Into The Dim Review

This week's novel is Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor.  I flew to Austin on Thursday and flew back on Friday, and I read this whole book while waiting at the gate and sitting on the plane.  It was a good airplane book.

Hope has an eidetic memory, which she finds overwhelming to the point that it has given her a handful of phobias, which keep her isolated, fragile, and sheltered.  When her mother dies, her father sends her to spend the summer with her aunt in Scotland, where Hope discovers that her mother was a time traveler and she's not dead but trapped in the 12th century.  Hope and two other teenagers must travel back in time, where they have 72 hours to find and save her mother.

I really liked how Taylor portrays Hope's feelings of being overwhelmed--her panic attacks, her claustrophobia.  It's visceral prose and taps into the panic attacks I've had.  It made me sympathize with Hope.

She lost some of that sympathy by being so far behind me on picking up on what was going on.  She finds a hidden machine with a bunch of dates scrolling by, a bunch of period accurate and painstakingly labeled costumes, and a bunch of freakishly well preserved artifacts, one of which is a clear 900 year-old depiction of her mother.  And she's like "What's going on?!?"  It's time travel.  Come on.  Keep up.  And this happens through the whole story, which is made predictable since all the Chekhov's guns are very clearly marked so there aren't many surprises.  It's frustrating.

There were a handful of frustrating tropes that popped up.  There was Hope's "I'm better than other girls because I'm smart and not a slut."  There were the adults purposefully not answering Hope's questions until "later" when Hope's knowing would better fit the narrative.  There's the rampant violence against women because how else are you going to show that characters are bad guys.  There were the adults sending a team of children on a dangerous mission through time--a mission the adults attempted previously and failed--because they were "the only ones" who could do it.  If you're going to send someone back in time, why tell a kid about time travel to send her back instead of bringing in a competent adult and telling them about time travel and sending them?

And then I didn't care about the time period.  I know some people love it, but it smells like fertilizer, there's a risk of catching small pox, there's the previously mentioned rampant violence against women, and some pretty absurd racism (which isn't all that more absurd than other time periods, I guess).  It wouldn't be my first pick.

But it's a short read with some really lovely moments of prose (That first chapter!  Be still my heart!)

***
Next week: The Girl with All the Gifts, children and zombies by M. R. Carey.