Review: Hazards of Time Travel

Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Joyce Carol Oates is one of those authors whose name I have seen on countless occasions, yet none of her books ever grabbed my attention. I knew the name, but none of her work screamed ‘read me’. Until Hazards of Time Travel, that is.

Hazards of Time Travel sounded like the kind of book I would adore. A dystopian tale mixed with time travel – of course, I would be all over that. Add in the fact it would finally cure my curiosity about Joyce Carol Oates, and I was more than happy to borrow this from the library the moment it appeared.

At first, this one sucked me in. I wasn’t crazy about it, but I was curious. It was one of those books that wrapped around me with the promise of things improving. Thus, I kept reading. There was a point where I believed it was getting better, where I was falling in love with the story, but this did not last for long. By the end of this book, my feelings towards this book were all rather negative – all surrounding disappointment.

I admit, a part of me did consider giving this a two-star rating. There was a time, a decent chunk of time, where this book was going to receive a two-star rating from me. The fact it held my attention and left me willing to continue, the way it left me wanting more, had me believing I should round my rating up. However, I was so disappointed in the end, I could not quite bring myself to do so.

I went into this one expecting a wonderful science fiction novel, one that mixed two of my favourite things together. As it was, the both the time travel and the dystopian aspects failed to wow me. In fact, I feel as though both elements barely touched the surface as what could have been.

Instead of being a powerful dystopian tale or a powerful time travel story, this became a story of following a female lead through emotions I could never connect to. It would have been fine, I guess, had I been able to connect to the female lead, but I spent the entire book unable to like her. Thus, I was unable to care about what was happening to her.

I know many people are Joyce Carol Oates fans, but Hazards of Time Travel failed to show me why.

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