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Here and Now and Then

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Kin is a likeable character to follow throughout a great/intriguing dilemma: how can he protect the family he loves without messing with time. I liked the tension with his daughter, well written and a good read!

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Mike Chen's "Here and Now and Then" checked nearly all of my reading boxes; fantasy, science fiction, drama, good writing, family dynamics. It approach the well worn path of time travel then adeptly skipped to a side, less traveled path. I very much enjoyed the smaller details, such as how the protagonist, father, and former agent Kin has aged while those around him continue with chemically enhanced youth. I liked the way in which the relationships and emotional ties are described. But the one criticism I had was that I felt that the initial family dynamic so necessary to the motivations of the main characters needed to be stronger. Personally, as a reader, I understood the actions, but just did not share in them to the degree that would have made this a five star read.

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I’m a sucker for time travel books and this definitely hit lots of high points. It was fun to follow our secret time traveler who gets stuck in the past and then must return to the future and leave his past behind him. The conflict about changing the past and protecting your family were an excellent tension point although things clean up a bit faster than I would have liked.

I received an ARC from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

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Thank you to NetGalley for a Kindle ARC of Here and Now and Then.

To be honest, I am not a fan of time traveling books; most of the time, I feel the story gets bogged down in mumbo jumbo technical terms and the relentless reminders of the grandfather paradoxes.

But the premise of Here and Now and Then had me more than a little intrigued.

* Minor spoilers ahead *

Kin Stewart is a time traveling agent who is, unfortunately, stranded in 1996, when a fight with a bad guy, leaves his transponder (or whatever its called) on the fritz.

Despite all the rules he was taught as an agent, he not only acclimates to his new time period, he meets a woman, falls in love, gets married, has a child and builds a career and marriage, leaving his past (future?) behind.

But when an agent returns for him nearly two decades later, Kin not only has to adapt to his previous life and the people and fiancee he left behind, he realizes it is not easy to live in two time periods and the costs in doing so might endanger his daughter.

First, I enjoyed the world building though I doubt we will have flying cars in over 100 years; I'm still waiting for Rosie, my robot maid.

Second, there was just enough technical sci-fi jargon to keep me interested but didn't detract or distract from the story. In fact, I would have liked an insider view behind a time traveling agent's life; what gadgets they use, what skills they are taught and where, stuff like that.

Third, the premise itself was a good twist on the time travel aspect, a father coming to terms with his dual lives, literally in two time periods, except I was looking for more action.

I'm not saying every time travel book (or any book) needs Jason Bourne-like action but blame my assumption on movies and pop culture. I was expecting more action, more urgency, more stuff going on.

Also, I did not like Kin. I didn't hate or dislike him but there was something aloof and distant about him; maybe because he still struggled to adapt to his new life and he had brief flashes of old memories that returned to him when he least expected it.

I liked the relationship between Kin and his daughter, Miranda, but I didn't feel the love and bond Kin had with either of the two women (wives) in his life.

I understood his disconnect and lack of emotion when he returned to his time period, the old feelings he had for his fiancee and friends were no longer there and that's more than understandable.

But I didn't feel the bond he used to have with his fiancee, nor with his 1996 wife.

Also, I felt the lack of character development in terms of his relationships with his family and friends.

Who are these people? Why does he connect with them? What do they have in common?

Marcus was a dick. He constantly puts down Penny, condescends to her and treats her as though her feelings don't matter.

And what's with her moronic family? What's the point of their hostility?

Why and how did Kin get along with Penny, despite their obvious differences?

The TCB seems relatively tame in their response to how many protocols Kin has broken. He's a respected agent who has risked his life for the agency numerous times but I expected a serious reprimand, especially when Kin's illegal communication with his daughter is discovered.

Also, the ending is resolved quite quickly, almost too easily, and I think the author could have had some fun with this part; the means through which Kin will do anything to save his daughter (I see some potential ACTION here!).

There is love and heart and a good twist on the time travel genre in Here and Now and Then, except I was looking for more action and intrigue.

I look forward to Mr. Chen's next book.

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Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen is a science fiction fantasy novel. This particular time travel adventure takes a look at what happens if things in the past are changed by the time travelers.

Kin is from the year 2142 when time travel becomes common and is an agent for the Temporal Correction Bureau (TCB). The agents of the TCB are tasked with going back and protecting the past from corruption as any little change can change their future that is yet to come.

However, Kin gets sent on an assignment back to the 1990s to take out someone interfering and while he does succeed in his mission he also ends up with his locator damaged. Kin hops that despite the damage someone will come for him in two days when scheduled but instead finds himself trapped for the next eighteen years where he slowly loses the memories of his true time.

