Paradox Bound: A Novel

by Peter Clines

384 pages

Published Sept. 26, 2017 by Crown.

ISBN:: 978-0-553-41833-0

(23 reviews)

Eli’s willing to admit it: he’s a little obsessed with the mysterious woman he met years ago. Okay, maybe a lot obsessed. But come on, how often do you meet someone who’s driving a hundred-year-old car, clad in Revolutionary-War era clothes, wielding an oddly modified flintlock rifle—someone who pauses just long enough to reveal strange things about you and your world before disappearing in a cloud of gunfire and a squeal of tires?

So when the traveler finally reappears in his life, Eli is determined that this time he’s not going to let her go without getting some answers. But his determination soon leads him into a strange, dangerous world and a chase not just across the country but through a hundred years of history—with nothing less than America’s past, present, and future at stake.

2 editions

Unruly Stacks reviewed Paradox Bound: A Novel by Peter Clines

Review of 'Paradox Bound: A Novel' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This was a slightly frustrating mythos for me. The original notion of the founding of the American Dream bothers me, and while I enjoyed the interweaving causality threads (and the geeky references), there were a few hanging plot points that I wish had been better resolved (or resolved at all, in the case of the 300-year cap). All told, pretty fun, but just frustrating enough to drop it to 4 stars.

Yashima reviewed Paradox Bound: A Novel by Peter Clines

Review of 'Paradox Bound: A Novel' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This read like „The Matrix Goes Back to The Future - an American Roadtrip“ with Adam Sandler and Kirsten Dunst. And I don’t particularly like road movies...

The pacing at the beginning made it a little difficult to get into the book and the somewhat boring protagonist with his creepy/stalkery behavior didn’t help.
Except for the slight twist of history-travel the setting is contemporary/historical US. I don’t know my US history well enough to know the references. So those are likely lost on me for the most part. The old-car-theme is not something that speaks to me either and so it took me two thirds of the book to get to the fun parts, where the plot picks up and a few interesting world-building bits show up. I wish the story would have spent more time with exploring the titular paradoxes... I expected some interesting twists and the book delivered …