This was a wonderful novella about the dangers and repercussions of time travel. The execution of how those changes come about is excellent. Something is, was, and has always happened. It's wonderful.

This book was such a unique and interesting read. I loved the writing as well as the themes the books revolved around. It was such an enjoyable read I would definitely read from this author again!

This is definitely the kind of book where you need a piece of paper to keep track of the timeline and not get lost. The main character and her past self are really different, which is fun to see. You will not be bored if you can keep track of the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

A well written book with an interesting premise that got bogged down in its own philosophy. Too much of the book is taken up with discussions between the V’s and it just makes what could have been a great book boring

Not really sure how I felt about this book, to be honest. I love time travel books, and the premise to this book was unique and attention grabbing. But the execution of the plot and the characters both fell flat for me. I still had some fun with this but it wasn’t all I wanted it to be.

I have received a copy of this book in exchange or an honest oppinion. Thank you NetGalley.

That said, let's talk about the book :)

Variel begins the book preparing herself to confront what she knows will cause her to loose everthing: her career, her status quo, her investments, etc. She is preparing herself to face her young self "V".
In a world where people live longer than 150 years, time travel happens regularly, you can select any destination and various dates in time to visit. Although, there are rules: children aduilts (people under 40) cannot travel alone, you can only travel a limited time lapse, you cannot bring with you any personal bellongs, etc etc. "V" is part of the resistance and whant to change the future, so she and her team, prepare an attack, something went wrong and she kidnap an important person. Unknowingly, she kidnapes her older self.
I liked the plot and the story but I did not love it. Why that? There are parts of the book that are very slow, much philosophy. The main characters talk about life based on their choices, what should they do to change the world again and again. This is the slow part.
What I like the most is the idea and the concept behind the book, time travel allowed, quality of life over 100 year old. There are action scnes well created also and several twists and turns on the way to the end. It seems that the future, like the past, cannot be changed, but the book is full of paradoxes, and contracdictions. So it is important attetion to the details.
In my opinion the author has created a very interest alternate universe. The book could be confused if you do not pay attention to the details. I recommend reading the book once to know the story but try a second time to check the details.

I usually love books about time travel, but I found this book hard to follow and rather uninteresting. I found I did not care about the characters or their struggles. The only interesting character that I found was Alex, a transgender who uses they/them pronouns. The book had some good ideas but I feel got too much into political debate. The arguments between the main character and her younger self were too heated and hard. I did enjoy the idea of what would you do if you met your younger self. The premise behind this book had great promise but I feel just did not meet what I expected.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

<i>“People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”</i> (S03E10 Doctor Who)

"The Bad Part of Time" grabbed me by the neck and wouldn't let go. The concept of time travel in sci-fi is a classic and is one of my absolute favorites! At first, the "Temporal Security Administration" sounded like it may be a sly rip-off of the "Time Variance Authority", but the story proved that wrong instantly. The TSA (hah) is nothing like the TVA, besides the barebones description of the "Agency that regulates time travel". The world in which the TSA resides is fascinating, and just a bit confusing logistics-wise. How the hell does all of humanity fit into what is essentially a two hundred-year loop?! Reading Variel and V argue with one another was also wildly interesting to read. Yes, they are the same person, but they also are not. Their conversations felt more like how one would argue with one's self within their own mind. Also, the stances on how to affect change politically that both V and Variel hold were interesting to see clash when they speak. They are both right, but they are both wrong. I could understand how some people will take V's dialogue or "tirades" as "Social Justice Warrior" nonsense. But as someone who has fought for her own social justice and helped those who are fighting for theirs, I can understand her frustrations. However, I could also understand Variel's perspective, because I also have sat with those on the other side of the table, who say the fight is won with words, not violence. It is a complicated topic, but V and Variel perfectly show the conflict between those who fight for equality. While V and Variel are on the run, this story smacks you with some wild theories of time travel in its own world-building. The time gates themselves as a concept are FASCINATING. I can't really say too much because I don't want to spoil some great plot turns, but god it's so good! I love stories that bend the mind, and this certainly does just that! (I would say it's "Inception" level of mind bend) Also, the one paragraph at the very end got me. I didn't expect it, but god I'm so happy it ended like that.

