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The Paradox Hotel
An impossible crime. A detective on the edge of madness. The future of time travel at stake.
January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.
Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past.
Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls.
None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see.
On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.
January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders.
There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once.
But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own.
January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.
Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past.
Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls.
None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see.
On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.
January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders.
There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once.
But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published February 22, 2022
About the author
Rob Hart
50 books798 followersRob Hart is the author of THE PARADOX HOTEL. He also wrote THE WAREHOUSE, which has been sold in more than 20 countries and been optioned for film by Ron Howard, as well as the Ash McKenna crime series, the short story collection TAKE-OUT, and SCOTT FREE with James Patterson.
His short stories have been published widely, including “Due on Batuu,” set in the Star Wars universe, which appeared in FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and "Take-Out," which appeared in BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2018.
He’s worked as a political reporter, the communications director for a politician, and a commissioner for the city of New York. He is the former publisher at MysteriousPress.com and the current class director at LitReactor. He lives in New York City.
His short stories have been published widely, including “Due on Batuu,” set in the Star Wars universe, which appeared in FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and "Take-Out," which appeared in BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2018.
He’s worked as a political reporter, the communications director for a politician, and a commissioner for the city of New York. He is the former publisher at MysteriousPress.com and the current class director at LitReactor. He lives in New York City.
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May 26, 2022
The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart
Paradox Hotel detective, January Cole. is Unstuck. Because she worked as security for the U.S. government's time travel organization for years, traveling to various time periods to thwart people who try to alter the present and future by changing past events, her mental state is degrading. With increasing frequency, January is finding herself in past and future moments and she is unable to control when these "skips" happen. She won't admit to her boss that she is in Stage 2 of being Unstuck but instead claims she can continue to do her job while in Stage 1. Soon she'll be in Stage 3 and that is lights out for January, she'll be comatose and unable to take care of herself.
My favorite character in this story is Ruby, January's hacked drone who has been allowed to develop a snarky personality due to January hacking it. The book is full of characters, way too many characters, with hotel employees, four trillionaires, who are in a bidding war to take the time travel enterprise private, the minions of the trillionaires, "ghosts", and the hotel visitors. Add in that January is experiencing past, present, and future events and things are pretty confusing. It's bad enough that January is having these "skips" but something is also very wrong with the time-travel technology and the present timeline. Creatures from the various time periods are showing up in the present timeline, the master clock is malfunctioning, someone is trying to kill off the trillionaires, and the security video and other hotel tech has been hacked.
On top of all of that, January's boss wants her gone from the hotel because her state of mind is interfering with her decision making skills. Oh yes, and there is a huge snow storm that traps everyone in the hotel, with not enough rooms and with super rich tourists making impossible demands. Despite how confusing things were in the first part of the book, I thought I was keeping up pretty well. Sure, I didn't understand half of what was going on but once we get to the climatic show down scenes, I was lost. After I finished the book and tried to work through what had happened at the end, I realized that I couldn't remember what had happened because we aren't shown that pivotal scene. Yes, January is an unreliable narrator but I need the story to be more cohesive for me to be satisfied with the end result.
Pub: February 22nd 2022
Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books and NetGalley for this ARC.
Paradox Hotel detective, January Cole. is Unstuck. Because she worked as security for the U.S. government's time travel organization for years, traveling to various time periods to thwart people who try to alter the present and future by changing past events, her mental state is degrading. With increasing frequency, January is finding herself in past and future moments and she is unable to control when these "skips" happen. She won't admit to her boss that she is in Stage 2 of being Unstuck but instead claims she can continue to do her job while in Stage 1. Soon she'll be in Stage 3 and that is lights out for January, she'll be comatose and unable to take care of herself.
My favorite character in this story is Ruby, January's hacked drone who has been allowed to develop a snarky personality due to January hacking it. The book is full of characters, way too many characters, with hotel employees, four trillionaires, who are in a bidding war to take the time travel enterprise private, the minions of the trillionaires, "ghosts", and the hotel visitors. Add in that January is experiencing past, present, and future events and things are pretty confusing. It's bad enough that January is having these "skips" but something is also very wrong with the time-travel technology and the present timeline. Creatures from the various time periods are showing up in the present timeline, the master clock is malfunctioning, someone is trying to kill off the trillionaires, and the security video and other hotel tech has been hacked.
On top of all of that, January's boss wants her gone from the hotel because her state of mind is interfering with her decision making skills. Oh yes, and there is a huge snow storm that traps everyone in the hotel, with not enough rooms and with super rich tourists making impossible demands. Despite how confusing things were in the first part of the book, I thought I was keeping up pretty well. Sure, I didn't understand half of what was going on but once we get to the climatic show down scenes, I was lost. After I finished the book and tried to work through what had happened at the end, I realized that I couldn't remember what had happened because we aren't shown that pivotal scene. Yes, January is an unreliable narrator but I need the story to be more cohesive for me to be satisfied with the end result.
Pub: February 22nd 2022
Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books and NetGalley for this ARC.
April 20, 2022
My last reviews of 2021 is coming up! I’m still heartbroken that we lost Betty White as I’m writing this review! I thank her for being our friend! And here comes my review:
Westworld meets Fantasy Island with Jurassic Park vibes could be definitely proper cure for mediocre sci-if fan for me!
Think about a hotel designed for Musk, Bezos, Arnault, Gates to help them time travel: going back and forth between any time zone to take care of their top secret businesses.
When I read about space travels of ultra rich groups and watched the final scene of Netflix’s dark and also entertaining satire Don’t Look Up, world building the author created in this book seemed more reliable.
The chief of security of the hotel is also our main unstuck character January Cole who is about to lose the last remaining marbles. She acts like night manager of Overlook or famous DTLA Cecil Hotel moving between different time zones to get flashes but she gets Haley Joel Osment-ed by catching glimpses of ghosts lurking around the hotel. I somewhat found her a little bit irritating and hard to connect with. But a character who suffers from deep grief, working under unconventional situations has every night to be annoying so I got her way of perspective.
The mystery part about a culprit who messes with the timelines by making crucial changes in the past which will immediately affect our near future kept me hooked.
The execution of the plot was complicated. The book totally requires your full attention to get the proper development. January was not our ideal hero to catch the bad guys to save our future but you get used to tolerate her!
Overall: it’s sarcastic, dark, smart, complex, bizarre story! The writing style a little exhausted me with its complexity but it was still unique and foreboding plot which has credibility that makes it more horrifying! I’m rounding up 3.5 stars to 4 sci-fi, time travel, beware of T-Rex stars!
Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/ Ballantine for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.
Westworld meets Fantasy Island with Jurassic Park vibes could be definitely proper cure for mediocre sci-if fan for me!
Think about a hotel designed for Musk, Bezos, Arnault, Gates to help them time travel: going back and forth between any time zone to take care of their top secret businesses.
When I read about space travels of ultra rich groups and watched the final scene of Netflix’s dark and also entertaining satire Don’t Look Up, world building the author created in this book seemed more reliable.
The chief of security of the hotel is also our main unstuck character January Cole who is about to lose the last remaining marbles. She acts like night manager of Overlook or famous DTLA Cecil Hotel moving between different time zones to get flashes but she gets Haley Joel Osment-ed by catching glimpses of ghosts lurking around the hotel. I somewhat found her a little bit irritating and hard to connect with. But a character who suffers from deep grief, working under unconventional situations has every night to be annoying so I got her way of perspective.
The mystery part about a culprit who messes with the timelines by making crucial changes in the past which will immediately affect our near future kept me hooked.
The execution of the plot was complicated. The book totally requires your full attention to get the proper development. January was not our ideal hero to catch the bad guys to save our future but you get used to tolerate her!
Overall: it’s sarcastic, dark, smart, complex, bizarre story! The writing style a little exhausted me with its complexity but it was still unique and foreboding plot which has credibility that makes it more horrifying! I’m rounding up 3.5 stars to 4 sci-fi, time travel, beware of T-Rex stars!
Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/ Ballantine for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.
February 22, 2022
Update 2/22/22: Reposting my review to celebrate that today is publication day!
Update: I had a hard time writing this review. The Paradox Hotel is a complex story, and it was difficult to organize my thoughts about it. So after posting my review, I scrolled through some other reviews and found one by someone who said they abandoned the book after reading only 5% because the novel has a main character who’s a lesbian and another character who is non-binary. How amazingly sad that in 2021 people could still have such an attitude. How many great books do you have to avoid if you’re never willing to read about people who are a bit different than you? And the irony of it all is that as I had read the book, I thought that the inclusion of diverse, LGBTQ characters was simply a reflection of the fact that such people exist, and if you have enough characters in a story they won’t all be straight and cis-gendered. But reflecting on that dismissive review, I now think that having diverse, LGBTQ characters was probably a deliberate decision to develop the idea of one’s found family—bonded together in the face of such sad non-acceptance—that I had praised in my original review. So after additional thought, I’m bumping up my original rating from 3 to 3.5 stars.
Original review:
The titular hotel in The Paradox Hotel is the playground of the super-rich before and after their time traveling trips to the past from the nearby Einstein Intercentury Timeport. But times are tough in 2072, and the US government is holding a summit at the hotel in which they plan to auction off the timeport to one of four trillionaires. January Cole is the hotel’s head of security, suffering from both a broken heart following the death of her girlfriend and from a time-traveling sickness that is slowly destroying her perception of reality. As the summit begins, January begins seeing visions of violence and death that has not yet occurred, and she must race against time and her own crumbling sanity to solve the mystery before someone can successfully rig the auction and steal the timeport.
January Cole herself is the best part of The Paradox Hotel. She’s got all the cynical and sarcastic traits you’d expect from a lead detective in a novel with the noir vibes found here. But she’s heartbroken and damaged too, staying in a place she knows is making her ill just for the chance to relive old memories with her lost love. The novel also touches on a number of ideas—grief and loss, found family, workplace drama, and the dangers of income inequality and privatization—that must be rather important to Mr. Hart as they all featured in various degrees in The Warehouse too.
