Dear *Here and Now and Then*, it's mostly me, but it's somewhat you. We just didn't click. This could be seen as a story about the lengths a father will go to (sometimes, when people tell him it's okay) to save his daughter. Or, it could be the story of how one guy carelessly wrecked the lives of three women, often multiple times each, and then said, \"but it's because I love you,\" like that makes him a good guy. Seriously? CONTENT WARNING: (no actual spoilers, just a list of topics) loss of a ...

Mike Chen's debut novel, *Here and Now and Then*, kicks off with a man unstuck in time. Kin Stewart is an agent for the TCB (Temporal Corruption Bureau) who finds himself stranded in the late 1990s after his retrieval beacon malfunctions. It takes the Bureau twenty years to locate him, and by that point, he's violated their prime directive: don't mess with the past. He's married his wife, Heather, and become a father to a daughter named Miranda. The timeline corruption is deemed negligible, so t...

Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin for sending me an ARC of *Here and Now and Then* in exchange for an honest review. One of my guilty pleasure movies is *Timecop*, the 1990s thriller where Jean Claude Van Damme works for the Time Enforcement Commission, an agency that stops people from going back in time to either try to change the present or, more commonly, try to steal money. It’s not a good movie, but JCVD punches and kicks loads of people, and Ron Silver is delightfully over the top as the v...

I enjoy time travel stories every so often, and I usually just accept the leaps from one time period to another, paying little attention to the nitty-gritty details of how the characters get there and back (and sometimes back again!). The important things for me are the characters, their relationships, and how they navigate those different years. So, I tried to ignore the technical details presented in Mike Chen's *Here and Now and Then*, although some of it was, of course, important to how the ...

Mike Chen's Here and Now and Then is a science fiction fantasy novel. This particular time travel adventure explores what happens when time travelers alter events in the past. Kin hails from the year 2142, a time when time travel is commonplace. He works as an agent for the Temporal Correction Bureau (TCB). The TCB's agents are tasked with safeguarding the past from corruption, as even minor alterations can reshape their future. However, Kin is dispatched on a mission to the 1990s to eliminate...

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 because, well, time travel!I know I'm not alone in finding time travel novels completely addictive. It's not just the science of it, though I do get sucked in by the paradoxes of potentially meeting yourself. For me, it's the idea that one tiny action can trigger a chain reaction that changes the world as we (or the characters) know it.In Mike Chen's novel, *Here and Now and Then*, Kin (short for Quinoa—apparently baby names were food-obsessed back then) is a special a...

Okay, folks, I've got a soft spot for time travel stories and anything about future tech. That's why I'm such a huge fan of Black Mirror – it's all about exploring possibilities.I definitely need to read more speculative fiction, and *Here and Now and Then* by Mike Chen was exactly the push I needed.One of the things that made this book so enjoyable is that it features plenty of cool technology, but it doesn't get bogged down in technical specs or extraneous details that make my eyes glaze over....

Mike Chen's Here and Now and Then is a superbly plotted technological twister about a husband and father forced into an impossible choice. The science is precise and clever, and Chen deftly serves up each unexpected turn, constructing his own impossible in the process—two poignant and disparate lives simultaneously experienced by one person. As a writer, I read with admiration, and as a mother, I sometimes needed a handkerchief. For fans of time travel books, Here and Now and Then is a must-read...

This book. THIS book. THIS BOOK. Here and Now and Then is a perfect little sci-fi gem, with just a touch of literary flair. When time traveler Kin gets stuck in the 20th century, he does what any reasonable person would do: fall in love and start a family. This turns out to be a perfectly good plan – until suddenly the rescue team shows up, almost two decades too late. Now Kin is back in the 22nd century, where for everyone else it's only been a week, but for him it's been an entire life. He re...

This is a beautiful, literary, genre-bending sci-fi novel about a time traveler and his love for his daughter. Kin's mission to reach across time and space to save his beloved daughter is both touching and terrifying. Fans of THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE and DR. WHO will absolutely love Mike Chen's *Here and Now and Then*. I can't wait to see what he writes next! This is a must-read for anyone looking for great science fiction book reviews.