3.5 

In the City of Time

By Gwendolyn Clare
In the City of Time by Gwendolyn Clare digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

From the author of the highly acclaimed Ink, Iron, and Glass series, this YA duology sends three science prodigies on a time-traveling adventure to save the Earth—if they don’t accidentally destroy it first—in Gwendolyn Clare's In the City of Time.

In 1891, Willa Marconi's life falls apart when her mentor at the University of Bologna unexpectedly dies. She loses her laboratory access and her stipend, but she refuses to let anyone take her research away. While testing her prototype radio equipment, she detects a mysterious signal and pursues its origin.

In 2034, a cataclysmic event has rendered the Earth uninhabitable, and humankind survives by living inside of artificial worlds. Riley would do anything for Jaideep, who lost his parents in the collapse of the Bay Area pocket universe—and anything includes building a time machine so they can travel back to the 19th century, prevent the destabilization of the planet, and rewrite history.

But the experiment goes wrong, accidentally pulling Willa forward in time and stranding the three of them in a strange, seemingly abandoned city. Now they’ve got a glitchy time machine, a scary android time cop hot on their trail, and some tangled temporal mechanics to unravel. Can they save the Earth when the Continuity Agency is dead-set on preserving the current timeline?

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In the City of Time Reviews

3.5
“This book wasn’t super interesting. I think if it had moved a bit faster and been a bit clearer, I would have given it a better review. The start of the story was slow and not the good kind of slow that makes you think something interesting is going to happen. The bad kind of slow that makes you tired and not want to read past the exposition. And even when the story sped up at a decent pace it was too far along in the book to really maintain interest. This is the first book of two and honestly it felt more like the first half of a book. If the writing had been written faster, it probably could have been one good book rather than the first book of two that wasn’t really very good. It also wasn’t written very clearly. As a book that deals with time travel and paradoxes it’s the authors job to write in a way that even the confusion of time travel can be understood. I have read several time travel books with more complicated plots than this one and never got lost but this one lost me completely at some points. Also, it was never very clear who the main character was. It kept switching without making it clear which were main and which were side characters. Overall, I would give this book a three out of five star but the interesting parts of the book that raised it from a one or two star to a three star don’t even start happening till about 75% of the way into the book when the climax should really be occurring. There wasn’t really a climax which is what made it feel like the first half of a book rather than the first of two books.”
“I thought that this book was a fun read. There were a few parts that confused me, and I could not keep up with some of the time travel rules, but it might be because I did not read the Iron Glass duology. I also think that the world building isn't explained simply enough and can be confusing to a reader. Overall, I give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.”

About Gwendolyn Clare

Gwendolyn Clare teaches college biology in central Pennsylvania, where she lives with too many cats and never enough books. Her short stories can be found in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Her debut novel was Ink, Iron, and Glass.

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