But I struggled a bit with the plot here. There are quite a few rules about time travel and January’s illness, and they are still being introduced even during the climax of the story, which made the mystery portions of the story rather challenging to follow. And after building to a final confrontation, the novel makes the puzzling decision to have significant portions happen offscreen, or simply be summarized rather than shown. I suspect I won’t be alone in being more interested in January’s personal story, and her relationships with her co-workers, than by the mystery itself. I liked The Paradox Hotel, but it is likely too speculative and out there to have the same mass appeal as The Warehouse.
Update: I had a hard time writing this review. The Paradox Hotel is a complex story, and it was difficult to organize my thoughts about it. So after posting my review, I scrolled through some other reviews and found one by someone who said they abandoned the book after reading only 5% because the novel has a main character who’s a lesbian and another character who is non-binary. How amazingly sad that in 2021 people could still have such an attitude. How many great books do you have to avoid if you’re never willing to read about people who are a bit different than you? And the irony of it all is that as I had read the book, I thought that the inclusion of diverse, LGBTQ characters was simply a reflection of the fact that such people exist, and if you have enough characters in a story they won’t all be straight and cis-gendered. But reflecting on that dismissive review, I now think that having diverse, LGBTQ characters was probably a deliberate decision to develop the idea of one’s found family—bonded together in the face of such sad non-acceptance—that I had praised in my original review. So after additional thought, I’m bumping up my original rating from 3 to 3.5 stars.
Original review:
In a moment I’ll be gone. Probably reality too. The timestream is broken and I’m the only one who can fix it, but instead I’m dying on the floor. Sorry, universe.Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for sending me an ARC of The Paradox Hotel in exchange for an honest review. I quite enjoyed Mr. Hart’s last novel, The Warehouse, so I was excited to read his follow up effort.
…
“There’s this saying, about people who are born on third base and think they hit a triple,” I tell him. “About the way people inherit wealth and power and think that not only did they earn it, but they deserve it. We deal with a different sort in this place. People who were born on third base and think they built the stadium.”
The titular hotel in The Paradox Hotel is the playground of the super-rich before and after their time traveling trips to the past from the nearby Einstein Intercentury Timeport. But times are tough in 2072, and the US government is holding a summit at the hotel in which they plan to auction off the timeport to one of four trillionaires. January Cole is the hotel’s head of security, suffering from both a broken heart following the death of her girlfriend and from a time-traveling sickness that is slowly destroying her perception of reality. As the summit begins, January begins seeing visions of violence and death that has not yet occurred, and she must race against time and her own crumbling sanity to solve the mystery before someone can successfully rig the auction and steal the timeport.
January Cole herself is the best part of The Paradox Hotel. She’s got all the cynical and sarcastic traits you’d expect from a lead detective in a novel with the noir vibes found here. But she’s heartbroken and damaged too, staying in a place she knows is making her ill just for the chance to relive old memories with her lost love. The novel also touches on a number of ideas—grief and loss, found family, workplace drama, and the dangers of income inequality and privatization—that must be rather important to Mr. Hart as they all featured in various degrees in The Warehouse too.
But I struggled a bit with the plot here. There are quite a few rules about time travel and January’s illness, and they are still being introduced even during the climax of the story, which made the mystery portions of the story rather challenging to follow. And after building to a final confrontation, the novel makes the puzzling decision to have significant portions happen offscreen, or simply be summarized rather than shown. I suspect I won’t be alone in being more interested in January’s personal story, and her relationships with her co-workers, than by the mystery itself. I liked The Paradox Hotel, but it is likely too speculative and out there to have the same mass appeal as The Warehouse.
August 25, 2024
**3.5-stars rounded up**
January Cole is head of security for the Paradox Hotel, a rest stop and playground for wealthy time travelers. Think of it as like a Four Seasons at an airport.
January has worked as a detective in the time travel space for years, traveling back to various time periods thwarting people from changing past, and therefore, future events.
Because of all the travel, January's brain is starting to 'skip', a very serious repercussion of the job. It's a major health concern and it's getting worse. There are moments where it is hard for her to determine what is real and what is not.
There's a lot going on at the hotel, as it is being switched from a government-run entity to a private one. Trillionaires begin popping up, anxious to make bids and secure the hotel for themselves and their interests.
January and the other employees of the hotel are anxious about what may become of their home. So, there's that. Then there's bad weather, people get stuck, and there's a possible murder only January can see.
Oh, and let's not forget the baby velociraptors that someone let loose. They're wrecking absolute havoc!
The Paradox Hotel was a very fun read. It was interesting as heck and contained many aspects that I truly enjoyed.
January was a fantastic main character; she was snarky, multi-faceted and someone I truly enjoyed going along with.
She had suffered a personal loss that was continuing to effect her life and interactions with others. I liked the way that aspect of her life was used to build out her character.
I also really enjoyed the evolution of this story and the exploration of time, however, I will say I was confused roughly 60% of the time.
It had the tendency to be almost too rapid fire, switching settings, scenerios, characters, etc. Hart left me in the dust!
Overall, though it was more fun than frustrating. I really did enjoy my time with this book and look forward to reading more from this author in the future.
I have heard a lot of great things about The Warehouse, so definitely plan to check that one out.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Ballantine Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I appreciate the opportunity to provide my opinion!
January Cole is head of security for the Paradox Hotel, a rest stop and playground for wealthy time travelers. Think of it as like a Four Seasons at an airport.
January has worked as a detective in the time travel space for years, traveling back to various time periods thwarting people from changing past, and therefore, future events.
Because of all the travel, January's brain is starting to 'skip', a very serious repercussion of the job. It's a major health concern and it's getting worse. There are moments where it is hard for her to determine what is real and what is not.
There's a lot going on at the hotel, as it is being switched from a government-run entity to a private one. Trillionaires begin popping up, anxious to make bids and secure the hotel for themselves and their interests.
January and the other employees of the hotel are anxious about what may become of their home. So, there's that. Then there's bad weather, people get stuck, and there's a possible murder only January can see.
Oh, and let's not forget the baby velociraptors that someone let loose. They're wrecking absolute havoc!
The Paradox Hotel was a very fun read. It was interesting as heck and contained many aspects that I truly enjoyed.
January was a fantastic main character; she was snarky, multi-faceted and someone I truly enjoyed going along with.
She had suffered a personal loss that was continuing to effect her life and interactions with others. I liked the way that aspect of her life was used to build out her character.
I also really enjoyed the evolution of this story and the exploration of time, however, I will say I was confused roughly 60% of the time.
It had the tendency to be almost too rapid fire, switching settings, scenerios, characters, etc. Hart left me in the dust!
Overall, though it was more fun than frustrating. I really did enjoy my time with this book and look forward to reading more from this author in the future.
I have heard a lot of great things about The Warehouse, so definitely plan to check that one out.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Ballantine Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I appreciate the opportunity to provide my opinion!
October 15, 2021
Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Time Travel/Mystery
I loved the premise of a hotel for the uber rich who are preparing to take flights into the past. Welcome to the Paradox Hotel - The hotel is going private because it is costing more than it is earning. Trillionares are preparing to bid.
Visiting the past through Timeport costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. You may choose to go back to see the first showing of Hamlet, visit ancient Egypt, a favorite battle, the Triassic period, the Renaissance, and more.
January Cole is head of security for the hotel and she is what they call Unstuck ( your perception of time gets out of whack and fries your brain). She is slipping in and out of reality. She is our unreliable narrator and I had issues with her, I couldn't keep the jumping back and fourth between time periods straight. It went into mind bending territory! This is why it took me so long to finish. I re-read more than a few pages.
If you like time travel and a new spin on it, this may work for you. The plot is quite complex and takes some concentration. You can also expect a time cop, an AI drone, on site costumers for period travel clothing, live dinosaurs, a trip to the nineteen forties and much more.
Loved the blended genres, but I found it hard to follow.
Thanks to the publisher and NG for granting my wish. OUT February 22, 2022
I loved the premise of a hotel for the uber rich who are preparing to take flights into the past. Welcome to the Paradox Hotel - The hotel is going private because it is costing more than it is earning. Trillionares are preparing to bid.
Visiting the past through Timeport costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. You may choose to go back to see the first showing of Hamlet, visit ancient Egypt, a favorite battle, the Triassic period, the Renaissance, and more.
January Cole is head of security for the hotel and she is what they call Unstuck ( your perception of time gets out of whack and fries your brain). She is slipping in and out of reality. She is our unreliable narrator and I had issues with her, I couldn't keep the jumping back and fourth between time periods straight. It went into mind bending territory! This is why it took me so long to finish. I re-read more than a few pages.
If you like time travel and a new spin on it, this may work for you. The plot is quite complex and takes some concentration. You can also expect a time cop, an AI drone, on site costumers for period travel clothing, live dinosaurs, a trip to the nineteen forties and much more.
Loved the blended genres, but I found it hard to follow.
Thanks to the publisher and NG for granting my wish. OUT February 22, 2022
December 23, 2021
Let me be blunt. I am not a fan of science fiction. But I was a big fan of Rob Hart’s The Warehouse, so decided to take another chance on him. The book seems incredibly relevant, as today’s billionaires are all clambering to get into space. In this story, they’re clambering to time travel back to the past.
The book takes place in a hotel for time travelers. The chief of security, January Cole, is losing it. She is what’s known as Unstuck. She moves around in time, sliding forward and backwards for brief flashes. So, when she sees a dead body in one of the rooms, a body no one else sees, she knows what’s coming.
I loved January. She’s got an attitude. Anyone who’s had to manage an insane situation, extenuating circumstances of any kind, especially those involving rich, self important people, will appreciate what she’s going through. Especially a woman dealing with an overload of testosterone in the room.
Hart packs a lot into this book- workplace angst, inequality due to wealth, how we move beyond the loss of a loved one and what constitutes a family. There’s even some Buddhist philosophy for good measure.
This isn’t an easy book to read or comprehend. It requires concentration. There are a plethora of characters to track. I can’t say the plot made a lot of sense, but it was fun. There are some scenes with a Jurassic Park feel to them. I could just see this being made into a movie.
My thanks to Netgalley and Random House - Ballantine Books for an advance copy of this book.
The book takes place in a hotel for time travelers. The chief of security, January Cole, is losing it. She is what’s known as Unstuck. She moves around in time, sliding forward and backwards for brief flashes. So, when she sees a dead body in one of the rooms, a body no one else sees, she knows what’s coming.