Although the idea behind Here and Now and Then is not a new one in the fact that change in the past can change the future I still enjoyed this author’s take on it. This is one that most of the plot is pretty much given away in the blurb so if you didn’t read that yet you may not want to if it sounds like a good one.

For me while I enjoyed the ideas on time travel and the story I did think this one read a little on the dry side and I just didn’t feel it oozing with the emotion it should have which is what led to my rating 3.5 stars. Maybe I was focusing a bit too much on the tech side or perhaps it was the male POV or writer that was a bit off to me but regardless it was still a solid and entertaining story.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

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A quick and quirky time travel read that would transfer well to the silver screen. When a time travel agent from the future is stranded in present days, the decisions he makes to cope will have ramifications far into the future. Fans of Robert A. Heinlein will devour this well-plotted story.

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3.5 stars. This can be described as a sci-fi/time travel book, but it is really more of an emotional, heart-felt journey of a father trying to do his best for his lost daughter. Lost in time, that is. Wonderful character development and an intriguing premise. The father, Kin, is a secret time traveling agent from the future who gets stranded in the past and develops a new, full life with wife and family. He is then suddenly “found” and brought home to his actual life in the future, having to leave behind those he loved in the past with no explanation. The main gist of the story then follows with how Kin tries to make sense of his two separate lives and, in forced secrecy, help the daughter left behind. Good story with a good ending.

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Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. First off, let me just say that I'm a sucker for a good time travel story. This one has a great premise. Kin time travels from 2142 to 1996 to prevent a "merc" time traveller from creating a bad paradox...and then he gets stuck in the past for 18 years before being rescued and brought back to his proper time. He even commits a major no no by marrying and having a child. So far, so good. The problem? Practically nonexistent character development and so so storytelling. This book could have been so much more. I was disappointed but I'll give three stars for the premise and writing.

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I got the digital ARC from Netgally, and this one is a gem.

On his website, Mike Chen, an engineer by education, writes, “…my head was constantly filled with stories. Today, I’ve found my niche, blending science fiction elements and themes with a more grounded and intimate story. In my stories, there are no epic wars or fate-of-the-universe events; instead, they’re tales of family and friendship and humor that just happen to have some time travel or an apocalypse.”

This exactly describes his book, “Here and Now and Then.”

More at https://indiapoint.net/2018/12/31/book-review-here-and-now-and-then-by-mike-chen/

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I’m not usually a science fiction fan, but this was amazing, absorbing, and a really quick read. I cannot wait to pass it on to my high school students and my adult friends- it really bridges the gap both genre-wise and interest-wise!

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Thank You so much to NetGalley for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.

To be honest it took me awhile to read this book. But in retrospect I will never be sure if it was because I didn’t want it to end or I was afraid the ending wouldn’t be good enough for the great premise it presented in the early pages. Science fiction, especially time travel is my favorite genre. With that said I have read a lot in my years of reading. This book, and its story and most particularly its ending has become a new favorite. Mike Chen has done what few authors of this type of story are able to do, he has given a great most believable ending to a story that is made even better by how it comes together. That was a big part of why it was five star for me.
The story follows Kin –a time traveling secret agent who makes time jumps as directed, though we learn little of his organizations structure or actual assignments. In one of these jumps his equipment is damaged and he becomes stuck or misplaced in a prior century (early 1990) and learns over 16 years to make the best of it—falling in love, marrying and creating a daughter. All this starts to fall apart when he is finally located and rescued by time travel agents from the future and whisked back to his former life, leaving his wife and daughter without a clue as to what has happened. It can be taken for granted that he has problems fitting into his former life and desperate to set things right in the past he begins to look for and follow his daughter’s life in time archives and begins to try to change the course of her life with clandestine correspondence. This ultimately presents big problems for both of them. I won’t give anymore of the plot away, but will say it was very well constructed, without gapping loopholes or quantum leaps of imagination that are often found in this type of story.

I will give a short list of the things that made this a very well written time travel book for me.
1. it was told in a linear fashion. Straight lines, easy to follow, It did not alternate chapters with one in past, one in future.
2. The story was simple but heartfelt and had some actually teary moments. I became invested in these characters and loved seeing them become more rounded as the story proceeded.
3. No fantasy world building or magic, this isn’t a fantasy book but closer to straight science fiction without space ships or travel to other planets.
4. People were still people with concerns for love and family in the future even if all around them was slightly different.

So it was great fun. A little slow at first and not much science in the mix. The author might have added more information about Kin’s work and world in the future but I only wished for that as background to help the story structure. The actual writing was very good, and the story one I will definitely remember.
Not a lot of hard science writing to be found here but if you want a good heartwarming, credible tale with a time travel foundation I highly recommend it.

