Dear book, it's mostly me, but it's somewhat you. We didn't work well together. This could be seen as a story of what a father will do (sometimes, when people tell him it's okay) to save his daughter. It could also be the story of how one dude callously ripped apart the lives of three women, sometimes multiple times each, and then said "but it's because I love you," afterwards so, you know, totes a good guy. CONTENT WARNING: (no actual spoilers, just a list of topics) loss of a spouse, infidelit...

Mike Chen’s debut novel Here and Now and Then begins with a man out of time. Kin Stewart is an agent for the TCB (Temporal Corruption Bureau) who gets stuck in the late 1990s when his retrieval beacon gets damaged. It takes two decades for the Bureau to find him, and by then he’s broken their cardinal rule not to mess with the past by marrying his wife Heather and fathering a daughter, Miranda. Corruption to the timeline is negligible, so the TCB allows him to return to his job and agrees to let...

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 villa...

I enjoy time travel stories every once in a while and I just accept the moving from one time to another, paying little attention to the details of what gets the character there and back and sometimes back again. The important things for me are the characters and their relationships and how they manage in the different years. So I tried to ignore the technical details put forth here, although some of it, of course was important to how the story plays out. The “technical” details in the story didn...

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 assignm...

3.5 stars, rounded up.I know I'm not the only one who finds novels about time travel utterly irresistible. It's not the science of time travel that fascinates me, although I'm always drawn in by the possible paradox of running into yourself somewhere in time. For me, it's more the thought that one single action, even the smallest gesture, can set off a chain of events that could change the world as we (or the characters) know it.In Mike Chen's new novel, Here and Now and Then , Kin (short for...

Y'all, I have a special place in my heart for time travel and I love reading about future tech. It's the reason I love Black Mirror so much--seeing possibilities.I don't read nearly enough speculative fiction and Here and Now and Then has given me the nudge I needed.One of the things that made this book so enjoyable for me is that there is plenty of technology involved, but we don't get bogged down in specs and the kind of extraneous detail that sometimes makes my eyes glaze over.I think it work...

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, in the process constructing his own impossible — 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.

This book. THIS book. THIS BOOK.Here and Now and Then is a perfect little sci-fi gem, with just a touch of literary. 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 really tri...

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 love Mike Chen. I can't wait to see what he writes next!