This isn't your run-of-the-mill time travel story - this traveler needs no time machine, just the movement of his body.

It took a good while for the hows and whats to reveal themselves - and I confess, I'm still slightly (snobbishly) eyebrows raised at how this drunk/drugged up male model calculated the rate of speed and time factors that triggered his travel, but once the deeper story was revealed I was curious and hooked. The book definitely ran at breakneck speed, and I'm left waiting to see where the author will next take the story. ( )

"Time Phantom: Amsterdam" is a Looper-Groundhog Day sort of story with a lot of inexplicable stuff going on but without seeming to contain a proper plot. Storyboard writing with little development. I didn't finish.

I received a review copy of "Time Phantom: Amsterdam" by Randy Anderson (BooksGoSocial) through NetGalley.com. ( )

This is actually the first time travel novel I've read (not counting tv shows) so yes, almost everything in this book seems original to me. It was still an enjoyable read and I look forward to the release of the second book.

Overall, the story was decent but I didn't really like the pacing. I was really hooked for the first 40%, where Dane was running away from the assassin from the future while trying to figure out all this time travelling shiz. There were lots of characters, running and a considerable amount of cussing. Then things slowed down, explanations for Dane's time travelling ability started rolling in, together with a bunch of scientific jargon, and I just kinda tuned myself out after a few pages. It's not that they were boring, the explanations were amazing, actually. They were solid, fleshed out and ingenious, but it seems that my tiny brain just wasn't able to process all that information at once. Plus, when you pick up a book after a long day at school, I doubt you'd be wanting to be thinking bout more sciency stuff. So, BAM!, information overload.

What I really liked about this book was its representation of the future. It's only about 200 years into the future, but many things have changed, and it isn't for the better. Nature has taken its toll, governments have fallen, and everything is run by a single corporation. It's morbid and pretty original if you ask me.

Also really glad that this book did not end with a cliffhanger (okay, it kinda did, in a way, but there was an epilogue of sorts). Cliffhangers are good, they make readers want to read on, but they're overused. Why can't we just have the characters sailing off into the sunset, awaiting their next adventure?

TIME PHANTOM delivers to us a refreshing and solid concept of time travel, together with an action packed story and diverse (mainly in terms of age) cast of characters. It's definitely worth a read. ( )