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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Read on loan from Ada
Rating: 4/5
Pages: 416
Started: 22 December 2022
Finished: 26 December 2022
Summary:
Libby is stuck in 1989. She has no money, no friends, no way to get home. After she escapes from the motel where Ezra was holding her captive, her only choice is to find the nearest Medeian university and continue her research on wormholes in the hope she can create one that will take her back home. At the sexist, underfunded college, Libby has to hide not only her identity, but also the true nature of her research--no matter how close she gets to one of her co-workers.
The five remaining Society members are intimately aware that no actual sacrifice was made to the Library, and even as they research and plot and hunt for Libby, they can all feel the collection slowly sucking at their reserve of power. All of them are in danger--from the Society, from those outside, from each other.
Thoughts (SPOILERS! BEWARE!):
My thoughts on the book as a whole are utterly eclipsed by my thoughts on the final scene. Gideon kissed Nico! And then Libby appeared! Still on fire! From causing a nuclear explosion and then killing several people! I'm not sure what was more exciting. No, that's a lie. Gideon kissed Nico! I had been waiting for Nico and Libby to get together for most of both books, but now I'm honestly not sure what I want to happen. Gideon and Nico had been my favorite (platonic) relationship throughout the series, so I'm just excited to see what happens with them next.
There were a lot of other exciting things that happened in the book, though. As I already knew Ada would phrase it on a post-it at the end of the chapter, "Asexual Reina!" Also apparently Bisexual Nico and Bisexual Libby, confirmed a little more clearly than the very weird little interlude in TAS where Libby slept with Tristan and Parisa. And I think Parisa might be demiromantic? Anyway, the representation in this book is great in a lot of ways. The Dalton-is-the-Prince situation was also very interesting, and I'm still waiting to see how Gideon fits into the whole plot.
The plot of this book was very complex, and admittedly I wasn't super mentally present while reading it, so I feel like I might have missed some things. But even so, I really enjoyed how many threads came together, and how many were left to be explained next book. I got very excited when I learned that the person Libby worked with in 1990 was also working with Ezra in the present. Her end was anticlimactic, though between her unclear death and the presence of time travel in the series, it seems possible that she will be back. Dalton's splitting and his alliance with Parisa were wild, and both of their relationship with Atlas was even more complex, which I thought was fun, if a bit confounding. Libby's storyline in the past was also super cool, both her survival and research, and the sacrifice she had to make to get back to the present. Time travel is always trippy, but the way that Blake has been handling it so far is complex and interesting--my understanding feels exactly like that of a researcher who has some facts and a hypothesis, but not a full understanding, which is the point.
One of my favorite things about the book as a whole is how unreliable all the narrators are. Only actions can be trusted; every characters' take on other characters is colored by their own personality and experience and so cannot be taken at face value. It's super fun to try to untangle the characters using such subjective descriptions. Because of this (and because Gideon kissed Nico!) I can't wait to read the the third book. I hope it comes out soon!
Words:
Atavistic (adj) relating to or characterized by reversion to something ancient or ancestral
Disparate (adj) essentially different in kind; not allowing comparison
Recalcitrant (adj) have an obstinately uncooperative attitude toward authority or discipline