Reviewed by Angie on
One thing that kept me distracted about A Thousand Pieces of You from the very beginning was this revenge plot. I loved the idea of following a criminal through parallel universes, but in this case, there was no basis for it. Like I said, it jumps right in, so we have no idea what exactly happened. But then it turns out that Meg and Theo actually have no idea what exactly happened. They left on this mission the very next day. Paul had only been a suspect at that point, and Theo kept pushing that Meg, her sister, and mother are in danger from him. But...neither of you know that he did it? So how do you even know that he would come after anyone else? They didn't even stick around to see the body. Just grabbed their Firebirds and started universe hopping. I don't think so.
Then there's the matter of the actual multiverse travel. It's explained pretty well, in a few info-dumps at the beginning. I don't think there's any other way to present this information, and I thought it was very interesting. I liked that only energy was transferable. They hadn't gotten to matter yet, which makes a lot of sense. Except that for 300 pages(!!!) I was wonder what happened to Meg, Theo, and Paul's bodies. Were they just laying around where they left them? They certainly didn't come with.
Then we're told what happens, which was not interesting or believable at all, because they didn't develop a way to do that which is why their bodies were left behind in the first place! And then I had to wonder what happened to a certain character who was returned to their body which was in a very inconvenient and dangerous location, because their consciousness is returned to wherever it had been last. It's a quick, simple solution but it doesn't make sense given what we know about how this works.
Along those same thoughts, A Thousand Pieces of You makes it clear that time travel is not involved in moving between universes. You always appear in the new world at the exact time you left the old one. But does that mean the exact same time and date? Or the same "biological" time? If it's the former, what would happen if Meg went to a world where she was born ten years later? Would she inhabit her 8 year old self's body? We see a world where she has different siblings, so it's not much of a stretch to imagine her born at a different time. The story makes it seem like it's the latter, because she's always in her familiar body, as are Theo and Paul, which would imply that in the worlds where all three of them exist, they were still born at the same times. But it's also the former because it's always the same time of day. It seems unlikely that both events would always be in alignment, unless they're able to somehow choose worlds where this is so.
Which brings to me the fact that I had to roll my eyes at how Paul knew exactly which of the trillionbilliongillion universes to set his Firebird to. How can he possibly know how mathematically different the worlds he needed to end up in were? They could have been wildly different or super similar or anything inbetween! In fact, it's possible that the worlds he was going to didn't even have a version of him in them, and therefore he wouldn't even be able to get there! Same with the bad guy who's going from world to world. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it all nagged at me.
Clearly, my brain was working overtime during A Thousand Pieces of You. There were too many pieces that simply didn't fit for me. I did love the middle portion of the book where Meg winds up in a world where the Industrial Revolution hadn't happened yet. That was super interesting! But then the traveling stuff started up again, and obvious reveals were obvious, and more questions.
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Reading updates
- Started reading
- 5 November, 2015: Finished reading
- 5 November, 2015: Reviewed