Paradox Bound

July 15, 2017
An aimless young man escapes his dead-end town when he meets a badass, time-traveling adventuress.Well, it's just about weird enough in America now for us to deserve a timey-wimey, full-barrel adventure novel from professional noodle-bender Clines (Ex-Isle, 2016, etc.) that also teaches a non-ironic lesson in American civics. One night 8-year-old Eli Teague of tiny Sanders, Maine, comes upon a woman decked out in Revolutionary War attire, complete with pistols, driving a souped-up 1929 Model A. He sees her briefly again at age 13, when he discovers her name is Harry. He's finally drawn fully into her world at the age of 29. Harry Pritchard is a Searcher, a member of a shadowy alliance called The Chain, and can move back and forth through history. She is searching for the literal "American Dream," a powerful incarnation of the values of the Founding Fathers, who summoned the Egyptian God of Creation to forge their totem--not as weird as it sounds. The American Dream was long protected by creepy murderous guardians called the faceless men, but the Dream was spirited away in the early 1960s. Now Harry and her companions use temporal anomalies called "slick spots" to flit through two centuries of American history. They're hotly pursued by the faceless men, who now number Eli's childhood bully among them. On their travels to pursue Harry's leads, we meet a James Dean who faked his own death to search for the American Dream and the folkloric icon John Henry as well as other curious people who helped shape American history. Clines even throws in a few in-jokes for fun--the "transparent aluminum defense" is funny enough to trigger a spit take. Eli is a fine avatar for the reader but it's Harry's epithet-wielding, pistol-packing heroine that will capture hearts. A rousing adventure novel that marries steampunk aesthetics to the seminal concept of protecting American liberty.

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Starred review from August 14, 2017
The hero and heroine of this lively, likable tale cover a lot of territory and zigzag through a lot of history as they drive a Model A Ford through secret passages in time. After Eli Teague encounters Harriet “Harry” Pritchard fleeing from a murderous faceless man, he joins her on a road quest to recover the lost American Dream. They are part of a loose swarm of travelers who can move forward or back in time in their various vehicles, pursued by the ubiquitous, indistinguishable, and apparently indestructible government agents who want to stamp out individual freedom. The menace is convincing, as is Eli and Harry’s friendly romance. Like Eli, readers will be surprised by revelations about some characters’ true identities, and they’ll be pleased to see how Clines connects details that looked like mere decorative flourishes. This adventure makes no attempt to be deep; it’s a superior time-passer, a wonderfully amusing yarn. Agent: David Fugate, LaunchBooks Literary.

August 1, 2017

As a child, Eli met a woman passing through his small Maine hometown. Dressed in a Revolutionary War uniform and driving a Ford Model A, she made quite the impression. When she reappears years later, he is determined to find out more about Harry (short for Harriet). Harry is one of a group of searchers looking for the American Dream, which she claims is a real thing that was lost years ago. She travels through history seeking clues to the location of the dream and now Eli is bound to the same quest. Literally faceless operatives from a shadowy quasi-governmental agency who were once charged with guarding the dream now seek to eliminate anyone who knows it is missing, including searchers like Harry and Eli. VERDICT Clines (The Fold) is always entertaining, but the MacGuffin of the American Dream is perhaps too amorphous an object for his characters to revolve around. While the action is swift and the faceless agents suitably chilling, the core quest and the mechanics of traveling through history simply never make sense.--MM

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017
Clines, author of the Ex-Heroes series, delivers a fun, almost sweet sci-fi thriller. Eli Teague lives in the same sleepy town he grew up in and is bored, yet he is reluctant to leave. His reluctance is entirely tied to a woman named Harry (short for Harriet), who zoomed in and out of Sanders in her Ford Model A twice before, dressed like she came straight out of the eighteenth century and chased by equally out-of-place characters with guns. Eli meets Harry again, of course, and is swept into a whirlwind time-traveling adventure. Harry is a professional of sorts, charged with finding the most powerful artifact in American history before a society of literally faceless men finds it first. Eli and Harry follow a series of clues and meet a few cheesy characters along the way, including a stocky prospector with a thick beard and a missing front tooth. Through several plot twists, Eli and Harry visit different periods of American history and continue to narrowly escape danger, all while exchanging sassy comebacks. For fans of Ernest Cline.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)