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I loved this story! Here and Now and Then was so much more than I expected. Like The Time Traveler's Wife and Outlander the human story was engrossing and evoked a depth of emotion few novels have managed to stir in this jaded reader. At the same time, the tightly wound plot kept me on the edge of my seat. This one is a classic, destined for "must read" lists for generations to come. No spoilers from me. I'll just say it's about fathers and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, jobs and careers, soccer and cooking, love and impossible choices. As a librarian I will recommend it for everyone from teens to grandparents. No sex scenes or foul language.

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Kin Stewart is a time travelling secret agent from 2142.  When a mission goes wrong. He gets stranded in 1992, and begins a new life.  Everything is going well until hr starts experiencing memory loss and blackouts, and then a rescue team arrive to take him home, 18 years late.  He returns to 2142 and his old life, but is unable to forget his family from 1992.  Torn between the two lives Kin desperately tries to find a way to stay connected to both of them, even if that means breaking all of the rules of time travel.


I really like the idea of this book, I'm a big fan of time travel books so I was looking forward to getting started on this one.  Unfortunately it didn't quite grip me as I was hoping.

The plot and storyline works well, I liked reading about Chen's vision for the future and how he thought things might have changed.  The idea of a time traveller being torn between lives caught my interest.  I think for me the execution just didn't quite work.  Don't get me wrong, the book isn't horrible and it doesn't have any major flaws that make it fail, I just found it didn't capture my interest.
I didn't feel like I made a connection with any of the characters, and that meant I wasn't invested in the story.  I didn't feel the depth of emotions that the author was trying to evoke.  Perhaps if we had a few extra chapters at the start of the book giving us more of an insight to Kin's life with his family it would help to get to know those characters and be more attached to them.

Im going with 3* for this one.  As I said there wasn't anything particularly bad about the book, I just didn't connect with the story as deeply as I normally like to, so I was ambivalent towards it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin - Mira for an arc in exchange for an honest review

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Thank you to Harlequin and Mira Books for sending me a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Kin works for a secret agency from the year 2142 where he is assigned missions to get rid of criminals who would alter the course of history. His latest mission lands him in the year 1996 where things start to go wrong. His method of being able to travel back to 2142 is shot and now he’s stuck, waiting for someone from his present time to come rescue him. 18 years later, that help comes. Although, it’s a little too late. He’s married, has a kid, and a new IT job. He’s completely forgotten what his past life was like. But now, he and his family is in trouble. He has to go back to 2142 and his family is in danger because they were never supposed to be married, and his daughter should have never existed. Will he be able to save his family from the year 2142? Will he be able to travel back to his family?

THIS BOOK! I LOVED IT! As soon as I saw the Star Trek references in the beginning, I knew I was in for a grand time. This is the perfect blend of a science fiction and contemporary fiction novel. I read this book in one night! The author did a wonderful job expressing the appropriate emotions between his family from 2142 and his family from 2014. There were a few events that happened that were sad and left me wanting to throw the book, but it was the best way the story could have gone. The ending was just perfect. It wrapped every cliff hanger up. This would be a wonderful movie, by the way!

4.5/5 Stars

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Writing a time travel novel is kind of like writing a vampire novel - there are certains rules that must be followed, but other than that, the only thing an author must do is create a world with internal cohesion. Mike Chen has definitely created a world that holds together. His time travel agents have strict rules they must follow in order to prevent the timeline from corruption, and even the more technical explanations (of things like the "grandfather paradox") are eminently understandable.

Unfortunately, his characters and their relationships don't get the same attention. At first, I thought the lack of depth in the future was deliberate, to reflect Kin's initial feelings of disconnect when he returns to his own time, but I didn't begin to feel more connected to those characters as he apparently did. We're told that his feelings return for his fiancee return, but never really shown it. On the other hand, the present-day characters felt much more fleshed out, but we don't actually have much interaction with them once Kin returns to the future.

So, it's a plus for world-building, a negative for characters, and there's another plus for the actual action of the story. Kin's various attempts to reconnect with and then save his daughter shine through with his intensity, and Chen's determination to stay within the rules that he's created add a sense of urgency and truth to his actions. If you do the math, world-building + action - character development = an eminently readable book, if not one of the best time travel books I've ever read.

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Kin Stewart is a time traveling secret agent from 2142, except he becomes severely injured during a mission and gets stuck in the 1990s. Without proper medical intervention and no sign of help coming from the future, Kin slowly begins to forget his life in 2142 and starts a family. Eighteen years later, where only two weeks have passed in the future, Kin's retriever agent comes for him, forcing him to return home and inevitably tearing him between his two families. When his attempts to keep both families are discovered, and his daughter from the past inadvertently threatens the future, he'll risk anything and everything to save her and fix the future.

