Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

[sa090]

It’s been a long while since I read a science fiction book, and I don’t think I read one like this book this year just yet.

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Time travel can be a very messy thing to try and incorporate into a story, depending on how in-depth and more importantly, how thorough you want to be in your explanations of the mechanics. In this book Ryan Graudin gives us a world that has already discovered time machines, so in turn we’re given the results of the discovery and an outlook on what they have already worked out instead of getting into way too much technical details of how these machines are built and operated. That in itself can be a double edged sword. For instance, if I’m prioritizing the events of the story + trying to make a more accessible world for my readers, this approach would work out pretty well given that too much technicalities might be a turn off for some. However, this approach also makes those who are crazy for details feel like it’s too light on them.

In this book, for me at least, Ryan Graudin managed to avoid potential outrage by how she made the time machine a secondary thing in the story and prioritized other things that didn’t need as many explanations. When the protagonists are basically preforming heists and using the time machine as a means of transportation, it made me think of it as a some sort of vehicle instead of this very advanced piece of technology so the information she provided about the operations and the mechanics was sufficient for this piece of writing. Moreover, her own way writing of very fast paced action, fast paced events and adding twists here and there makes it very easy to just get sucked into the story without minding that minor detail. Of course, she does provide information, but since I love tiny tiny details, I’m glad that I wasn’t bothered when she didn’t answer all my questions about it.

The fast pace she incorporated into the story would’ve probably worked better if we are taking this standalone book as a series, I mean it works for what she was going for but when everything is going way too fast, it’s not so easy to see how skilled the team is or how they’re really planning their heists. Moreover, it makes it a little difficult to get a real grasp of the places they’re visiting because they’re spending so little time appreciating them and spending more time trying to accomplish the goals in the already small time frame allocated for the missions. This would’ve also bothered me to a much bigger degree, if she didn’t keep adding her twists. Whenever I discover something new, it makes it have more sense as to why she’s doing it this way than not.

The characters themselves were interesting, my favourite would be Imogen for how coluorful she was in this book. Easily the friend who takes everything by storm and makes your head spin trying to make sense of it. Compared to the rest of the crew, she was a bit of a breath of fresh air. It’s not that they were suffocating, but they felt like they were trying to fit into certain molds I’ve seen many many times while she just operated according to her own wavelength and everyone had to get on it. I think given how this book went, the main thing I disliked about the book was the romance. It felt like it was added because this is a YA and not because it was needed or made the book better. Thankfully we skipped some of the annoying tropes in it but yeah, wasn’t a fan.

I didn’t know that the book was a standalone until about half way through it, I mean with the way most of it went, it was either a duology or a standalone but I’m glad that it was a standalone because I really miss reading those. I do want to read more similar books tbh, heists being the center point of it, not necessarily through time. Might be finally time to put Six of Crows on the monthly TBR :)

Final rating: 3.5/5