The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart is a trippy science fiction about time travel and how it can easily spiral out of control. Science Fiction Noir is the genre I would classify The Paradox Hotel under. In simplest terms is a murder mystery, but to make things more complex it is a murder that hasn’t taken place yet, and is trapped in time. This book is Inception meets Primer an independent time travel movie. This book cleverly looks at time travel and imagines it like space travel is currently going. The US developed NASA for space exploration in the 1960’s and now billionaires are privatizing space travel. The Paradox Hotel takes this approach with time travel, and has individuals that want to privatize it and break all the rules. The overall story is great and really clever, the execution of the story was a little bit muddled and all over the place. The pacing is good and for the most part kept my interest. The finale wraps up some but not all of my questions. The Paradox Hotel will make your head hurt at all the back and forth in time, which might throw off some readers but the end of the book most of it makes sense. This book has the strongest LGTBQIA+ characters our main character is a lesbian, January, the femme fatale is trans Mena, and supporting character, Cameo, they’re non-binary. This book cares about it’s pronouns and representation. I read The Paradox Hotel early thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine, Ballantine Books. The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart is published on February 22 2022.

The Plot Summary: January work security for the government run Paradox Hotel. The Hotel is a gateway for time travelers to go back to the past. There are rules for time travelers to not alter any thing, January has had to intervene with a person that was going to warn hitler of his death, and another wanted to warn the passengers of the Titanic about the iceberg. January is good at her job but she is one of the unstuck, which is a disease of too much time travel but it allows her to briefly see the future. January takes pills to slow this process. January starts training a new recruit, that could be her replacement. The hotel is gearing up, to be sold to one out of 4 billionaires. But before the building can get sold time starts jumping around and like January the whole hotel becomes unstuck in time. January finds a body that only she can see it. the body is unstuck, January fights against time to find out the killer.

What I Liked: I really liked the disease of being unstuck, I thought that was really clever. I liked the overall plot even though I had problems with how it played out it was a fantastic idea. I like the LGTBQIA+ characters because there background was used to further develop their individual character and did not have anything to do with the plot or a plot twist. I liked the twist at the end I predicted one aspect earl on but there was layers to it. I loved the brief moments of the characters in the past the World War II and Titanic scenes were good but too short.

What I Disliked: That the actual time travel scenes were so short. The plot would have so many starts and stops in momentum. I liked the Mena but it took a little too long for her to serve a purpose. I thought the ending and what exactly happened could have been explained in the epilogue.

Recommendation: For the most part I liked this book and the statement it made about privatizing. Fans of Inception will love the head trippy aspect of the plot. I rated The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart 4 out of 5 stars.