Perchance: A Tale of the Paraverse

This is a very readable and congenial adventure story involving travel between parallel time-tracks, reminding me slightly of [b:Worlds of the Imperium 2148843 Worlds of the Imperium (Imperium, #1) Keith Laumer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1526000591l/2148843.SY75.jpg 319678] by [a:Keith Laumer 32303 Keith Laumer https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1227586536p2/32303.jpg], although the writing style is more modern and the characters more likeable.It gets off to a really good start, full of strangeness and mystery. Most of the book remains good, but in the last quarter of it the author tries to resolve the mystery, and his attempt is adequate but slightly disappointing. I'm reminded of the saying that it's better to travel hopefully than to arrive.In the story, there are various peoples who can travel between parallel worlds by using machines. However, a young lady is found with the power to do it by mere effort of will, which was thought to be impossible. She has amnesia, and can't explain anything, but is pursued by everyone.In the end, she turns out to come from a civilization that is slightly eccentric but in most respects cosily familiar. I think it would have been better if she had come from a genuinely exotic civilization, with particular problems that could have taken the story to another level. But coming up with a genuinely exotic civilization was perhaps beyond the powers of the author, who generally stuck to variants on historical civilizations.Good points are that the situation is quite complex, the details inventive, the characters varied, and the story has charm. It's a fairly lightweight novel, but I've become fond of it, and I reread it periodically with pleasure. I'd give it 5 stars if Kurland had found a better ending for it.The hero and heroine mostly find themselves “victims of a series of accidents”, rather than directing events themselves. Their relationship is uncomplicated: they soon fall in love with each other. Another author might have put them through some difficulties first, but Kurland seems to be a nice man who likes to write about nice people, and such people naturally fall in love with each other rather easily. It comes as a surprise to find that he was about 50 when this book was published: it feels like the work of a precocious youngster.Of course, there are some people in the story who aren't nice at all, otherwise there would be no story; but he doesn't linger long over them.Compared with other stories of its kind, this one is rather unusual in that our own time-track, with history as we know it, doesn't feature in it at all, and all of the characters come from time-tracks other than ours.