An intriguing light sci-fi with elements of romance, it was complex and sweet all at the same time. Honestly, though, the details of time travel and the inevitable paradoxes were a little over my head. I didn't always understand how time functioned with years in the past passing by whereas only a few hours would go by in the future. The time travel element was confusing, but I don't feel I needed to understand every detail of how it worked to enjoy the story. But the future didn't feel too jarringly different and I could see it as a definite possible future. Overall, it was just a really sweet story about a family man who wants to do right by the people he loves and to make amends for mistakes he hadn't even realized he had made.

The first half seemed to move at breakneck speed. Multiple events occurred where any number of them could have been a mid point or turning point, but only served to lead up to the mid point. There was so much happening, it kind of felt like the story was moving along a little too quickly, especially since it occurred over a relatively short amount of time. At the same time, Kin seemed a little frozen. His character felt static as he tried to keep his two lives separate. In the second half, the story seemed to slow down quite a bit as it was all downhill and involved a single overarching event. But this is also where we see Kin prove what he's made of. While he spent the first half of the book projecting a certain air to everyone around him, he let all that down in the second half to prove he's a loving man who will do anything to make things right.

I wouldn't call this a romance, but there is a very strong romance element. Here we have a man who has a wife and daughter in the past and a fiancee in the future and we see him have relationships with both romantic partners. The one thing I found annoying was how opposite the two women are, almost as though Kin sought the exact opposite of what he had in the future when he was stuck in the past. It makes me question him and I wish the women had been a little more alike, but it was interesting to see how he interacted with such different women. In the end, it was a really sweet romance without any real drama.

Despite how quickly half of this book moved, it did feel like it dragged a bit. Either too much was going on or too little. There were times when I wanted to stop or just take a long break from it, but I was also reading it aloud to my kids at naptime and bedtime and didn't have anything better to read, so I kept going. And I'm glad I did. The ending was totally worth it. The whole story came together beautifully and I have zero complaints.

Overall, I wouldn't really call this sci-fi or romance though there are strong elements of both. Instead, I like to think of this as a nice story of a man struggling with mistakes he made and trying to atone for them. This is his story and he really is one of the good guys.


Thank you so much to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. It is set to be published January 29, 2019.

Post date: 1/25/19
Blog: thelilycafe.wordpress.com

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While I am not a fan of science fiction, I am drawn to books about time travelers. How can one little change mess with the past and the future by disrupting the continuum? Throw that in with a good story, and I am hooked.

In the late 1990's, Kin Stewart lives in the Silicon Valley with his wife and daughter, deciding what to make for dinner and what show will they watch on tv afterward. Then, someone appears to take Kin back to 2142, the year he came from, where he works with a government agency and in the thick of wedding planning to his longtime girlfriend. But wait, Kin misses his other family and is torn between his two lives.

I absolutely loved this story and there was just enough scientific explanation to help understand the whole time travel theory, but not too much to take away from the story of Kin and his family.

If you enjoyed The Time Traveler's Wife and The Jane Austen Project, like I did, then you'll probably enjoy this book as well.

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I really enjoyed this book, I love time travel books when they are original and well written and this one was.I liked the main characters, and thought the story was very original, and the pace was good.Very entertaining and with a few surprises thrown in.looking forward to reading more by this author.This book kept me entertained and happily page turning .Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC.

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This time travel book starts really strongly. Kit was in pain and forgetting himself. When he is "found" he faces an unbelievably difficult choice of what to do about his family in the past. Then he comes back to his real time and is faced with more difficult choices. At this point in the story, it started to seem a little predictable. Then Penny gets involved (she had seemed a minor character for the first part of the book) and the book picked up. The ending is great and really appropriate. I'm still not sure who I would recommend this book to. But I will purchase it for the library. It is science fiction without a lot of science, but a lot of the moral dilemmas of time travel ala Connie Willis.

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Here and Now and Then is one of those books that is instantly endearing. It has themes of family, agency, and love all wrapped in a science fiction story that will have your heart throbbing. There's drama, love lost, and forgiveness all in one. It's one of those books where all these elements come together in perfect harmony to make a book that just clicks with you without effort. If you love Doctor Who this book is a must read for you.

Reading it felt like being drawn into Doctor Who for the first time. I first saw the episode with Vincent Van Gogh. And just like Here and Now and Then there's this tenderness, this wonder, and utter emotion that spills forth. And I fell in love with this book only more and more until the end left me ugly crying on my couch.

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