3 stars. The Bad Part of Time has a very strong premise and a surprisingly intricate world -- a world stuck in a time loop of two hundred years between the invention of the first "time gate" and the apocalypse that everyone knows is coming but is too complacent to do anything about -- but, to me, very little is done with it. Most of the book revolves around Variel Martinez, a former revolutionary turned Temporal Security Administration worker, meeting her younger self, "V", in an encounter that she's been expecting and dreading for fifty-five years. The interactions between Variel, who has come to regret her past and simply wants a quiet life, and V, who cannot believe that her older self has given up on her revolutionary ideals, form the meat of the storyline, even as they must run from time gate to time gate to deal with the aftermath of V's attack. At its bones, this book offers a lot of promise.

However, I couldn't help but feel unsatisfied with the way that the storyline ends up unfolding. Much of the book consists of political debates between Variel and V, which seem to be intended to paint a sort of gray-morality portrait of the conflict between more radical and more conservative ends of the political spectrum, but they fail to do that more than they just quote buzzwords and quips from modern-day Twitter and NYT editorials. It felt like the author was trying to subtly weave in messaging about our current political climate, but it ends up feeling like a hammer instead. On top of that, the messaging was confusing and inconclusive. We are constantly told that "time can't change," a mantra that drives many of Variel's decisions toward inaction, but starting at around halfway through, it becomes very clear that V and Variel's timelines are changing. And in light of that, many of the plot points just don't make sense. It's not that the time travel made the story confusing -- on the contrary, I think I actually perfectly understood what was happening near the end of the book. It's that I couldn't understand why Variel and V were continuing to take the actions that they were, considering everything we'd learned over the course of the novel. I finished the book feeling very much unfulfilled.

The Bad Part of Time is an intriguing time-travel tale that promises to push boundaries, but really ends up only gesturing at them.

Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

I’m quite a fan of time-travel sci-fi, but I found it hard to follow in this book. The story was hard for me to get into because I never felt like I truly understood what was going on. It’s the kind of book you’d need to read a second time in order to understand.
It felt like I kept being told what the rules of time travel were just for them to immediately be broken. I didn’t care too much about the characters or their problems, because none of them were particularly likable or interesting.

I appreciated seeing a character who used they/them pronouns because I haven’t come across that before.

Love the idea of people being able to time travel. Normal people, traveling in a normal weekend, to a normal destination such as the end of the world, yeah totally normal.

The load of political/social criticism is kind of an important part of the book and the rebellion is what drives the mc in the search for social justice for the baby-adults (just like me, a baby) who have no independence at all (at the contrary of me).

Loved how we are constantly told that time has already been written, that we can't actually change a thing bc it has already happened in another time line, but still V keeps trying to do something about it bc (and for an optimistic like me it's all it takes). The action, the constant escaping is just exciting!

But It just left me missing something, I don't know why but it wasn't as fulfilling as I hoped

Variel Martinez is a bureaucrat with the Temporal Security Administration, an agency tasked with safeguarding the timeline as tourists, businesspeople, and refugees travel. They only go about 200 years into the future, because that's when the world ends -something everyone knows is coming, but most people ignore. The few who don't include terrorists trying to stop the impending apocalypse by blowing up the timeline. And Variel knows exactly who they are, because one of them is her younger self.

There was a good idea here about using time travel to examine whether people can actually change. If you can convince your younger (or older) self to see things differently, can you change the world? Or are we predestined to always be a true self. But it was SO confusing. It felt like Ingle was trying to do too many things - have a story about time travel, and the perils of capitalism, and age discrimination, and about 50 other things. And the logic of time travel just never clearly seemed to come together. The world is destroyed, yet people can still live there? Variel's younger self is from the past, but also from the future? Time travel means events are immutable - because you can go to the future and see something already happened, so now it's in your past, but you also can change everything by bringing something from the future to the past, and make people vanish out of existence? And it was difficult to put up with all the confusion because none of the characters were all that interesting, or even likable, so their impending doom really didn't seem like that big of a deal.