I loved January. She’s got an attitude. Anyone who’s had to manage an insane situation, extenuating circumstances of any kind, especially those involving rich, self important people, will appreciate what she’s going through. Especially a woman dealing with an overload of testosterone in the room.
Hart packs a lot into this book- workplace angst, inequality due to wealth, how we move beyond the loss of a loved one and what constitutes a family. There’s even some Buddhist philosophy for good measure.
This isn’t an easy book to read or comprehend. It requires concentration. There are a plethora of characters to track. I can’t say the plot made a lot of sense, but it was fun. There are some scenes with a Jurassic Park feel to them. I could just see this being made into a movie.
My thanks to Netgalley and Random House - Ballantine Books for an advance copy of this book.
December 27, 2021
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Not that long ago, if I read a story in which time travel was possible but instead of it being strictly regulated and only utilized for things like historical research that it was used just for tourism for rich assholes, I’d have said that doesn’t seem very plausible. However, these days I’d say that’s absolutely what would happen if we had time travel because the wealthy will obviously get their way even as it dooms us all.
So in the future time travel is a real thing, and there’s a kind of timeport where the wealthy go to indulge their curiosity, and the place they stay while getting ready to leave is the Paradox Hotel. In the Paradox, January Cole is the head of security, but this was a step down from her old job as a kind of time cop who used to do missions to prevent things like a white supremacist trying to save Hitler at the end of World War II.
Unforunately, extensive time travel can have some nasty side effects like coming ‘unstuck’ so that you start seeing the past instead of the present around you, and this eventually leads to total mind meltdown. January was demoted because of this, but she had briefly found happiness at the Paradox before tragedy struck. Now she’s hiding her worsening condition so that she can stay there and briefly relive her favorite moments when she comes unstuck in time.
Things get more complicated when the government is about to privatize the time travel business, and there’s an important meeting coming up where several rich scumbags with dubious motives will bid on trying to take control of the timeport and hotel. It gets worse when January starts seeing a future version of a murdered man, various weird time related things keep happening, and old secrets related to the core idea of time travel itself start coming out.
There’s a lot of interesting ideas here as well as some cool scenes that put a fun spin on the whole time travel thing. However, overall it lacks the really satisfying feeling of everything coming together like you should in this kind of twisty-turny, timey-wimey kind of plot. It all feels very scattered and kind of muddy.
You could argue that makes sense because our narrator, January, is confused and an unreliable narrator, but she’s also written to be your typical smart-mouthed bad-ass. However, even the stuff that shouldn’t be confusing comes across as wandering all over the place. For example, January is supposedly pressed for time and has too many things to do, yet she just drops everything to go work out at one point. None of it really tracks well, and it all ends up feeling disjointed and unsatisfying.
It’s not a terrible book by any means, and there were elements I enjoyed. It just seems more like a collection of ideas that needed more shaping and editing to turn into a more coherent and compelling story.
Not that long ago, if I read a story in which time travel was possible but instead of it being strictly regulated and only utilized for things like historical research that it was used just for tourism for rich assholes, I’d have said that doesn’t seem very plausible. However, these days I’d say that’s absolutely what would happen if we had time travel because the wealthy will obviously get their way even as it dooms us all.
So in the future time travel is a real thing, and there’s a kind of timeport where the wealthy go to indulge their curiosity, and the place they stay while getting ready to leave is the Paradox Hotel. In the Paradox, January Cole is the head of security, but this was a step down from her old job as a kind of time cop who used to do missions to prevent things like a white supremacist trying to save Hitler at the end of World War II.
Unforunately, extensive time travel can have some nasty side effects like coming ‘unstuck’ so that you start seeing the past instead of the present around you, and this eventually leads to total mind meltdown. January was demoted because of this, but she had briefly found happiness at the Paradox before tragedy struck. Now she’s hiding her worsening condition so that she can stay there and briefly relive her favorite moments when she comes unstuck in time.
Things get more complicated when the government is about to privatize the time travel business, and there’s an important meeting coming up where several rich scumbags with dubious motives will bid on trying to take control of the timeport and hotel. It gets worse when January starts seeing a future version of a murdered man, various weird time related things keep happening, and old secrets related to the core idea of time travel itself start coming out.
There’s a lot of interesting ideas here as well as some cool scenes that put a fun spin on the whole time travel thing. However, overall it lacks the really satisfying feeling of everything coming together like you should in this kind of twisty-turny, timey-wimey kind of plot. It all feels very scattered and kind of muddy.
You could argue that makes sense because our narrator, January, is confused and an unreliable narrator, but she’s also written to be your typical smart-mouthed bad-ass. However, even the stuff that shouldn’t be confusing comes across as wandering all over the place. For example, January is supposedly pressed for time and has too many things to do, yet she just drops everything to go work out at one point. None of it really tracks well, and it all ends up feeling disjointed and unsatisfying.
It’s not a terrible book by any means, and there were elements I enjoyed. It just seems more like a collection of ideas that needed more shaping and editing to turn into a more coherent and compelling story.
April 15, 2024
My thanks to Random House/Ballantine. Rob Hart and Netgalley. I just flat out loved this damn story. It's going to do science things.😕 I'm cool with science, until I'm not! Then I just go with it. This? I went with. Fact is that I loved the entire story line. Best thing about that is that real science?.Ugh, fuck it! I'll worry about that in another life! I'm still not sure how I feel about that ending. I get it, but I wanted otherwise.
February 22, 2022
3.25 time travel stars
I don’t read much science fiction, but occasionally I venture in with an intriguing premise. In this case, we have the hotel where ultra-wealthy guests stay before they go on a time travel adventure. Sometimes the guests arrive in period costume, but right now they are all mad because trips are canceled, and some very odd events are happening at the hotel.
We meet January, she’s the head of security at the hotel, and she used to be a Travel Enforcement Agent, making sure that these travelers to the past didn’t change anything. I honestly found myself wanting to read the book of January’s life then because now she is Unstuck – a condition that happens with too much time spent time traveling. There are some pills to slow down the effects, but it’s basically a death sentence. She gets these glimpses into her past and often looks like she is daydreaming, not the best for a security agent meant to be on her toes!
There’s an important Summit happening at the hotel any day now and top bidders are arriving to buy the hotel. However, security is a mess and January wants to postpone the Summit. January keeps seeing bad things happening and races to prevent them.
January has a cool drone sidekick, and I liked that character a lot! There are also a lot of characters that work at the hotel that are like a family. There are also some ghosts that haunt the hotel.
I didn’t always understand the references and koans (a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment) in this book.
This was a good departure read for me, but complex and somewhat difficult to follow the storyline. Maybe that’s the case for time travel books though!
Thanks to Marilyn for discussing this one with me. And thanks to Random House/Ballantine for the opportunity to read and review this one.
I don’t read much science fiction, but occasionally I venture in with an intriguing premise. In this case, we have the hotel where ultra-wealthy guests stay before they go on a time travel adventure. Sometimes the guests arrive in period costume, but right now they are all mad because trips are canceled, and some very odd events are happening at the hotel.
We meet January, she’s the head of security at the hotel, and she used to be a Travel Enforcement Agent, making sure that these travelers to the past didn’t change anything. I honestly found myself wanting to read the book of January’s life then because now she is Unstuck – a condition that happens with too much time spent time traveling. There are some pills to slow down the effects, but it’s basically a death sentence. She gets these glimpses into her past and often looks like she is daydreaming, not the best for a security agent meant to be on her toes!
There’s an important Summit happening at the hotel any day now and top bidders are arriving to buy the hotel. However, security is a mess and January wants to postpone the Summit. January keeps seeing bad things happening and races to prevent them.
January has a cool drone sidekick, and I liked that character a lot! There are also a lot of characters that work at the hotel that are like a family. There are also some ghosts that haunt the hotel.
I didn’t always understand the references and koans (a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment) in this book.
This was a good departure read for me, but complex and somewhat difficult to follow the storyline. Maybe that’s the case for time travel books though!
Thanks to Marilyn for discussing this one with me. And thanks to Random House/Ballantine for the opportunity to read and review this one.
March 5, 2022
I liked the premise of this book about a hotel that operates time travel trips for tourists. However, I couldn’t get past my extreme dislike of the house detective January. Do you know what would be original, making the protagonist an even tempered, well adjusted, polite person, rather than a tough-talking asshole who evades the rules and lies to her employer. Don’t look for that in this book. January is a walking cliché. I didn’t like “The Warehouse” either, so I guess I should just avoid this author. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
January 5, 2022
I was so hyped for this one! I’m not huge into this genre, but sometimes I get lucky and find a hidden gem! This was one of them! The concept of time travel is so cool and this story takes a unique twist on it.
January Cole is the head of security for the elegant Paradox Hotel. At the Paradox Hotel the mega rich are given the opportunity to time travel. Sounds pretty cool. The timestream starts acting strange, a with a blizzard rolling in, the hotel to goes into a sort of lockdown.
To add fuel to the fire, there is a murderer running around and only January can see the dead body. The past and present collide as January starts to question her sanity.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
January Cole is the head of security for the elegant Paradox Hotel. At the Paradox Hotel the mega rich are given the opportunity to time travel. Sounds pretty cool. The timestream starts acting strange, a with a blizzard rolling in, the hotel to goes into a sort of lockdown.
To add fuel to the fire, there is a murderer running around and only January can see the dead body. The past and present collide as January starts to question her sanity.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
February 18, 2022
It’s the year 2072 and January Cole is a smart aleck Time Enforcement Agent and head of security at the Paradox Hotel. She has been working for the U.S. time travel organization for six years and has become unstuck. This negative side effect of frequent time travel is impairing her mental state. How can she continue preventing individuals from changing the timeline when she keeps finding herself in past and future moments? When she sees a dead body suspended in time, she wonders if she has finally lost it.
Meanwhile, a summit of trillionaires has been assembled to take bids on privatizing the Paradox Hotel due to its inability to turn a profit. The master clock malfunctions, the security camera is hacked, ghosts haunt the hotel, and dinosaurs roam the hallways. Oh, and a hit man is attempting to murder the trillionaires!
Can January save the day?
