Book Review: The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas

About:

The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas is a novel which imagines the world if time travel was invented in the late 1960s by four female scientist, and a murder being investigated across time. This is Ms. Mascarenhas’ first novel.

• 336 pages
• Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1683319443

 

My rating for The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas – 3
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Thoughts:

The premise of The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas sounds very interesting, a mystery being investigated across time, starring a mostly female cast.

The book has a lot in it, a murder-mystery which drives the plot, but I found the world building a lot more interesting. The author envisioned a futuristic world where time travel is a business, used mostly for commercial purposes and military logistics. It is not available to the general public even though they are aware of the technology and reap its benefits.

The chosen time travelers are beholden to the company, who is beholden to no one. They have their own rules, laws, and currency (since those apply differently based on which era you land governments are ineffective). Time travelers can meet themselves, interact with their past and future selves and think nothing of having get-togethers with several versions of themselves.

The future, however, is set and time travelers are forbidden to interfere, only observe. But if a past-self observes a future-self, wouldn’t that – almost by definition – change the future events?

The author also imagined how time travel would change a person’s psychologically. After all, no one “really” dies since you can always go back in time and visit them. You know that someone is going to wrong you in a decade, but you have no reason to be nasty to them in the present. She goes into very interesting tangents on how time travel will change ones outlook, in life and love, as well as their own mortality.

The novel has many characters in it, and because every chapter jumps in time, there is no linear quality to it. This is fine but I had a tough time keeping track of who’s who. I had to go back and re-read some pages, even go back to the beginning to remind myself who this character is. At the end of the novel, I just didn’t care about any of them and the mystery didn’t hold my attention.

I enjoyed the world building parts of this book, it was original and mostly thought through. The psychological impacts of time travel (as the book title suggests) are very interesting and brought up ideas I’ve never thought about. I could have read a book twice that size just on those two subjects.

Synopsis:

Four scientist invented time travel in 1967, however one of them suffers a breakdown and the other three exile her fearing she would jeopardize the project. Ruby Rebello, granddaughter to the pioneer who broke down, receives a message from the future about a murder, which she tries to investigate across time.

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More Books by Kate Mascarenhas*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free.
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