Paris Adrift

by E. J. Swift

Determined to escape her old life, misfit and student geologist Hallie packs up her life in England and heads to Paris. She falls in with the eclectic expat community as a bartender at the notorious Millie's, located next to the Moulin Rouge. Here she meets Gabriela, a bartender who guides her through this strange nocturnal world, and begins to find a new family. But Millie's is not all that it seems: a bird warns Hallie to get her feathers in order, a mysterious woman shows up claiming to be a chronometrist, and Gabriela is inexplicably unable to leave Paris. Then Hallie discovers a time portal located in the keg room. Over the next nine months, irate customers will be the least of her concerns, as she navigates time-faring through the city's turbulent past and future, falling in love, and coming to terms with her own precarious sense of self.

• ISBN10: 1781085935
• ISBN13: 9781781085936
• Publish Date: 8 February 2018 (first published 6 February 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 27 January 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Solaris
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://rebellionstore.com/products/paris_adrift

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Paris Adrift is a standalone dystopian SF/fantasy by E.J. Swift. Due out 4th Feb 2020 from Rebellion Publishing, it's 250 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats (ebook available now). It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is shelved as dystopian speculative fiction, and it is, but what it struck me as primarily is character driven quest fiction. The friends surrounding and helping protagonist Hallie are growing and exploring the increasingly unstable timeline and trying to prevent the end of everything. The main value for me came from the character development and interaction, the scenery and descriptive prose. It's not an action packed read. The denouement is gentle, almost anti-climactic. Much of the plot centers around bar life and working conditions and rang believable and true.

I enjoyed the read, it was absolutely not what I was expecting, but it was beautifully written nonetheless. There are some slight elements of graphic body horror and descriptions. The language is R rated, but nothing extremely egregious.

As a small bit of nostalgia, the eARC of the book contains blurbs from several of the publisher's other imprints and backlist authors. I enjoyed the bonus and a couple of the blurbs appealed to me and I'll be chasing them down. It's always a good day when I find new authors to explore.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

[Witty and Sarcastic Bookclub]

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with this book in exchange for my honest opinion. This will be available on February 4th.

What first interested me in this book was its comparison to Midnight in Paris, a movie that I love. I can’t say I see much of a resemblance, aside from the obvious (they both involve Paris), but I’m grateful for that blurb because otherwise this book might have passed me by.

Hallie is our main character, a woman who feels out of place in her own skin. She’s decided to travel to Paris, more to run away from something than to run toward anything. There, she gets a job at a bar and joins an eclectic group of friends. She finds a sense of family, a boyfriend, and-oh yeah- a time anomaly in a taproom. Soon, Hallie is traveling through both the past and future, making changes. Whether she’s fixing things, or causing irreparable damage remains to be seen.

On the surface, my description probably makes this book sound like a lighthearted romp. It isn’t at all. It explores the idea of small changes having big impacts, discusses problems in our present, and touches on themes of self-acceptance and change. It does all that in a fast-moving, unique way. I loved it.

There were several things that set this book apart from other time-traveling books. There wasn’t nonstop action, the futuristic gadgetry wasn’t everywhere, and a good chunk of time spent was actually traveling to the past as opposed to the future. I tend to shy away from books involving time travel because it’s hard for me to handle the problems that tend to arise when writing about that subject. This book handles those stumbling blocks with aplomb.

I liked the bohemian feel of the group of friends, how they were all dissatisfied with how the world works and desperately wanted to affect change, but were unsure how to start. I think many people can relate to that (and no, I’m not going to start a religious or political argument, I promise). I actually think the conversations Hallie had with her friends were some of the most interesting parts of the book. You know a writer is talented when the musings and dialogue are just as interesting as any action scene, if not more so.

While there was a climax of events, what I most enjoyed was how things got there. The ending, while good, almost didn’t matter because the meat of the story was so well done. I definitely recommend reading this one.