Splinter Effect by Andrew Ludington

 This was a very promising debut! 

I have been trying to read outside my comfort zone - I try to make sure I don’t get into a rut where I only read the same authors all the time. Also, I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy lately and I decided to more actively seek out more science fiction books. 

So a few months back, when I got an email from NetGalley telling me I was auto-approved for a bunch of books by authors I had never heard of, I decided to say “what the heck!” And I downloaded all of them, thinking maybe I’d find something good, maybe I wouldn’t. So I was very pleased when I started reading and realized/remembered that this was a time traveling archeologist book!

In premise, this book felt like it was trying to be Connie Willis mixed with Indiana Jones. 

Now, I absolutely adore Connie Willis and her Oxford time traveling historians, and the premise revealed in To Say Nothing Of The Dog that items about to be destroyed in history can be removed from their original time and brought back to the present/future. At first I thought this book might be in conversation with that book, but I don’t think so. I don’t think this author is that familiar with a lot of other SF books, because this book often felt like a trope-fest crossed with a Byzantine history course - But fun! I’m not adequately conveying how much fun this book was or how much of a page turner it was. Even though the main character was too morose and too good at everything, and the twist was able to be seen a mile away, and the science of the time travel did not seem well thought out, I didn’t want to put this down! I really enjoyed it, flaws and all, and look forward to the next book in the series.