Ruby Red (The Ruby Red Trilogy, 1)

I have a love/hate relationship sci-fi/fantasy that centers on time travel. I love Connie Willis's stories enough that I'm willing to suspend my inner skeptic and just enjoy the time travel journeys with her characters.

I enjoyed this story well enough, but I kept butting up against some time travel inconsistencies that kind of spoiled the plot for me a little bit. I'm going to try and explain them as vaguely as possible, to avoid spoilers.

For example, if people from the present go into the past and tell the "past" people about some of the things coming up in their future, why don't they tell them about other things? For that matter, why hasn't someone from the future already gone as far back in the past as possible to tell the first of the "twelve" the names of all the others and who's going to rebel and so on? Why on earth would certain travelers need to be present at a person's birth to know her name, given that other travelers from a more recent time period could've just told them the name?

I understand why these bits of info had to be revealed the way they were in terms of their storytelling purpose (of creating a mystery), but I got thrown out of the story and into "but wait a sec...." moments too often.

That being said, I will likely listen to the next book in the series, esp. if I can get it through my Scribd subscription (rather than buying it on Audible).

The first on hundred and fifty some odd pages were fantastic. Based on them and the last twenty pages I would give this book five stars. If I just looked at the rest of the book I would have given it two stars.

I enjoyed the introduction of the characters, but I felt as if getting to know the characters was all accomplished in this book. We were generally told what the problems were, but we weren't told why they came about. I got frustrated with the lack of information told to Gwyneth. Her family and those in charge kept telling her to not trust anyone, she wouldn't understand what was happening, she was to naive, and other things along those veins.

I loved this book! It was very suspenseful, but it was kind of slow-paced, which doesn't bother me. If you don't like slower-paced books, then you won't enjoy this book.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I finished it today at school, which I read the last 150 pages lol. This is one of my favorite books as of today.
This review is spoiler-free.
I am also totally IN LOVE with the cover! It is possibly my favorite cover out of all the books I own, if it isn't, then it's up there.
I really recommend this book to pretty much anyone! Once you read the first, you will want to read the others!!!