I loved Rob Hart’s The Warehouse with its completely original premise that kept me on my toes. The Paradox Hotel felt like it would be a perfect fit for me because I enjoy time travel, unreliable narrators, and locked room mysteries. However, this book was very difficult to follow due to its large cast of underdeveloped characters, too many plot points, and confusing timeline.
I really enjoyed January’s snarky attitude and adorable googly-eyed AI sidekick, Ruby. I applaud Hart for including Lesbian and Nonbinary characters as well as for making a woman responsible for inventing time travel. This book might appeal to true science fiction afficionados, but my layman’s brain couldn’t wrap my head around it.
3/5 stars
Expected publication 2/22/22
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group and Ballantine Books for the ARC of The Paradox Hotel in exchange for an honest review.
Meanwhile, a summit of trillionaires has been assembled to take bids on privatizing the Paradox Hotel due to its inability to turn a profit. The master clock malfunctions, the security camera is hacked, ghosts haunt the hotel, and dinosaurs roam the hallways. Oh, and a hit man is attempting to murder the trillionaires!
Can January save the day?
I loved Rob Hart’s The Warehouse with its completely original premise that kept me on my toes. The Paradox Hotel felt like it would be a perfect fit for me because I enjoy time travel, unreliable narrators, and locked room mysteries. However, this book was very difficult to follow due to its large cast of underdeveloped characters, too many plot points, and confusing timeline.
I really enjoyed January’s snarky attitude and adorable googly-eyed AI sidekick, Ruby. I applaud Hart for including Lesbian and Nonbinary characters as well as for making a woman responsible for inventing time travel. This book might appeal to true science fiction afficionados, but my layman’s brain couldn’t wrap my head around it.
3/5 stars
Expected publication 2/22/22
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group and Ballantine Books for the ARC of The Paradox Hotel in exchange for an honest review.
February 17, 2022
I think this is a case of I must have expected more out of this than I might have, otherwise. I loved the Warehouse and I've been glutting on a stream of great, quirky time travel novels by Jodi Taylor (St. Mary's, Time Police) that deal with institutional absurdities, politics, chaos while giving us a light humorous touch.
The Paradox Hotel is something like that. Selling joy-rides to the past for the rich and powerful, having a badass security-woman suffering from a PTSD-like time-ghost haunting condition, and a hotel as a base of operations with its own mysteries. It reads like harried insider officials and institutional/spook fiction.
Unfortunately for me, it felt a bit disorganized even for the disorganized attempt. Even in the chaos, there's self-consistency and the opportunity for some great humor just screams opportunity, but there were a number of missteps and pacing problems that let those fizzle out until I had to accept that it wasn't meant to be funny at all. And that's okay. But this also slapped this book back down to the level of some much older SF that did have a lot of the same institutional feel and focus -- including the realization that the rich will absolutely destroy us all.
I didn't hate this book, mind you. I just thought that my impression of missed opportunities overwhelmed my outright enjoyment of a book that might have been written fifty or sixty years ago.
The Paradox Hotel is something like that. Selling joy-rides to the past for the rich and powerful, having a badass security-woman suffering from a PTSD-like time-ghost haunting condition, and a hotel as a base of operations with its own mysteries. It reads like harried insider officials and institutional/spook fiction.
Unfortunately for me, it felt a bit disorganized even for the disorganized attempt. Even in the chaos, there's self-consistency and the opportunity for some great humor just screams opportunity, but there were a number of missteps and pacing problems that let those fizzle out until I had to accept that it wasn't meant to be funny at all. And that's okay. But this also slapped this book back down to the level of some much older SF that did have a lot of the same institutional feel and focus -- including the realization that the rich will absolutely destroy us all.
I didn't hate this book, mind you. I just thought that my impression of missed opportunities overwhelmed my outright enjoyment of a book that might have been written fifty or sixty years ago.
March 18, 2022
This had so much potential. I was so excited for this book. But I hate the way the author handled it. 60 pages in and I just wanted someone to shoot the MC so that we could move on from the snarky dialogue and actually get into the story. I don't have to love the MC but there has to be some draw to them that makes me want to hear more from their perspective.
I didn't care about a single character. Everyone was reduced to their hair style and race with no further development. And the stereotyping drove me nuts. That guy is white and has muscles, so he is a meathead. Those people are rich, so they are racist and demeaning to staff. Some of the least original character work I've ever read.
I really wish a different author could've tackled this same plot, someone not so focused on proving how woke they are. Way too many other books in the world to stick with this.
I didn't care about a single character. Everyone was reduced to their hair style and race with no further development. And the stereotyping drove me nuts. That guy is white and has muscles, so he is a meathead. Those people are rich, so they are racist and demeaning to staff. Some of the least original character work I've ever read.
I really wish a different author could've tackled this same plot, someone not so focused on proving how woke they are. Way too many other books in the world to stick with this.
December 13, 2021
I guess I'll land on 3.5 stars... This is such a hard one to rate, because for premise, writing quality, and characters, I could happily give this something in the B+ to A range. But for plot execution, this is more like a C+, because there are so many threads that don't really come together as successfully as I hoped. By the end, it felt kind of jumbled but still somewhat satisfying, which creates a headscratcher in terms of how to review! In general, I appreciate an ambitious project even if it is not wholly successful, so I would still encourage people interested in this to give it a try. I really liked what it was trying to do with respect to a time travel story that actually takes the moral implications seriously and how fast moving the story was as a whole.
February 20, 2022
The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart is a science fiction fantasy that does have an air of mystery and a thrilling side to the story. The story in The Paradox Hotel is one that involves time travel jumping, has an unreliable narrator and a complex plot.
January Cole has spent a lot of her career going through time and fixing problems that have arisen to keep a balance. Now January is head of security at the Paradox hotel because she is “unstuck” and has to battle slips of the timeline.
Due to January’s slipping in and out of time she finds a room that only she can see and a body that no one else notices. On top of January having to figure out just what the room means there are “accidents” happening to those around the hotel including live dinosaurs roaming the property.
I have to say that at the core of The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart is a strong story that I did enjoy. Of course my three and a half star rating shows that I did find some issues when reading The Paradox Hotel. For me the story wasn’t always easy to follow and I think could have been a little more clear in places especially the beginning when just diving into the book. That being said though I think the dinos and the snarky robot won me over enough that I’m glad I gave this a chance.
I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.
For more reviews please visit https://carriesbookreviews.com/
January Cole has spent a lot of her career going through time and fixing problems that have arisen to keep a balance. Now January is head of security at the Paradox hotel because she is “unstuck” and has to battle slips of the timeline.
Due to January’s slipping in and out of time she finds a room that only she can see and a body that no one else notices. On top of January having to figure out just what the room means there are “accidents” happening to those around the hotel including live dinosaurs roaming the property.
I have to say that at the core of The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart is a strong story that I did enjoy. Of course my three and a half star rating shows that I did find some issues when reading The Paradox Hotel. For me the story wasn’t always easy to follow and I think could have been a little more clear in places especially the beginning when just diving into the book. That being said though I think the dinos and the snarky robot won me over enough that I’m glad I gave this a chance.
I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.
For more reviews please visit https://carriesbookreviews.com/
July 31, 2021
Like Doug Adams’ Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe, Hart takes his gorgeous Hotel and sticks it at the edge if time, specifically two miles from the timeport where the ultrawealthy dress in period garb and head off to their favorite places in history. For the most part, they make minor ripples, but for those who make (often purposefully) more of an impact, there are Time Agents who go back and fix things. It’s kind of like the original Westworld where the rich can indulge their fantasies and nothing can go wrong.
Of course, there wouldn’t be much of a story if nothing ever went wrong. Here, the star of the show is January Cole, house detective and head of security for the Paradox Hotel. The only thing is January has become Unstuck in time and she is slipping between present, past, and future, half in ghost world with her deceased girlfriend and fast becoming less and less dependable in the real world. Accompanying her on her rounds around the hotel by is the drone Ruby, but January is like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, half in the game and half lost in time.
More to the point, everything is quickly becoming Unstuck and there are those ready to bid for control of the timeport for their own nefarious ends. Thus, we get Jurassic Park with velociraptors.
One of the difficulties in reading this novel though is that we have an unreliable narrator who is half in reality and half out. Unfortunately, often the reader will feel lost in time as well as the storyline seems to meander often.
Of course, there wouldn’t be much of a story if nothing ever went wrong. Here, the star of the show is January Cole, house detective and head of security for the Paradox Hotel. The only thing is January has become Unstuck in time and she is slipping between present, past, and future, half in ghost world with her deceased girlfriend and fast becoming less and less dependable in the real world. Accompanying her on her rounds around the hotel by is the drone Ruby, but January is like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, half in the game and half lost in time.
More to the point, everything is quickly becoming Unstuck and there are those ready to bid for control of the timeport for their own nefarious ends. Thus, we get Jurassic Park with velociraptors.
One of the difficulties in reading this novel though is that we have an unreliable narrator who is half in reality and half out. Unfortunately, often the reader will feel lost in time as well as the storyline seems to meander often.
April 10, 2022
I hate books with female narrators that are clearly written by men. I got to the sentence “these aren’t my ass jeans” and knew it was time to put it down.
February 21, 2022
Well, this one is different! I am a great lover of time travel fiction and jumped at the chance to read Rob Hart's latest novel which takes place about 50 years in the future. The US government now runs a time travel program for wealthy vacationers who want to go back in time to experience history first hand. One cardinal rule though is to respect the time line. Nothing about the past can be changed--so no going back with plans to stop Hitler, for instance. That would disrupt the time/space continuum and would be very bad.
Flights leave from the Einstein Intercentury Timeport but on the day this story opens, all flights are being cancelled due to some issues with the system and travelers are needing to be booked into the adjoining Paradox Hotel. With a big snowstorm rolling in, no one is going anywhere, even if they just wanted to go home. The hotel lobby and check-in desk are a scene of utter chaos with all these wealthy and self-important travelers demanding THE best accommodations possible (DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM??!!)
The hotel is already quite busy because it is hosting an important summit between the government and four billionaires. It seems the time travel program has been running in the red (think the post office) so the powers that be, represented by the insufferable Senator Drucker, are hoping to privatize the business with the proviso that they still remain in control of rules and operations. So these people are also arriving with their entourages.
