Kyle

Take the fact that I have given every book in this series as huge praise for it. Few series manages to keep the same characters fresh while not letting the plots get too overcomplicated. Fforde does a beautiful job dancing around cliché while never stepping on it, and the series has a feeling like good improv, where you can tell that he's making it up as he goes along, but you can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

This book was really well paced (which is my normal complaint with these type of competition based plots), had interesting characters, and a solid plot. It would have gotten five stars from me except HOLY SHIT SO MANY 80'S REFERENCES! I swear, there was an average of four per page, and some pages had up to 10. I get how it fits in with the plot, but it's just way over done.

ehhhhhhh, it's fine. I might read the other one at some point.

This book is completely utter nonsense and I love it.

Willis does a fantastic job of bringing a handful of fantastic characters through an interesting time travel narrative. If I had to complain, I would say that the split narrative doesn't work as well as it should, as I was far more interested in the present timeline than the past.