Review Detail

Invictus was the first book I've read by Ryan Graudin and I'm really glad I gave it a try. The book was a little slow for me at times, but overall, it was really interesting. I absolutely loved the time travel parts.

Invictus takes place hundreds of years in the future. Faraway (Far) McCarthy is training to be a time traveler. During his testing, there are always issues with his date of birth. Far's mom gave birth to him on a ship while they were in void between time. She did the one thing she wasn't supposed to do during time travel, interacted with someone from the past. Not only did she speak to a gladiator in 95 AD, she got pregnant by him. During Far's final exam, he is spotted by Marie Antionette in the Sim. She winks at him and Far is positive his Sim was hacked, but he fails.

Far receives a message to meet someone about his future. He goes and ends up signing on to go into the past to steal things no one will miss. Far not only wants to time travel, but he's hoping to go on missions to find his missing mom. He chooses the ship's name, Invictus, and his crew. His cousin Imogen was my favorite character in this book. She is the ship's historian and is very colorful and happy. She also has a pet on the ship, a red panda. Far's friend Gram is the engineer and his girlfriend Priya is the medic.

The Invictus crew goes back in time for heists and all go well until they get to the Titanic. Things are weird with the numbers and they land four hours later than they have planned. While looking for a book, Far spies another time traveler from the future who steals the book before him. Eliot ends up on the Invictus and says she wants to work with the crew. However, Eliot is there for reasons Far and his crew will have a hard time understanding. They must find a way to make things right because Far should have never been born.

I haven't really read books on time travel before. Historical fiction and science fiction are genres I'm pretty with. I don't read them often. But this book ended up being better than I expected. I enjoyed the writing and details and will definitely be picking up another book from the author in the near future.

I received a digital arc from Netgalley for review. It did not influence me in any way.