January Cole, the unreliable narrator of the story, is currently head of hotel security. She is tough, irreverent, rude, and quite testy. She's worked for the company for several years and is suffering from a certain degradation of her brain caused by too frequent trips into the timestream for her job. She doesn't mind though when she slips back to be with her deceased lover, Mena, but it's starting to interfere with her job when she blanks out.
Allyn Danbridge, a Time Enforcement Agent, is on scene to help with this big summit and he's hoping to convince Jan to retire. He's brought along a young agent named Nik Moreau, who just might be her replacement.
Some readers might be put off by having an unreliable narrator who experiences time out of sequence and may even be hallucinating at times. But I advise these readers to hang in there--the ending brings some answers and ties the plot together nicely. So when are you booking your trip? Remember: 'The majesty of life can be found only in the present moment.'
Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking Glass and Georges Seurat's painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte both have roles to play in this story. Next time you are in Chicago, make a point of visiting the Art Museum to see that painting in person. It's worth the trip. And ask yourself, What are the people in the painting all looking at?
I received an arc of this new novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks for the opportunity.
Flights leave from the Einstein Intercentury Timeport but on the day this story opens, all flights are being cancelled due to some issues with the system and travelers are needing to be booked into the adjoining Paradox Hotel. With a big snowstorm rolling in, no one is going anywhere, even if they just wanted to go home. The hotel lobby and check-in desk are a scene of utter chaos with all these wealthy and self-important travelers demanding THE best accommodations possible (DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM??!!)
The hotel is already quite busy because it is hosting an important summit between the government and four billionaires. It seems the time travel program has been running in the red (think the post office) so the powers that be, represented by the insufferable Senator Drucker, are hoping to privatize the business with the proviso that they still remain in control of rules and operations. So these people are also arriving with their entourages.
January Cole, the unreliable narrator of the story, is currently head of hotel security. She is tough, irreverent, rude, and quite testy. She's worked for the company for several years and is suffering from a certain degradation of her brain caused by too frequent trips into the timestream for her job. She doesn't mind though when she slips back to be with her deceased lover, Mena, but it's starting to interfere with her job when she blanks out.
Allyn Danbridge, a Time Enforcement Agent, is on scene to help with this big summit and he's hoping to convince Jan to retire. He's brought along a young agent named Nik Moreau, who just might be her replacement.
Some readers might be put off by having an unreliable narrator who experiences time out of sequence and may even be hallucinating at times. But I advise these readers to hang in there--the ending brings some answers and ties the plot together nicely. So when are you booking your trip? Remember: 'The majesty of life can be found only in the present moment.'
Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking Glass and Georges Seurat's painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte both have roles to play in this story. Next time you are in Chicago, make a point of visiting the Art Museum to see that painting in person. It's worth the trip. And ask yourself, What are the people in the painting all looking at?
I received an arc of this new novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks for the opportunity.
Shelved as 'dnf'
January 16, 2022Well, I hate to call a DNF this early in the year, but 2022 is the year for good books and good vibes only.
I was positive going into this one, as it was highly anticipated for me because the premise sounded amazing! But I should’ve know that trying to include elements of sci-fi, murder mystery & time travel all packed into one book just sounded too good to be true.
The first chapter was very disorienting & the ones to follow were nothing short of chaotic. I was struggling to get a grasp on the world building and instead was met with immature characters and a lot of unnecessary language for my taste. The humor was also just not my cup of tea.
Once we got to the actual murder mystery aspect, I didn’t care enough about the characters to be invested because there was very little depth to them.
Overall I wanted to love this one, but glad I knew early on that this just wasn’t the book for me!
DNF at 7%
Thank you so much to Ballantine Books for a review copy in exchange for an honest review!
I was positive going into this one, as it was highly anticipated for me because the premise sounded amazing! But I should’ve know that trying to include elements of sci-fi, murder mystery & time travel all packed into one book just sounded too good to be true.
The first chapter was very disorienting & the ones to follow were nothing short of chaotic. I was struggling to get a grasp on the world building and instead was met with immature characters and a lot of unnecessary language for my taste. The humor was also just not my cup of tea.
Once we got to the actual murder mystery aspect, I didn’t care enough about the characters to be invested because there was very little depth to them.
Overall I wanted to love this one, but glad I knew early on that this just wasn’t the book for me!
DNF at 7%
Thank you so much to Ballantine Books for a review copy in exchange for an honest review!
February 22, 2022
3 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2022/02/17/...
Welcome to the Paradox Hotel. A playground for the super rich, its offers its exclusive clientele the chance to travel back in time to any era they want. But meddling with the time stream also has its consequences. To prevent any of their time tourists from mucking about with the past too much, the hotel also employs time agents like our protagonist January Cole, whose job is to track and fix any time ripples before their effects can get out of hand.
Unfortunately, too much time travel can also have some deadly side effects. One of the nastier symptoms is mental degradation, a state known a being Unstuck. When this happens, the time traveler will experience lapses where past and future moments collide with the present, making it difficult to tell what is real. Due to her many years of working security for the Paradox, January has become Unstuck, her condition having progressed into the later, more severe stages, though she is reluctant to admit it, insisting on staying on the job.
So, when January finds a dead body in one of the hotel rooms, she doesn’t know what to think. Is this real, or is it something only she can see? With a blizzard rolling in, the Paradox is also on lockdown, trapping a group of trillionaires within its walls, along with the ghosts purported to haunt its halls. It all just seems too coincidental, and January has a suspicion that all this has been planned. Hiding among them is a killer who knows how to manipulate time in their favor, and the hotel is rife with wealthy victims, any of whom might be next.
As someone who has read and enjoyed Rob Hart’s The Warehouse, I was excited to jump into The Paradox Hotel, whose premise boasts of a locked room mystery with time travel. But as it turns out, the mystery aspect doesn’t feature too prominently. For one thing, there is a lot of preamble; by the time we got to the part with the dead body, I confess I’d almost forgotten that this was supposed to be a murder mystery. In addition, we also had a multitude of factors that made the plot confusing to follow, but I’ll talk more about that in a bit.
The good news though, is that there’s time traveling aplenty. I was impressed with a lot of the ideas here, and there are some fascinating world-building elements related to time travel. That said, if you’re not into sci-fi or don’t read the genre regularly, the story might be a bit hard to follow, with time travel being a challenging subject to write about in the first place, and the author could also have done a better job articulating some of the more intricate concepts. If you zone out for even a second, you might miss some important detail, so this is a book that truly requires the reader’s full attention.
Another factor that could complicate things is the main character herself. Because of her condition, January could be considered an unreliable narrator, leading you to constantly question where or when she might be, and whether or not she is experiencing something real versus reliving one her memories or having one of her “slips” through time. She isn’t the easiest protagonist to get behind either. Often, I found her too standoffish, judgmental, and overly sarcastic. Character development in general was sparse, and had the unfortunate effect of making a caricature out of most situations, the people of this world reduced to stereotypes, and January herself felt like a generic smartass, I’ve-got-a-tragic-backstory-to-excuse-my-too-edgy-to-follow-your-stupid-rules kind of heroine, unloading her unpleasantness onto everyone from hotel clientele to close friends.
Still, The Paradox Hotel wasn’t a bad book, as ultimately I enjoyed myself. Of course, I wish the story had featured a stronger mystery element or that the plotline hadn’t been so convoluted, but the second half of the book contained a ton of action and entertainment which made it a quick and fun read (despite the dinosaur parts coming across as just a tad self-indulgent). For me, this one felt more like a standard fluff read, but I was glad it kept me turning the pages.
Welcome to the Paradox Hotel. A playground for the super rich, its offers its exclusive clientele the chance to travel back in time to any era they want. But meddling with the time stream also has its consequences. To prevent any of their time tourists from mucking about with the past too much, the hotel also employs time agents like our protagonist January Cole, whose job is to track and fix any time ripples before their effects can get out of hand.
Unfortunately, too much time travel can also have some deadly side effects. One of the nastier symptoms is mental degradation, a state known a being Unstuck. When this happens, the time traveler will experience lapses where past and future moments collide with the present, making it difficult to tell what is real. Due to her many years of working security for the Paradox, January has become Unstuck, her condition having progressed into the later, more severe stages, though she is reluctant to admit it, insisting on staying on the job.
So, when January finds a dead body in one of the hotel rooms, she doesn’t know what to think. Is this real, or is it something only she can see? With a blizzard rolling in, the Paradox is also on lockdown, trapping a group of trillionaires within its walls, along with the ghosts purported to haunt its halls. It all just seems too coincidental, and January has a suspicion that all this has been planned. Hiding among them is a killer who knows how to manipulate time in their favor, and the hotel is rife with wealthy victims, any of whom might be next.
As someone who has read and enjoyed Rob Hart’s The Warehouse, I was excited to jump into The Paradox Hotel, whose premise boasts of a locked room mystery with time travel. But as it turns out, the mystery aspect doesn’t feature too prominently. For one thing, there is a lot of preamble; by the time we got to the part with the dead body, I confess I’d almost forgotten that this was supposed to be a murder mystery. In addition, we also had a multitude of factors that made the plot confusing to follow, but I’ll talk more about that in a bit.
The good news though, is that there’s time traveling aplenty. I was impressed with a lot of the ideas here, and there are some fascinating world-building elements related to time travel. That said, if you’re not into sci-fi or don’t read the genre regularly, the story might be a bit hard to follow, with time travel being a challenging subject to write about in the first place, and the author could also have done a better job articulating some of the more intricate concepts. If you zone out for even a second, you might miss some important detail, so this is a book that truly requires the reader’s full attention.
Another factor that could complicate things is the main character herself. Because of her condition, January could be considered an unreliable narrator, leading you to constantly question where or when she might be, and whether or not she is experiencing something real versus reliving one her memories or having one of her “slips” through time. She isn’t the easiest protagonist to get behind either. Often, I found her too standoffish, judgmental, and overly sarcastic. Character development in general was sparse, and had the unfortunate effect of making a caricature out of most situations, the people of this world reduced to stereotypes, and January herself felt like a generic smartass, I’ve-got-a-tragic-backstory-to-excuse-my-too-edgy-to-follow-your-stupid-rules kind of heroine, unloading her unpleasantness onto everyone from hotel clientele to close friends.
