The Ship Beyond Time: A Book Review

I enjoyed this much more than The Girl From Everywhere. I feel like book 1 should have been trimmed and/or edited for pacing and that both books should have been marketed as two volumes, one story. Especially since The Ship Beyond Time picks up on the same day that TGFE ends. 

Beware! Here be spoilers!

✦

What I liked:

• excellent pacing
• more exploration of Navigation​​
• growth in the characters' dynamics
• Kash and Blake's friendship
• Kash and Nix's relationship development

• Nix's mom!
• Dahut!
• Gwenolé! 
• Nix and her dad's relationship development
• the continued dissolution of the (never meant to be long-lasting) love triangle from book one
• the villain!
• the entirety of chapter 30, with the waters of Lethe and Mnemosyne
• the mermaids
• the heartbreak of Blake's betrayal trying to save what he loved, come hell or high water (literally)

​My gripes, because I loved this book, but I wish: 

• we got more of the side characters - again! so interesting! I just wish we got to see more of them! not necessarily in this book, but maybe as some sort of epilogue or even spin off novellas!
• I'm particularly saddened by Dahut's fate, but I'm choosing to believe her death's ambiguous enough that maybe she survived, since it's implied Slate did (but did Lin?! God, I hope so)
• that the ending was longer: it was bittersweet, which I do not mind at all, but...hm. I feel like it needed just a tiny bit more. I think this just may be because I fell in love with this book?
• Blake's implied fate. it's a suicidal choice and i hate that for him, despite his selfish and devastating choices in the final hour...still, there's enough ambiguity that Nix may have convinced him not to throw away his life
•  that Crowhurst had not been so insane that he wouldn't take the other opportunities to see if the myth could be changed. It felt a bit weak, a way of forcing the plot to go the way it went...but then again...he was a megalomaniac so...it unfortunately makes some sense that he would choose to ruin everything rather than not have his Grand Plan™ pan out

​Why it's not a 5-star rating:

 1) As is the case with practically any time-travel media...it contradicts itself. I have no quarrel with the idea that fate is fixed, but everyone is still responsible for their actions, and that not knowing what will happen is where free will comes in. My issue is more with the looping of time.

If Event A can only happen because Event B causes it to happen, but Event B only causes it to happen because of the influence of Event A happening, then we're stuck in a nonsensical cycle and time actually grinds to a halt. There's no forward movement. It's a loop of infinite regress. There has to be a starting point. 

I know, I know 'it's fantasy! there are mermaids and myths come to life and magical cure-all mercury!' Sure, but all those don't break my mind. They're not inherently impossible. (Feel free to argue with me lol, I know how I sound). 

2) The waters of Mnemosyne...Nix gives it to Joss, which explains Joss' accurate foreknowledge, but it seems a terrible thing to give to a person. It literally drove Crowhurst insane and Nix herself is deeply tempted to drink it. And it brings us back to point #1 - Joss knows everything because Nix gave her the water, which triggered everything that happened into happening. Timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly indeed...

3) If Crowhurst drank the waters of Mnemosyne, why would he need all his horrible experiments to prove if history/stories can be changed or not. He should already just know, shouldn't he?

4) ...is it not already proved that history/stories can be changed after the fact, since the number of people who died in the Wilcox rebellion changed to be one less?

5) the semi-woobification of James Cook. Gross.