Kin Stewart works for a time travel agency in the year 2142. After things go wrong, he ends up being stranded in SF in the 1990's, and he starts forgetting things in his previous life (such as oh, his previous life). He settles down as a techie, gets happily married, and has a teenage daughter, Miranda. Then the time travel agency finally finds Kin and forcibly retrieves him back to his time, where he works with his future brother-in-law Marcus and is engaged to Penny.
This is a switch, to say the least. While the book moves super quickly past Kin losing the wife he loved--we're told she died of brain cancer soon after he was taken and in all honesty he doesn't spend much time grieving that(!?), the book focuses on how Kin's daughter starts doing poorly after losing her parents, and how he uses his job to try to email her in the past and be there for her, even though he's Not Allowed. However, Miranda finds his old notebook that he wrote down things about his job in--she thought it was his novel--creates a video game based off of it--and then the time travel agency decides that Miranda needs to be eliminated immediately. Even though Kin's not supposed to time travel again because it might kill him, he's going to risk his life to save her.
This is a well done novel. The one thing I don't think is done well is the handling of Kin's wife--it really gets short shrift and he just doesn't seem that messed up over losing her once he's in the future. Otherwise the focus is on Kin and his daughter, combined with him trying to get back into an emotional relationship with Penny again. Penny is a truly great girl who ends up coping with a very weird situation very well, and she even pitches in on helping Miranda. It was very endearing and I liked that in particular, and I also really liked how the ending resolved. Excellent.
Overall I'm giving it four stars.
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