Still, The Paradox Hotel wasn’t a bad book, as ultimately I enjoyed myself. Of course, I wish the story had featured a stronger mystery element or that the plotline hadn’t been so convoluted, but the second half of the book contained a ton of action and entertainment which made it a quick and fun read (despite the dinosaur parts coming across as just a tad self-indulgent). For me, this one felt more like a standard fluff read, but I was glad it kept me turning the pages.
April 17, 2022
4.25/5
I have to say, I meant to read The Warehouse when it came out but never got around to it, and now
that I've read The Paradox Hotel I am definitely going to have to stop putting that off! I loved the super complex, multilayered story, and Rob Hart's writing sucked me in so completely that I basically listened to the whole thing in one sitting. Science fiction is a genre that I really enjoy but don't read much of, and I am always a little leery of the story potentially going over my head. I think Hart did a great job explaining things through the story so that they made sense and reading this made me feel smarter which is always a plus. I loved our main character January and there were a lot of great humorous moments thrown in with the mystery and tenser/more serious scenes which was an aspect I also loved. There is no way I could have figured out where the plot was going, and the end fully surprised me while also making me a touch sad at the same time.
And it is super important to note that the audiobook for The Paradox Hotel is completely incredible. The narrator is Emily Woo Zeller who I have listened to before, and she was THE perfect voice actor for this book. I could totally picture her as January, and she was just super talented with every single aspect of her narration and the story. I did think the pacing was slightly odd, and there are quite a few fast-paced scenes, but then we would have lulls as well where I felt the story slowed down quite a bit. This is what really kept The Paradox Hotel from being a full 5 stars for me, and other than that I didn't have a single complaint. I would really love to see this as a movie, and I could easily picture the hotel and everything happening in my mind thanks to Hart's writing skills. The action, characters, plot, and humor were all completely on point and had a ton of qualities I adore. I can't wait to read more from this author, and I hope I can one day see this onscreen!
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
I have to say, I meant to read The Warehouse when it came out but never got around to it, and now
that I've read The Paradox Hotel I am definitely going to have to stop putting that off! I loved the super complex, multilayered story, and Rob Hart's writing sucked me in so completely that I basically listened to the whole thing in one sitting. Science fiction is a genre that I really enjoy but don't read much of, and I am always a little leery of the story potentially going over my head. I think Hart did a great job explaining things through the story so that they made sense and reading this made me feel smarter which is always a plus. I loved our main character January and there were a lot of great humorous moments thrown in with the mystery and tenser/more serious scenes which was an aspect I also loved. There is no way I could have figured out where the plot was going, and the end fully surprised me while also making me a touch sad at the same time.
And it is super important to note that the audiobook for The Paradox Hotel is completely incredible. The narrator is Emily Woo Zeller who I have listened to before, and she was THE perfect voice actor for this book. I could totally picture her as January, and she was just super talented with every single aspect of her narration and the story. I did think the pacing was slightly odd, and there are quite a few fast-paced scenes, but then we would have lulls as well where I felt the story slowed down quite a bit. This is what really kept The Paradox Hotel from being a full 5 stars for me, and other than that I didn't have a single complaint. I would really love to see this as a movie, and I could easily picture the hotel and everything happening in my mind thanks to Hart's writing skills. The action, characters, plot, and humor were all completely on point and had a ton of qualities I adore. I can't wait to read more from this author, and I hope I can one day see this onscreen!
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
February 22, 2022
4.5 stars
An absorbing, fascinating mess, The Paradox Hotel packs in so many ideas, and simply can't decide which one is the dominating thread. Is it a time travel sci-fi? A political/social espionage? A friendship story circling around the hotel staff? or a personal, intimate journey of grief? The answer is this novel is all of the above (and more)—if you're willing to be open-minded, and simply let the book throws its unruly wildness at you, you'll come out of it appreciating its emotional depth and exciting creativity.
Turning the classic hard-boiled fiction setup on its side, The Paradox Hotel features a woman in the role of the cynical detective with a dark personal past. Along with her sapphic relationship and inclusion of a nonbinary character, The Paradox Hotel feels progressively modern while still maintains some of the genre's trademarks, such as a comic relief sidekick (in the form of a surveillance robot — one that I kept imagining as a flying Roomba), and sarcastic, highly foul-mouthed dialogs.
Be ready to take note if you want to keep track of its 15+ characters spanning across the hotel staff, its guest and government personnel. The Paradox Hotel can be a little unforgiving, referring to its characters by either their first or last name, often switches around for no apparent reason. The inconsistency is minor, but still a noticeable annoyance keeping track of everyone's full name at all time.
For a novel of relative typical length, it's a marvel how much plot is packed in here. The staff members all have easily identifiable (and relatable) personalities, the political and social commentary nicely laid out, even the time travel has enough 'movie logic' for me to buy it without batting an eye. Yet I'm most impressed with the character arc of the protagonist, particularly moments spent with her girlfriend; the book dives into some philosophical discussions regarding death and acceptance I don't often see explored in mainstream fiction.
I felt like I've read a 500+ pages novel even though The Paradox Hotel is only in the 300 range; yet this statement is not meant to be a criticism — there are so much intrigues to unpack one simply has to slow down and absorb them. Yes, the plot can be overwrought at times, and the constant narrative shifts can give one whiplash (perhaps appropriately judging by what the characters are going through). But overall Rob Hart (even if just barely) was able to reign it all in, delivering a cohesive story that covers an insane amount of ground (time travel, murder mystery, close-knit 'family' dynamic, and even architecture), and still remains completely heartfelt.
**This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated!**
An absorbing, fascinating mess, The Paradox Hotel packs in so many ideas, and simply can't decide which one is the dominating thread. Is it a time travel sci-fi? A political/social espionage? A friendship story circling around the hotel staff? or a personal, intimate journey of grief? The answer is this novel is all of the above (and more)—if you're willing to be open-minded, and simply let the book throws its unruly wildness at you, you'll come out of it appreciating its emotional depth and exciting creativity.
Turning the classic hard-boiled fiction setup on its side, The Paradox Hotel features a woman in the role of the cynical detective with a dark personal past. Along with her sapphic relationship and inclusion of a nonbinary character, The Paradox Hotel feels progressively modern while still maintains some of the genre's trademarks, such as a comic relief sidekick (in the form of a surveillance robot — one that I kept imagining as a flying Roomba), and sarcastic, highly foul-mouthed dialogs.
Be ready to take note if you want to keep track of its 15+ characters spanning across the hotel staff, its guest and government personnel. The Paradox Hotel can be a little unforgiving, referring to its characters by either their first or last name, often switches around for no apparent reason. The inconsistency is minor, but still a noticeable annoyance keeping track of everyone's full name at all time.
For a novel of relative typical length, it's a marvel how much plot is packed in here. The staff members all have easily identifiable (and relatable) personalities, the political and social commentary nicely laid out, even the time travel has enough 'movie logic' for me to buy it without batting an eye. Yet I'm most impressed with the character arc of the protagonist, particularly moments spent with her girlfriend; the book dives into some philosophical discussions regarding death and acceptance I don't often see explored in mainstream fiction.
I felt like I've read a 500+ pages novel even though The Paradox Hotel is only in the 300 range; yet this statement is not meant to be a criticism — there are so much intrigues to unpack one simply has to slow down and absorb them. Yes, the plot can be overwrought at times, and the constant narrative shifts can give one whiplash (perhaps appropriately judging by what the characters are going through). But overall Rob Hart (even if just barely) was able to reign it all in, delivering a cohesive story that covers an insane amount of ground (time travel, murder mystery, close-knit 'family' dynamic, and even architecture), and still remains completely heartfelt.
**This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated!**
February 21, 2022
This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart
Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
3.5 hearts
The Paradox Hotel is a strange place. It is a place people go to travel in time and see different events in history. With that comes some different challenges for head of Security, January Cole. People are people and they try to sometimes bring things back with them they shouldn't. Like raptor eggs because who doesn't want a little souvenir from their trip. But strange things are happening at the Paradox right now. Clocks sometimes goes backwards, ghosts or afterimages are seen in the halls and the coffee carafe never has coffee in it when January wants some. All the weirdness started when the four buyers for the hotel showed up to bid on it. That is when January found the dead body that isn't really dead yet.
This is a strange book. I really liked a lot of the concepts in it. January used to be like a time cop going up and down the timestream making sure no one tries to change history. But because she did tha,t now she is unstuck, meaning sometimes she sees moments from the past or the near future like they are happening right now. This is how we learn about the love she lost and why we also know there will be or already has been a murder. I found a lot of this book pretty interesting in general but sometimes difficult to follow in a few places because of the time shuffle stuff.
January is sometimes a hard character to like as she tries to push away anyone who is nice to her. She lost the love of her life at that hotel and now the people who care the most for her are the ones she is trying to make a little bit miserable. Still the timeslip stuff and why it is happening at the hotel is extremely interesting and the who-dun-it and why was a good story. I found the ending fitting to a standalone story.
Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
3.5 hearts
The Paradox Hotel is a strange place. It is a place people go to travel in time and see different events in history. With that comes some different challenges for head of Security, January Cole. People are people and they try to sometimes bring things back with them they shouldn't. Like raptor eggs because who doesn't want a little souvenir from their trip. But strange things are happening at the Paradox right now. Clocks sometimes goes backwards, ghosts or afterimages are seen in the halls and the coffee carafe never has coffee in it when January wants some. All the weirdness started when the four buyers for the hotel showed up to bid on it. That is when January found the dead body that isn't really dead yet.
This is a strange book. I really liked a lot of the concepts in it. January used to be like a time cop going up and down the timestream making sure no one tries to change history. But because she did tha,t now she is unstuck, meaning sometimes she sees moments from the past or the near future like they are happening right now. This is how we learn about the love she lost and why we also know there will be or already has been a murder. I found a lot of this book pretty interesting in general but sometimes difficult to follow in a few places because of the time shuffle stuff.
January is sometimes a hard character to like as she tries to push away anyone who is nice to her. She lost the love of her life at that hotel and now the people who care the most for her are the ones she is trying to make a little bit miserable. Still the timeslip stuff and why it is happening at the hotel is extremely interesting and the who-dun-it and why was a good story. I found the ending fitting to a standalone story.
