I used to be like YEAH BELLA SWAN SHE IS AWESOME because I guess I inserted myself into her place. This is not what I'm talking about when I say relatable.) She's relatable because she has normal problems. Her parents are divorced (it seems to be kind of recent? I don't remember the details exactly) and she is shuttled back and forth between them. I know from experience that having that kind of uprooted sense of home is not fun. She has a history of what was diagnosed as panic attacks-- even though we find out something special about those, and they are not actually panic attacks-- and I think it's really really cool to see a main character with a problem like that instead of just the "I don't fit in but I'm perfect" kind of thing.Another thing I love about this book is the world building. Yes, Kate is a normal girl living in our time, but the future that is described in this book is really really awesome. I don't want to give too much away but the world building is spot on!Now, let's get down to business and talk about this love triangle. Dude, I really hate love triangles. I initially was going to say something along the lines of "this is my only real criticism of this novel" but then I thought about it more and... this love triangle is just DIFFERENT than all of the other YA love triangles you see floating around. It's because two seperate Kates from two seperate timelines have been in love two seperate times. But, our Kate is the one that has to deal with this fall-out. The more I think about it, the more it seems like this is the only kind of love triangle that really makes sense. Other YA love triangles are like this: Dude likes girl and girl likes dude back, but there is another dude that likes the girl too and she could totally see herself with him and one of them is a more healthy choice but the other one is soooooo passionate oOoOoOoOo~~DUMB.This love triangle is way less dumb and, for once, actually justifiable by the story instead of just there to add unnecessary drama. I was about to explain it in detail, but I think you should find out for yourself how it's different and kind of awesome (: You know what? Don't even think about it like a love triangle. It's a love river that diverges into two different love streams and they are both awesome and fun to kayak in. Or something.Bottom Line: Well thought out characters, relationships, and universe make this page-turner of a YA time-travel novel enjoyable and satisfying on all levels. Recommended for people that like YA adventure, time-travel tropes, and everything else that is good and right in the world!

I adore time travel stories, always have ever since I first saw The Time Machine (the original, of course) about 50 years ago and was totally mesmerised when the little model version he builds first is set going and disappears from the table top, travelling off in time for ever. I thought deeply about that for weeks afterwards, wondering what would happen to it.The way that time travel is implemented in this story is actually pretty complex, with the travellers not only frequently encountering other versions of themselves but actively exploiting this paradoxical feature, and yet it is handled really cleverly and you never end up scratching your head trying to grasp what is happening. Having seen that this won a Young Adult Fiction prize I'm not entirely sure that I'm the target audience the author had in mind (as you can tell from the fact I watched The Time Machine nearly 50 years ago) but it really is very good and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and as I write this review I am already well in to the sequel.

What a debut I loved it and I'm confused about any less than stellar reviews. There are a couple of timeline fantasy authors that are well respected and I enjoy but this is my favourite. I'm 41 but the teenage/coming of age aspects didn't detract from the story or bother me as much as they usually do because the supporting actor role of Katherine the grandmother was just incredible and because all of the characters, young and old were so well drawn.

Certainly exciting and a time travel novel with a heroine and written by a woman is something a bit different. The female perspective is evident in the descriptions of what the characters are wearing. The story is fast paced but at times it is difficult to follow why some things are affected by changes to timelines and others aren't. This may become clearer as the series develops and as this is the first of said series the others should be well worth reading.

This timeless saga is something for teens to turning greys.My 70+ mind reaches back to my youthful past and is never quite sure what is fact and what is fiction, but this fantasy soars way beyond those realms and transports the reader to a whole new way of being. It is full of action, adventure, happiness, sorrow, comfort, hardship, and, just about every emotion imaginable. My tired eyes often cause me to listen to audiobooks, but the best of reading is that your mind visualises the author’s words, not the narrator’s concept.This is definitely a book for reading - and for anyone with time to come back to in small bursts or read in a marathon chunk. I will watch for more of this author.

The writing was ok.I found the storyline and the characters to be very wooden.It was so confusing.A good imagination by the author but so hard to follow.I had to read for my book club but I found myself speed reading it after 50 per cent.