This was a fun time travel adventure. The characters were believable, the world was well crafted and believable. I loved everything about this book. This one kept me reading late into the night to see where it was going . An easy five star read from me. I hope to read more from this author.

Trigger warning for violence. There is some violence at parts in the story so if that is an issue for you be warned.

I received an arc digital copy but my opinions are honest and my own.

Thanks to NetGalley and City Starlight Press for an eARC on this one, although it came out Oct 2021.

Really fascinating take on two time periods in an individuals life colliding through the time space continuum in a universe where old folks are in charge of the world (not gonna lie “the gerontocracy” had me laughing at its ingenuity).

This short little novel also grapples with whether the past (and the future) can be changed. It requires a close read, as some time/space continuum stuff I found myself going back and re-reading a paragraph thinking I’d missed something, but honestly liked the way those bits aren’t pulled out of the text visually.

I also love a novel where the bad guy gets it in the end really good, so this one definitely hit some sweet spots for me!

THE BAD PART OF TIME

The Bad Part of Time is set in a undertermined future when time travel has been discovered and regulated by the government creating the TSA. The story focuses in 70 something Valerian a Puerto Rican agent in the edge of retirement. We get a glimpse into her life as she prepares to what it seems like the most important day of their life. We may think is retirement, but it’s actually her encounter with her past self, V, a terrorist that wants to change the dominant government that has alienated the youth into poverty and lack of opportunities, to keep them bellow.

The book deals with so much beautifully, it talks about how to change the world, how to care of it, and even it gives you a glimpse of what you look like in different stages of your life. It present the structure of power really way and tells the readers how we are dealing with a system that creates -with intention- the conditions for many of the miserable things that happen. And of course, time traveling.

The characters of Valerian and V are well crafted, one, older, seeing the foul young fight, and the younger deceived with the result of her own life. I think it deals well with not only the disappointment of how life can apparently crush your young dreams, but also with the no stopping hope of changing that it should spark for ever in all of us, it doesn’t matter the age.

It is a recommended read, it is really light and sometimes blunt. So much that I missed some of the poetic style that I normally seek.

I did enjoy the book it was interesting. But there were some things that I didn't understand like how they avoid meeting another version of themselves when they travel through time and how the world isn't extremely overpopulated. Some things are confusing but overall it's a good and interesting read.

An interesting time travel tale. It has an interesting premise and includes some nice suspense. I stayed engaged and thought it was pretty well executed. A lot of time travel fans will like this one.

I really appreciate the free review copy!!

I was given an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The book started off amazing. I was drawn into Variel and wanting to know more of her story right away. From the moment we meet her she knows that today something is going to go down and she is incapable of stopping it. We soon find out the the younger version of Variel known for the rest of the book as V is breaking into the Temporel security administration.V is here on a mission to try and stop the end of the world but using the time portals jump through time. We follow V and Variels journey of V trying to change the course of history and Variel trying to convince V nothing she dose will change anything.
Now when I put it like that this book sounds amazing and don’t get me wrong this book was good however there are points in the book that I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that it is clearly did it so many times that nothing they do will change the future but it seems to be implied that things are changing and that decisions that happen before I no longer happening and I just found that to be a little confusing with everything else going around in the world.
I felt like some of the characters were not explored enough and they were just kind of thrown in there to just have someone to hate for the time being but honestly if you took them out of the book it wouldn’t have changed anything.
I do have to give the author props for the character of Alex. Alex uses they them pronouns and honestly that is amazing to see in today’s day and age honestly that is one of my favorite things about this book and why my rating is at three stars.
All in all it was just book the best book I’ve ever read no but what I recommend it to people who enjoy sci-fi absolutely it just wasn’t where are usually read so it was a change for me.