January 30, 2022
I went into this book so excited by the premise. "A locked-room murder mystery set at a hotel for time travelers—in which a detective must solve an impossible crime even as her own sanity crumbles." I mean, are you kidding me?! That sounds amazing.
The story centers around January Cole who runs security at the Paradox Hotel, an establishment for the extremely wealthy to be able to time-travel to the past. The plot takes off when January discovers a body in one of the hotel rooms that only she can see.
Within the first 5% I had a strong feeling this book wouldn't be to my liking, but I trudged on because if I am reviewing a novel I feel compelled to read it in its entirety before passing judgement. The opening hits all the major modern points: trans, non-binary, and queer rep, a sarcastic dislike of nearly every white person brought onto the page, and a deep hatred and stereotypical portrayal of the rich. I’m over it. I just can’t stand it anymore. There is absolutely no nuance whatsoever, when there could have been room for some very interesting conversations about wealth and access to technology. But the above criticisms aren’t my reasons for not enjoying the book overall.
So, here are some things, in particular, I really didn’t like:
Characters: About halfway through I started feeling like there were too many characters. Many of them did not have memorable descriptions and I quickly forgot their job titles or reasons for being at the hotel. Oh, and of course, our main character is a complete ball-buster whose defining personality trait is to be a straight-up dick to everyone she meets (even people she supposedly likes). Is this the only way to write a strong female character? Tough exterior but deep down all her bitchiness stems from past trauma, fear of rejection, and utter loneliness? It was very hard to root for her sometimes, which is not a good thing when you’re reading in first person.
Plot: For a book that was described as a locked-room murder mystery, I felt like very little time was spent actually investigating the murder. As the reader, I was expecting to be rooting through suspects among hotel patrons and staff and searching for a motive for the killing. But, none of that really comes together? Maybe this is an issue with the given synopsis, and not the book itself.
The ending just did not feel cohesive enough for me. For a relatively short book with quite a few plot points and characters, the explanation at the end felt glossed over and was practically explained in one paragraph (no, I’m not kidding). At the end of each chapter some new disaster would arise in the hotel and in the subsequent pages it just felt like that newest problem was absorbed into the overall muddy feeling this plot had. I never had an aha! moment where everything clicked in my brain and I could look back and connect the dots myself.
To end on a positive note though, the reason this book is getting two stars instead of one is that I genuinely enjoyed the author’s writing style. I enjoyed his fast-paced and quippy prose. I also think he has a knack for writing action scenes. I could picture fight scenes in my head perfectly, which doesn’t happen for me often in books. And because of that, I think this novel could lend itself really easily to the big screen.
Sad this one didn’t work out for me, because I really wanted to love it. But ultimately, a hard pass.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The story centers around January Cole who runs security at the Paradox Hotel, an establishment for the extremely wealthy to be able to time-travel to the past. The plot takes off when January discovers a body in one of the hotel rooms that only she can see.
Within the first 5% I had a strong feeling this book wouldn't be to my liking, but I trudged on because if I am reviewing a novel I feel compelled to read it in its entirety before passing judgement. The opening hits all the major modern points: trans, non-binary, and queer rep, a sarcastic dislike of nearly every white person brought onto the page, and a deep hatred and stereotypical portrayal of the rich. I’m over it. I just can’t stand it anymore. There is absolutely no nuance whatsoever, when there could have been room for some very interesting conversations about wealth and access to technology. But the above criticisms aren’t my reasons for not enjoying the book overall.
So, here are some things, in particular, I really didn’t like:
Characters: About halfway through I started feeling like there were too many characters. Many of them did not have memorable descriptions and I quickly forgot their job titles or reasons for being at the hotel. Oh, and of course, our main character is a complete ball-buster whose defining personality trait is to be a straight-up dick to everyone she meets (even people she supposedly likes). Is this the only way to write a strong female character? Tough exterior but deep down all her bitchiness stems from past trauma, fear of rejection, and utter loneliness? It was very hard to root for her sometimes, which is not a good thing when you’re reading in first person.
Plot: For a book that was described as a locked-room murder mystery, I felt like very little time was spent actually investigating the murder. As the reader, I was expecting to be rooting through suspects among hotel patrons and staff and searching for a motive for the killing. But, none of that really comes together? Maybe this is an issue with the given synopsis, and not the book itself.
The ending just did not feel cohesive enough for me. For a relatively short book with quite a few plot points and characters, the explanation at the end felt glossed over and was practically explained in one paragraph (no, I’m not kidding). At the end of each chapter some new disaster would arise in the hotel and in the subsequent pages it just felt like that newest problem was absorbed into the overall muddy feeling this plot had. I never had an aha! moment where everything clicked in my brain and I could look back and connect the dots myself.
To end on a positive note though, the reason this book is getting two stars instead of one is that I genuinely enjoyed the author’s writing style. I enjoyed his fast-paced and quippy prose. I also think he has a knack for writing action scenes. I could picture fight scenes in my head perfectly, which doesn’t happen for me often in books. And because of that, I think this novel could lend itself really easily to the big screen.
Sad this one didn’t work out for me, because I really wanted to love it. But ultimately, a hard pass.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 31, 2022
Back when I was a teenager and Jeff Bezos, much less Amazon, wasn't even a gleam in his mother's eye, science fiction was my favorite genre. Dogeared paperbacks by Bradbury, Orwell and Heinlein were all over the house (who could afford hardbacks)? This book, coming to me in the form of a prerelease review copy - thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley - brings back much of that early interest in time wrinkles and such, but with a twist: Even though it's set in 2072, a lot is relevant to today, when Kindles and virtual wallets are taken for granted and billionaires tout cryptocurrency, excursions into outer space and elimination of fossil fuels. In fact, climate change has taken a toll here, obliterating Florida and New Orleans, and there's talk of colonization on other planets. The latter isn't being taken too seriously, even with the prediction of an estimated two generations of life left on earth; instead, guests at the Paradox Hotel enjoy taking trips to long-ago periods using the nearby Timeport. Heck, there's even a shop in the hotel that rents costumes appropriate for the destination.
January Cole used to be a guide on these tours, making sure paying guests follow the rules and don't do anything that could alter something that happens in the future. Now, she's chief of security at the hotel, taken off the job that she loved because she's become an "Unstuck" - the term for a person for whom the present isn't always present. She can see things no one else can, and that's not a good thing; the condition will only get worse, the end stage being an vegetable-like existence until her body gives out. Her big challenge as the story opens is maintaining control over a very important conference; the hotel, owned and managed by the government, is losing money, so the plan is to sell it off. To that end, a group of four trillionaires are gathering to place bids - and not surprisingly, security is a nightmare.
But concurrently, a blizzard is rolling in so time travel bookings, flights and transportation services are shut down; nobody can go anywhere. Worse, January finds a dead man in her room - except no one else can see it, so she's pretty sure he's the victim of a murder that hasn't happened yet. She also sees someone who has died who was once very close to her, but she doesn't dare reveal that lest she be sent away never to see her again. In the midst of all this, clocks start going screwy, electricity flickers, and January's drone, Ruby, gets flustered from time to time (pun intended) for no apparent reason. Something's going very wrong, but no one can, or wants, to believe January because of her shaky mental state. She sets off to investigate, but she can't do it alone so faces still another challenge: Who can she trust when she can't even fully trust herself?
All that said, let the action begin as she fights to keep her job amid a trio of smuggled-in prehistoric critters, fighting among guests who demand only the best accommodations and unsettling visions of the past and future. As I suspected from the beginning, this is a very complex, but thoroughly entertaining, story that's action-packed but requires more than a little concentration to fully comprehend (which, IMHO, is well worth the effort). And if you're like me, strains from "Hotel California" will run through your head almost from the first page. For a big Eagles fan like me, that's not a bad thing, but for others, forewarned is forearmed. And to this very talented author, thanks for rekindling an old passion.
January Cole used to be a guide on these tours, making sure paying guests follow the rules and don't do anything that could alter something that happens in the future. Now, she's chief of security at the hotel, taken off the job that she loved because she's become an "Unstuck" - the term for a person for whom the present isn't always present. She can see things no one else can, and that's not a good thing; the condition will only get worse, the end stage being an vegetable-like existence until her body gives out. Her big challenge as the story opens is maintaining control over a very important conference; the hotel, owned and managed by the government, is losing money, so the plan is to sell it off. To that end, a group of four trillionaires are gathering to place bids - and not surprisingly, security is a nightmare.
But concurrently, a blizzard is rolling in so time travel bookings, flights and transportation services are shut down; nobody can go anywhere. Worse, January finds a dead man in her room - except no one else can see it, so she's pretty sure he's the victim of a murder that hasn't happened yet. She also sees someone who has died who was once very close to her, but she doesn't dare reveal that lest she be sent away never to see her again. In the midst of all this, clocks start going screwy, electricity flickers, and January's drone, Ruby, gets flustered from time to time (pun intended) for no apparent reason. Something's going very wrong, but no one can, or wants, to believe January because of her shaky mental state. She sets off to investigate, but she can't do it alone so faces still another challenge: Who can she trust when she can't even fully trust herself?
All that said, let the action begin as she fights to keep her job amid a trio of smuggled-in prehistoric critters, fighting among guests who demand only the best accommodations and unsettling visions of the past and future. As I suspected from the beginning, this is a very complex, but thoroughly entertaining, story that's action-packed but requires more than a little concentration to fully comprehend (which, IMHO, is well worth the effort). And if you're like me, strains from "Hotel California" will run through your head almost from the first page. For a big Eagles fan like me, that's not a bad thing, but for others, forewarned is forearmed. And to this very talented author, thanks for rekindling an old passion.
February 24, 2022
January Cole is the house detective at the Paradox Hotel. She had formerly been an agent that traveled through time to make sure noone changed anything. This caused her to become unstuck. Her health is deteriorating and she has slips, or lapses where she sees both past and future events. When a big summit comes to where the Paradox is going to be sold to a very wealthy bidder and a body shows up that only she can see, January has a lot to investigate. Can she get to the bottom of the murder and keep the hotel from falling into the wrong hands?
