This book was fantastic! It's a standalone novel about time travelling thieves! For a standalone novel it had so much detail and such a complex and compelling story that felt wrapped up at the end, which I don't always feel at the end of standalone books.  

The characters and their group dynamic was fantastic, I felt like I knew each one of them and felt so connected to them, their group kinda reminded me a little of six of crows, a group of teenagers going on heists and causing trouble, it was brilliant. 

It's futuristic with touches of history and historical things which was really cool. I've not read a book even slightly similar to this before, it was so interesting and refreshing! 

I would recommend this to you if you enjoy YA sci-fi because this is honestly one of the best that I've had the pleasure of reading

This was mindblowing-ly wonderful. A utterly compelling plot, mixed with characters you will 100% fall in love with (seriously loved Imogen SO much), and writing that was so gorgeous it felt like I was reading a fairytale at times. The sci-fi meets history elements were uber satisfying for me, a history student, to read, the world-building was incredible and did I mention the friendships? THEY WERE SO BEAUTIFUL. Basically, I loved this book, and if you like time-travelling history thieves on an accidental mission to save the multiverse, you will too.

This review appears on Goodreads and will be cross-posted to my blog (possibly with edits if it seems incoherent).

First of all: I really enjoyed this book. I read Ryan Graudin's "Wolf by Wolf" a while ago, and didn't enjoy it as much as I expected because it totally wasn't WHAT I expected (I'd gone into it thinking it was just alternate history and didn't realise it had a fantastical element), but I knew this was sci-fi when I started it, which probably helped. It's a fast-paced time travel novel with plenty of heists and dubiously legal manouvres, which is the kind of thing that appeals to me, and I found the plot plenty engaging as a result.

The first half of the book reminded me somewhat of a YA "Chronicles of St Mary's". For those who aren't familiar with that series, it follows a group of historians who can time travel and use it to observe and record historical events, particularly those that are poorly documented. Of course, they always end up getting involved, and when they eventually figure out that they can bring objects out of the past if and only if those objects are about to be destroyed, they start a sideline in doing that. I'm a big fan of this series, mostly because as a medieval historian there are a ton of ambiguities I'd love to clear up by visiting the events, and also because the characters drink a lot of tea and I'm here for that.

So, the similarities: there is time travel. There are historians. The characters retrieve items that are about to be lost or destroyed (if they weren't, removing them would change the course of the past and screw things up). There's even tea, although not in anything like the same quantity. There's less of a focus on history and more on adventure and the things that happen between and around these historical periods, which meant it leaned slightly less heavily on my particular soft spots, but all in all, there was a similar vibe.

Then things got complicated because parallel worlds came into play, although I will give Graudin this: I didn't find my brain melting out of my ears, which is how I sometimes feel reading books about time travel and parallel worlds and all the complications of that sort of thing. Okay, so once or twice I sort of lost the thread of how a paradox could actually happen or be resolved, but hey, you don't need to understand a book to read it, do you? Then the universe started unravelling and the stakes got quite a lot higher, which ought to have made me more invested, but to be honest I could have kept on reading about time travelling heists for a while longer.

I enjoyed how well-developed all of the characters were: they had their distinct quirks and personalities, from Gram's love of Rubik's Cubes to Priya's way of making tea as a ritual to calm down (same) to Imogen's brightly coloured and constantly changing hair.

However, I was less keen on the romantic elements, and I have a few reasons for that.
1. Literally everybody is straight. This book is set in the future. Are you trying to tell me there are no queer people in the future? Because, like, that's not a world I want to live in.
2. Seriously, you have a crew of two girls plus two guys and they end up as couples? That's such a bad idea. Can you imagine what it would do to the ship if they broke up?
3. Priya and Far are already together when the story starts, so we never really get to see them fall in love. That's fine, because I'm not that keen on romantic plotlines anyway so wouldn't have wanted the book taken up with one, but it did make it a bit tricky to be convinced by their relationship.
4. Seriously. Why is everyone straight.

I think if you like Firefly, you might enjoy this book. It's set on a time machine and not a spaceship, but the crew ARE still smugglers and there's something of the same group dynamic happening. It definitely feels strongly YA (not least because of unnecessary romance and jealousy between characters that I don't find particularly engaging), but that's what it is, so that can't really be a criticism. Likewise, if you enjoyed the witty banter of Six of Crows, this might also appeal, but I don't feel like it had the depth of emotion that that had (especially where backstory was concerned).

All in all, a plenty enjoyable time travel heist story, but I probably enjoyed it more before the parallel worlds / "the universe is literally unravelling" plotline began. It was also distinctly heteronormative which, I don't know, just felt weird for a book set in the future.

