The story is fun, action-packed, and the characters are solid enough. The technical chitchat about the “timeline self-intersecting loop” (a.k.a. “time machine”) made my eyes glaze. The author is a physicist; I imagine most readers are not. It was over my head! 

I did find some thought provoking ideas in both the concept of time-travel (whether one travels back into their own universe or an alternate) and in the theological debates, though they both got a little repetitious. The tests to the characters' faith(s) nicely ratcheted tension.

I found the descriptions of the setting a little too light to make me feel completely immersed. It was suggested that the characters saw a lot they'd come to expect, but that it was "different." I wanted to see more of how it was different, and more (besides the difficulty of male/female social customs) about how the characters experienced this journey through their senses. It seems like it would be completely jarring.

I'd have liked to give this a higher rating than three stars because the writing was decent, because of the aforementioned thought-provoking, because it was a clean read, and because there was plenty of action. But the antagonist was weak and clumsy, and made a poor foil. Then the ending was an obvious cliff-hanger, and the epilogue was sappy.

There is compassion in this writing, a feeling of acceptance and love both for all things normal, and all things different. 

 

I loved the setup for this story, and I love how the language flows. Seriously well-edited texts are such a treat. I only noticed one wrong verb usage, a couple of typos, and a brand name that was misspelled. That’s really, really good, these days.

 

But. I got confused with so many POVs. Too many characters for only 190 pages, and I must confess I was quite confused when we travelled into the minds of five whole different people. A little bit disappointed that the old trope that bisexual people are promiscuous. Can we please stop it, and soon.

 

I am a sucker for the insta-love trope, and here it was simply brilliant. I also loved that the women weren’t all painted in a bad/good color, as so often happens. They were real people, one of whom even redeemed herself. Full points for that one.

 

Everybody has secrets. I would have liked this story even more, had it not been set in the glamorous Hollywood. It kind of made the “problem” so much bigger—needlessly so, as the problems Zack and Sky would be facing are quite daunting all on their own in a normal setting; it didn’t need the added pressure of fame. It actually took away a little bit of their complete anguish. Because, mark my words, there was anguish here.

 

I love the debunking of the idea (quite common, still), that bisexual men are gay men who haven’t come all the way out of the closet yet.

They are not. The just simply like both men and women, as a preference for a potential partner.

 

The struggle is real. Transgendered people, pre- or post-op, and bisexual people, while still part of the LGBT community, are sorely underrepresented in today’s literature, and seem to be quite invisible, at times. The same goes for bisexual people.

 

So I am giving this book five stars for taking the dive into this universe.

 

And for doing it well, I might add.

 

 

***

 

I bought this book with my own money.

 

Abbé Mouret's Transgression - Émile Zola... Introduction

--Abbé Mouret's Transgression

I downloaded this as an Amazon freebie because I like time travel. I didn't really know what else the book was going to be about to be honest. I'd recommend you not to read the full blurb since it's one of those that tell so much about the story already.

 

American archaeologist Rivka (who happens to know a lot of dead languages by the way) learns about Ari and his time travel device and gets trapped in the Jerusalem of 2000 years ago.

 

At first I thought the book was a bit too strong on the religion side, and although is was more interesting since I know less about the different groups of Jewish faith but there's a scene particularly anti-Christian (and I don't like my books anti-anything). I was afraid this would be the tone for the rest of the novel, but luckily, although religion does seem to play an important role in the rest of the novel it didn't feel pushy anymore and it didn't really bother me.

 

Rivka's transgression into the new society is very smooth. She happens to know the language and figures out extremely easy how it's supposed to be spoken. There are a few mentions in the beginning of her finding the right wording, but after that she can hold very long and difficult conversations. The same goes for the rest of her transgression. The story that Damien tells her is utter crap and I can't believe she fell for that even in the beginning.

 

Besides these things I did find myself enjoying the novel, but not so much I'm already planning to read the rest of the novels. Perhaps some day.

 

Transgression is the first book in the City of God series, the other books are Premonition and Retribution.

As it states, this is a short story at 25 pages, but oh, does it pack a punch. I was breathless, eating up each page to see what was going to happen next. The reader learns a bit about Nathan, before the war. He's a jerk, but we get to see the side of him that is dying for his fathers attention. We learn how just by trying to make his father proud, he ends the world as we know it. We also get to see him try to make a wrong, right, while in the middle of a living hell.

In 25 pages, my emotions ran from one end of the scale to the other and back and forth. I felt disgust, sympathy, anger, pain, fear and much more. For an author to do this with a short story, that author has mastered the art of storytelling. I bet her campfire stories keep even the forest creatures too scared to rest! The suspense, the doom, the ending, oh my!

This is a must read for those just starting this series and for those that have read Sovereign and The Offering. Both groups will be wanting more. I recommend this for anyone who likes the post-apocalyptic genre.