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January Cole is having a particularly rough day. The Paradox Hotel, where she runs security, is being inundated with wealthy guests whose “flights” back in time to ancient Egypt, the Triassic Period, the Renaissance and more have been delayed at the timeport next door. They’re demanding suitably upscale accommodations as they wait.
On top of that, the government, which has been running the hotel and the timeport, has decided to sell the complex because it’s not been turning a profit. Four trillionaires are now at the hotel, getting ready to bid on the property. Somehow, a few baby dinosaurs are running around, and the cherry on top of it all is that January has found a dead body in one of the guest rooms — but only she can see it.
Underlying the craziness is that January is “Unstuck” — because of the many times she traveled into the past herself to stop people in the present from breaking the time travel rules, her brain is getting unmoored from time. She sees things she’s experienced in the past (in the location they happened, so just in the hotel) as well as some things that are going to happen, whether in five minutes or two hours.
Her condition is progressing enough that the medication she takes to alleviate the effects doesn’t work all the time, and she is staring down a near-future where her brain goes to mush. But she is determined to solve the mystery of the murdered man; protect the trillionaires, each of whom is facing death threats, and to help figure out why time is coming unmoored around the whole hotel — and not just for her.
The Paradox Hotel is a pretty cool novel about time travel, with a murder and several other mysteries all mixed together. It’s also quite a bit about love and grief: January stays at her job because it’s the only way for her to have a connection with her dead girlfriend (her time slips give her opportunities to “be with” her again). January is a pretty tough nut to crack; she’s acerbic and mean to everyone, even her friends, and she lets out her pain on others. It’s not a really pleasant narrator to hang out with for a whole book.
I was pleasantly surprised, though, at the poignant ending, which made me like the book as a whole more. It made it feel there was a reason for the unpleasantness. I still wouldn’t really choose to plow through another book with a similar narrator and often-bitter style, though, if given a heads-up.
Rated: High. Profanity includes 48 uses of strong language, about 100 instances of moderate profanity, around 60 uses of mild language, and about 20 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes some kissing, characters in bed together, brief mentions of sex with few details, and some crude references. Violence includes several deaths, including a couple of murders; some light to more serious injuries, and attempted killings. There are a moderate amount of details of blood and gore.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