Because we’re just going to be shouting about how incredible this book was from now until the end of time, we thought instead of writing a review that would be 100% incoherent, we’d shuffle our thoughts into a Reasons To Read Invictus. So, without further ado, let’s get into it!

PACING
Invictus is heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat fast, but at the same time it has slow moments for you to savour things like the tentative conversations between the couples. There was not one moment where I thought, ‘this needs to speed up’ or ‘wait, I’ve lost what’s happening.’ It’s literally crafted to perfection so you’ll never want to put it down!

FOUND FAMILIES
If you’re a fan of The Heroes of Olympus series, or Six of Crows, basically anything where a group of kids have to come together and save the world/steal some stuff, then you’re going to love this book. Invictus has the wholesomeness of the Percy Jackson series and wicked sense of the Grishaverse. With some strong Firefly and Doctor Who vibes as well, but that just comes with the sci-fi territory. (Side-note for other influences: the recent Star Trek films. The prologue is very Star Trek opening realness, and I was living for it.)

MIND BOGGLING REVEALS
OH MAN. The twists and turns in this story were off the scale good. Like, I didn’t see any of them coming. It’s really not something you can put together yourself, and even when I thought I had a one-up on the characters, I really didn’t. I’d like to think than Ryan thought of the ways a reader could construe things and then was like ‘haha nope! They’re not going to guess this!‘

ROMANCE
There are two main romances. You’d got Far and Priya, and Imogen and Gram. The first are the most true-love destiny pairing you’ve read since Percy and Annabeth. They communicate and it’s pretty glorious. And even though they’re young, they’re really serious about their feelings which is so joyful to read. As for Imogen and Gram, they don’t communicate and that’s the best thing too. Like, unrequited love that isn’t actually unrequited has got to be everyone’s favourite relationship dynamic ever right? It’s like love/hate but with more angst and emotional tension rather than sexual tension. Basically, it pulls on your heart strings and turned me into a puddle of love and tears. The romances aren’t over done, they’re secondary to the action plot, but they’re pivotal to the adventure so, sign me up!

ACCOMPLISHED WRITING
It literally blows my mind that Ryan Graudin came up with both Wolf By Wolf (a stunningly original idea) and Invictus. Seriously, one person should not be allowed to be this clever at plotting books. Everything I’ve read by Ryan has been different, but all her books have the same tone and beautiful crafting. I need Ryan to run a webinar on plotting, for sure!

Also, thought we’d give a shoutout to our friends Carys, Kate and Lily who we buddy read this book with. It was super fun to discuss it with them, so maybe another pro of this book is that it’s great for a book club pick – there’s a lot of talk about!

So, obviously, Invictus is getting 5 stars from us! I so wish this was the first in a larger series, but it’s also such a rewarding standalone (and you don’t get many sic-fi ones!) that it’s perfect on it’s own! We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

I have an issue with time travel in narratives. It always feels too convenient (see Season 7 of "Game of a Thrones" and the cave-of-convenience) or too riddled with flaws (see "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child"). As a result, I approached this novel with trepidation and low expectations. Both were ill-founded.

Ryan Graudin is a plot wizard. Sure, the characters and description are vivid, too, but what leaves a lasting impression is an ability to stitch together a storyline over plains of time and space. Some aspects lock together with predictable ease which, in turn, lure you into a false sense of security so that you're blindsided by the twists. "Hashing" clever.

I’m very disapointed that I didn’t like this book. After the incredible Wolf by Wolf, I was convinced that Graudin could do no wrong. Add that to my love of reading about criminals and ensembles and ensembles of criminals and I thought I would be obsessing over this book for the rest of my days.

My actual reaction to the book went as follows, *ahem*

Meeeeeeeeeeeh.

Okay let’s get into it. I was told I’d be joining a rag tag group of thieves as they attempt daring heists plundering the treasures of history. But actually, we don’t get to see them do many missions, we only get to see them do…one. Maybe two, depending on how you’re counting. And the heists aren’t all that daring, in fact, they’re pretty tame. We’re told in the text that this crew is the best at this job but um, why? We never see them do anything particularly impressive, we barely see them work at all.

And it turns out that plundering history for treasure isn’t even the actual plot! Oh no, the real plot – which I won’t spoil – was just waiting in the background ready to come along at the last minute and bore me to death because, you know what? I’ve seen it. A. Hundred. Times. Before.

The cast, too, disapointed. I don’t know if it was because I had just finished The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, a book that does it’s characterisation extremely well, but the characters in Invictus seemed plain and dull. Not one of them interested me. Their dialogue was bland, their “banter” wasn’t funny or endearing, and their interactions with each other felt forced and clichéd.

I feel terrible to be saying such negative things about the work of an author I really admire, but ultimately this book was a huge let down.