Time's Convert

Book Title: Time's Convert

Author: Deborarh Harkness

Series: All Souls Trilogy

Date Started: September 18th 2018

Date Completed: October 5th 2018

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Historical

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

I enjoyed Time's Convert, but largely because I was already in love with the characters. It's definitely not one to dive into if you haven't read the previous book in the All Souls Triology. And, for a book about Marcus and Phoebe, there's precious little of Marcus and Phoebe actually together. It still felt a lot like the Diana show; she has the most progressive story, the most active obstacles and the first person narration. Maybe it's a slight of the marketing, but I can't help feeling let down from my expectations.

Again, this book is very sexy. I've called the series an academic-adult twilight, but this is more so than the main books. I guess it's because the characters are younger? While not necessarily being a bad thing, there felt like less of a focus on the history and other interesting aspects that we had in the original series. Like with Diana again, it feels like the real positions of power are being kept for the older characters (predominantly women, which is fantastic) but I would have liked the 'kids' to have had a little bit of that agency as well.

The structure of these books is always a little unfamiliar. While it's pretty carefully plotted and fascinating history-wise, it's not as thrilling as it builds itself up to be. I remember at the end of the trilogy feeling like there should've been this big climax that never came. The endings are always rushed: having taken pages and pages to get through a single event, we then have entire months being skipped over in a sentence. It's a bit of a let down when we have such long sections of exposition and character-building, but no real resolution to a story.

And there were a few instances in which we started to go down some aisles. There was what felt like an ancient Greek twist towards the beginning but it ended up disappearing. While I liked the various time periods we dipped out toes into - and it made sense in the context - having experienced how interesting it was to be completely immersed in Elizabethan England in the second novel, it paled a little in comparison when Harkness wasn't able to look so deeply into the historical period her characters were in.

I'm still pretty conflicted about my rating - it flips between three and four stars in my head because I absolutely enjoyed it, but it also left a lot of gaps for what I wanted from a sequel to the All Souls Trilogy. Bordering on self-indulgence and companion-style fun, it's worth the read if you enjoyed the main books, but properly won't give you a whole lot if you're unfamiliar with the characters you'll be continuing with.