Timebomb

Timebomb
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Borrow
Source: Copy courtesy of Bookbridgr

New York, 2141, Jana is on top of a skyscraper surrounded by dodgy blokes after her head, she does the only thing she can think off.....she jumps. But she never hits the ground.

Cornwall, 1640, young Dora is working at Sweetclover Hall, she's new to the Hall, but she knows enough to know what goes on there. However, when she hears a strange noise, she follows it to find a badly burned woman at the bottom of the stairs. A woman who knows who she is. Wanting to help her, Dora reaches out to touch her, she's knocked out and blasted through space. When she wakes? She's in a laboratory in the future, with Lord Sweetclover.

Present day, Kaz is wandering the Cornwall lanes after fleeing from his last workplace when he stumbles upon the long abandoned Sweetclover Hall. He's only after a dry place to sleep, but he gets so much more. When he enters the building, he finds Dora and Jana, both with no idea what the hell is going on.

The three are thrust in to an adventure that spans millennia, when they flee the laboratory they end up back in Dora's time...sort of. See they end up about 5 years out from the year Dora mysteriously vanished, and they couldn't have come back at a worse time really, you see the English Civil War is in full bloom and they're just in time to be harassed by Parliament soldiers....soldiers who are then facing....Celts? There's something strange going on, and it's not long before they face a mysterious woman named Quil, and her army of men pulled from different eras, or Sweetclover, the villainous douche. It would appear, however, that while they don't know Quil....she knows them.

Timebomb is certainly unique, I've not encountered anything like it before, you're caught up with the characters, blasting through time and in the same boat as them information wise. Timebomb doesn't mess about, it's all action straight from the start, and the pace doesn't slow down at all, despite the hasty pace, you can still get a strong feel for the characters.

Each was very different, and each had a strong personality in their own way. Dora, at first seemed a bit timid but rather sweet, then you get to know her a bit more and you realize she's incredibly stubborn, and i'm intrigued about the elder her you got a glimpse of. I did chuckle a bit at her questioning of modern things, but she was very witty and intelligent. Jana is probably my favourite because her snark is on point. She's blunt, she doesn't sugar coat and she's very confident and not afraid of anything really. Kaz was quite a lovely person, I wasn't sure on him at first, but he was so lovely and patient with Dora, you really watch his confidence grow throughout the book, and he's kind of a hero!

It was a fairly fun read, at the points when I did get quite in to it, but I did have parts of the book where I was a bit meh. At points I felt like it was bit too rushed. There was a lot crammed in to the book, and genre wise with all the different genres thrown it, it was fun and it worked, but with other things it was a bit like "really...AND that?". While I did like seeing the future selves, it was also a bit confusing at times with all the people running about.

I felt like some of the explanations where really lazy. You don't find out why they can time travel until the end, and I kind of felt like it was a bit half assed, there was a vague explanation and then nothing really added up and I wasn't convinced by it. The world didn't feel as extensive as it could have been, it was quite condensed, and I didn't really get much of a mental image or feel for the time, there was a lack of explanations, and I don't know why exactly, I can't put my finger on it, but I felt like the travel was overused I suppose? There was almost too much going on at points, like they went back to Dora's time and they just so happened to land smack in the middle of the civil war and Jana just so happened to know aaaallll about it thanks to her chip. Really didn't buy it.

I'm undecided as to whether I'll pick up the second book or not, because while I am intrigued, I just had a bit of a love hate thing with this book, parts where too rushed, I couldn't get in to it at the beginning or at other points, I got frustrated with all the coincidences and strokes of luck, and the explanation was so blah.