This was an enjoyable story. I feel like it's more character driven than plot. There are a lot of characters to keep track of here, and at times I had to stop to figure out who was who. I really liked January and Ruby. The snarky banter kept it from getting too heavy. The underlying themes here are love, loss, and found family, which were presented really well. I would recommend to those who like sci-fi and character driven novels,
My thanks to Ballantine Books, author Rob Hart, and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book. My opinions are my own.
This was an enjoyable story. I feel like it's more character driven than plot. There are a lot of characters to keep track of here, and at times I had to stop to figure out who was who. I really liked January and Ruby. The snarky banter kept it from getting too heavy. The underlying themes here are love, loss, and found family, which were presented really well. I would recommend to those who like sci-fi and character driven novels,
My thanks to Ballantine Books, author Rob Hart, and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book. My opinions are my own.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2022
i guess this is what we are calling “good” now a days? cos white men pulling in any token race they can think of, oh hey here’s some lesbians but i’m just going to write in the exact same character i have before but put boobs on her, and here is her dead girlfriend who has no depth other than being trans and propping up the same tired main character. couldn’t possibly have their own life lessons or dimension. oh hey non binary is popular now, i’ll just throw that in instead of giving the person a real life. just say they are non binary snd away we go! it’s like this author tried to check off every single box he could to get buys and didn’t give a sh*t about non binary or trans people or lesbians or what it means to write a woman or pretty much anything of substance involving characters who are non white.
February 24, 2022
Book Review
The Paradox Hotel
Rob Hart
reviewed by Lou Jacobs
readersremains.com | Goodreads
Imagine going back to the late Cretaceous period to marvel over the plethora of various dinosaurs roaming the earth. This was one of the many opportunities afforded TEA Agent, January Cole.
One of her duties in the Time Enforcement Agency was to assure that no one messed with the timestream. “Look, don’t touch!” Everyone knows the rules—you cannot interfere with anything that’s already happened. If you do so, there will be ripples that affect the fabric of reality. January is “Unstuck,” an occupational hazard of traveling the time stream too often. This neurodegenerative condition progresses in stages and has no cure. She is in Stage I and occasionally experiences a “slip” – hears an internal clacking sound followed by experiencing an episode / memory of the past or even future. These spells can last seconds to minutes, and to an outside observer it “looks like you were somewhere else” (medically speaking, like an absence seizure). Retronim is a medication that slows the process, it’s not a cure. It forestalls the inevitable progression to stage 2 and finally 3, were the slips occur frequently and lead to coma.
January, now progressing to stage 2, is on meds and is serving as security head for the Paradox Hotel. The hotel serves as a waiting area in preparation for “catching a flight” to the past at the nearby Einstein Intercentury Timeport. The rich pony-up hundreds of thousands of dollars for exotic vacations to the past.
Apparently, the time travel operation is expensive and is proving to be a losing proposition for the government. The Feds have invited four trillionaires to the hotel for a summit to accept bids to privatize the operation. January’s job is to see that the summit happens without a hitch.
January is assisted by Ruby, an AI drone that hovers over her shoulder, observing and offering advice and valuable info. Ruby’s voice is not female and has an accent. January thinks it would be sexist to make her drone a female. To make Ruby more personable, January has added googly eyes, even though it obscures her visionary input. As the summit draws near it is apparent that someone is breaking into the hotel’s security system, erasing video and trying to hide events.
Soon there are attempts on the lives of the trillionaires. January has a slip in which she visualizes baby velociraptor in the lobby, quickly followed in reality by an incursion of three velociraptors into the hotel with the resultant brutal killing of one the employees. Who has smuggled from the time port three dinosaur eggs, on the brink of hatching? And why?
Weird anomalies begin occurring, someone is deliberately screwing with the upcoming summit. January’s suspect list is growing. A blizzard is approaching, and the surrounding roads are impassable and there are not enough rooms for all.
Rob Hart provides a masterful twisted and complex narrative involving a time travel murder mystery. Expertly employed are a colorful ensemble cast of characters to aid in the progression of intrigue and tension. January continues to not only visualize but converse with her beloved girlfriend, Mena (aided by her continual “slips” ) This not only explores the theme of grieving and lost love, but also provides some relief from January’s usual acerbic and antisocial behavior. Many refer to her as a sarcastic bitch. The ultimate prize is having unrestricted access to all of time, and with it, the potential destruction of reality.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for providing an Uncorrected Proof in exchange for an honest review.
The Paradox Hotel
Rob Hart
reviewed by Lou Jacobs
readersremains.com | Goodreads
Imagine going back to the late Cretaceous period to marvel over the plethora of various dinosaurs roaming the earth. This was one of the many opportunities afforded TEA Agent, January Cole.
One of her duties in the Time Enforcement Agency was to assure that no one messed with the timestream. “Look, don’t touch!” Everyone knows the rules—you cannot interfere with anything that’s already happened. If you do so, there will be ripples that affect the fabric of reality. January is “Unstuck,” an occupational hazard of traveling the time stream too often. This neurodegenerative condition progresses in stages and has no cure. She is in Stage I and occasionally experiences a “slip” – hears an internal clacking sound followed by experiencing an episode / memory of the past or even future. These spells can last seconds to minutes, and to an outside observer it “looks like you were somewhere else” (medically speaking, like an absence seizure). Retronim is a medication that slows the process, it’s not a cure. It forestalls the inevitable progression to stage 2 and finally 3, were the slips occur frequently and lead to coma.
January, now progressing to stage 2, is on meds and is serving as security head for the Paradox Hotel. The hotel serves as a waiting area in preparation for “catching a flight” to the past at the nearby Einstein Intercentury Timeport. The rich pony-up hundreds of thousands of dollars for exotic vacations to the past.
Apparently, the time travel operation is expensive and is proving to be a losing proposition for the government. The Feds have invited four trillionaires to the hotel for a summit to accept bids to privatize the operation. January’s job is to see that the summit happens without a hitch.
January is assisted by Ruby, an AI drone that hovers over her shoulder, observing and offering advice and valuable info. Ruby’s voice is not female and has an accent. January thinks it would be sexist to make her drone a female. To make Ruby more personable, January has added googly eyes, even though it obscures her visionary input. As the summit draws near it is apparent that someone is breaking into the hotel’s security system, erasing video and trying to hide events.
Soon there are attempts on the lives of the trillionaires. January has a slip in which she visualizes baby velociraptor in the lobby, quickly followed in reality by an incursion of three velociraptors into the hotel with the resultant brutal killing of one the employees. Who has smuggled from the time port three dinosaur eggs, on the brink of hatching? And why?
Weird anomalies begin occurring, someone is deliberately screwing with the upcoming summit. January’s suspect list is growing. A blizzard is approaching, and the surrounding roads are impassable and there are not enough rooms for all.
Rob Hart provides a masterful twisted and complex narrative involving a time travel murder mystery. Expertly employed are a colorful ensemble cast of characters to aid in the progression of intrigue and tension. January continues to not only visualize but converse with her beloved girlfriend, Mena (aided by her continual “slips” ) This not only explores the theme of grieving and lost love, but also provides some relief from January’s usual acerbic and antisocial behavior. Many refer to her as a sarcastic bitch. The ultimate prize is having unrestricted access to all of time, and with it, the potential destruction of reality.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for providing an Uncorrected Proof in exchange for an honest review.
May 28, 2024
I enjoyed this sci-fi action romp featuring a grumpy, lesbian protagonist and her grief over the loss of her true love in an event she could easily prevent with the time travel technology at her fingertips, except that it is against everything she believes in and has sworn to protect. The yearning and melancholy underpinning a fast-paced, heart-pumping adventure to investigate murders that haven't happened yet and capture wayward dinosaurs was an effective way to lend weight and sincerity to a story that was otherwise a bit silly and fluffy.
I appreciated January as a character and found her relationships with the people around her quite interesting. Her romance with Mina was wholesome and heartbreaking, her friendships and rivalries with coworkers had a lot of nuance, and her grudging acceptance of her robot assistant/surveillance detail was deeply entertaining.
All that being said, this was not a perfect book by a long shot. The many intertwining timelines, plots, and characters were not always handled skillfully, leaving me confused and disconnected at inopportune times. There were some characters and side plots that felt superfluous and pulled focus from not only the central mystery but also the emotional core of the story. Some of the explanations at the end felt a little deflating, and I can't say I was entirely satisfied with how all the loose threads were wrapped up.
My favourite aspect of the story was the exploration of the alienation and trauma that can come with growing up LGBTQIA+ in an unsafe and unaccepting family environment, and the ways abuse and neglect can leave deep, lasting scars. I wish we'd spent more time on this theme because both Mina's and January's stories were heartwrenching in their vulnerability.
All in all, it's a fun read with pockets of brilliance, but sadly not an overly memorable one.
Representation: lesbian mc, nonbinary secondary character, trans secondary character
Trigger/Content Warnings: death, murder, blood, violence, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, child abuse, homophobia, transphobia, racism, grief
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I appreciated January as a character and found her relationships with the people around her quite interesting. Her romance with Mina was wholesome and heartbreaking, her friendships and rivalries with coworkers had a lot of nuance, and her grudging acceptance of her robot assistant/surveillance detail was deeply entertaining.
All that being said, this was not a perfect book by a long shot. The many intertwining timelines, plots, and characters were not always handled skillfully, leaving me confused and disconnected at inopportune times. There were some characters and side plots that felt superfluous and pulled focus from not only the central mystery but also the emotional core of the story. Some of the explanations at the end felt a little deflating, and I can't say I was entirely satisfied with how all the loose threads were wrapped up.
My favourite aspect of the story was the exploration of the alienation and trauma that can come with growing up LGBTQIA+ in an unsafe and unaccepting family environment, and the ways abuse and neglect can leave deep, lasting scars. I wish we'd spent more time on this theme because both Mina's and January's stories were heartwrenching in their vulnerability.
All in all, it's a fun read with pockets of brilliance, but sadly not an overly memorable one.
Representation: lesbian mc, nonbinary secondary character, trans secondary character
Trigger/Content Warnings: death, murder, blood, violence, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, child abuse, homophobia, transphobia, racism, grief
You can find me on...
Youtube | Instagram | TikTok
You can join our book club over on Patreon...
PBB Book Club
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