I love when an author can create something I would never have imagined. In The Paradox Hotel, Rob Hart gives us a place where Time Travelers stay.

"January Cole is Head of Security at the Paradox Hotel. She is also slightly Unstuck from all of the time she rode the Time Stream. She sees things that aren't really there...yet...but might be. The hotel and the time travel port are up for sale and several trillionaires have been invited to bid on it.
January has a dead body in a room that only she can see. There are dinosaurs running around the hotel. Time is a little wonky and all of the guests are seeing ghosts. January is not sure who she can trust anymore. And what's this about a secret room?"

Hart has created a place that sounds plausible. All of the characters treat time travel like a normal, but very expensive, event. And then he puts them in situations where the time travel radiation is causing problems in the hotel. Problems like dinosaurs and early sunsets.

Just like in The Warehouse, Hart writes about a big organization and the people in it. There are characters willing to do anything for money and power.

The ending is a bit vague. I think I would have preferred something more specific.

This is a great, amazing story from Hart. Time travel fans will love this one.

I went in to this expecting a fairly fun time travel thriller. And don't get me wrong, it was absolutely that! But there was so much more just waiting to ambush me. What I got was a story of grief, pain, loss, and family. A story about how hurt people hurt people. A story about breaking cycles.

This story hits so many high points. Great plotline. Beautiful characters. Some writing tricks that had me stopping to flip back and forth while I connected dots. I don't know how to really talk about this book without spoiling the whole thing, and I think this is a book that's best gone into without spoilers.

The queer rep in this book really took me by surprise, if I'm being honest. It was absolutely beautifully portrayed. The nonbinary representation in particular was an absolute delight. Most importantly, the queerness of the characters wasn't a focal point - it was just a part of who they were, relayed as easily and organically as the color of their hair. Incredibly refreshing and necessary.

The unique time travel concept drew me into this book, but it was the emotional depth, the tension, nonstop thrills and whodunit that kept me glued to the pages. January's character slowly grew on me more and more as the author steadily revealed what shaped her into her. The writing flowed effortlessly, with the exception of one character being referred to as "them" or "they", making it look like constant grammar mistakes that took me out of the story. This would have been a five-star read, but the book was chock full of far-left liberal claptrap that got exhausting after the first few pages.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine for access to this arc.

Thank you Netgalley for this Arc!

I have not been so captivated by a story in a while. This is definitely going to stick with me.

January was working as a time cop far in the future when our world discovers the means to time travel. After January gets diagnosed as unstuck (think of it as being slightly unstuck from the straight line moving forward in time. She will sometimes drop into her past or possibly even her future.). This kind of makes January seem untrustworthy and less mentally stable to some. Some question her ability to work as head of security for The Paradox Hotel. But, really, January can stand up for herself and she does... even if she is missing out on the support from her friends and coworkers at The Paradox Hotel.

This story just goes right into an intense vibe. Even the first paragraph lets the reader know they are in for something wild and unexpected. Time begins to stutter. All these trips that the rich take to different eras start having an effect on everything and it's simply a wild ride from start to finish.

If you love mind trippy books about time travel and alternate planes of time then I think you will enjoy this book. I had such a blast reading it. I went through every single emotion while not being able to put this book down for a second. Definitely recommend!

FIVE STARS!
It's 2072 and the super rich (think trillionaires) visit the Paradox hotel prior to leaving on a time jump to the past. Run and regulated by the US government, the jumps are a series of trips based on important times in history (see dinosaurs! King Tut, Colonial Days and so on ).

January Cole is head of security at the hotel. She is grounded there due to her "time slips" a result of too many jumps in her previous job of keeping the peace in the time traveling world. Too often, uber wealthy believe that they can bring back a token or change history and it was January's job to stop them. Now she is the security in the magnificent Paradox Hotel. She is a strong, likeable female character that is still hurting from the death of her soul mate Mena.

As the story opens, we learn that the time jump program is hemorrhaging money and the government is actually selling it and the Paradox hotel. Four of the most powerful men (!) in the world are coming to the hotel for an important meeting to determine who will take on ownership. January is charged with keeping the hotel secure which is a fete in itself. Someone, or some thing is working against her and she fears that she cannot keep the hotel secure. Thus begins a cat and mouse detective noir plot that will keep you guessing until the end .

Add a to the plot a charming floating bot, a know-all front desk person and a moody genius chef and you have an ingenious plot with lovable characters. I highly recommend this novel for it's plot, it's ideas and it's emotional depth. There is something for everyone and I promise you, you will enjoy it! #TheParadoxHotel #netgalley #netgalleyreads #Randomhouse #Ballantine

Review of eBook

For the past six years or so, January Cole has been in charge of security at the Paradox Hotel. But the young woman has some significant issues to deal with, thanks to having reached the stage of being Unstuck, a result of moving through the timestream during her work with the Time Enforcement Agency. Being Unstuck means that, among other things, January tends to drift out of time and see things that others don’t, leaving her grasp of reality wavering at times.

The Paradox, adjacent to the Einstein Intercentury Timeport, is, in addition to its regular ultra-prosperous clientele, preparing to host four wealthy bidders, one of whom will be successful in purchasing the unprofitable hotel from the government.

But there are strange goings-on at the hotel, and they are causing problems for January. Are they real or are they the result of her unpredictable slips into alternate times because she’s Unstuck?

As she investigates, January will discover other forces at work, including ghosts, a dark secret built into the hotel, a dead man that no one except January can see, and a killer stalking the bidders.

Will January be able to find the answers, keep the hotel guests safe, and solve the mystery of the dead man in room 526?

And what will she do about the three velociraptors running amok in the hotel?

=========

This ambitious narrative, with its complex plot, keeps jumping around as it spins its tale of time travel [always into the past] and the hotel associated with the phenomenon. It’s an interesting take on the time travel trope, and readers will find much to appreciate in the telling of the tale. The murder mystery becomes a subplot as the unfolding story deals more with January’s response to her grief, her dealings with others working at the hotel, and her own guilt.

Both January and Ruby, the Artificial Intelligence drone, are well-drawn and believable. The intricate plot takes several unexpected turns and January’s propensity to drift out of time keeps the reader guessing. The evolving story is intriguing; time travel, a long-standing trope for the genre, gets a new and thoughtful spin here, giving the narrative a unique feel.

But there are a couple of considerable obstacles in this futuristic tale. Social commentary focused on present-day issues does not work particularly well in a story taking place in a future world. Here, significantly removed from the present day [and from the current social/political correctness], the story has uber-rich trillionaires arrive at the hotel for their time travel vacations. The egomaniacal, self-serving trillionaires all behave badly; many are racist. The working-class folks at the hotel are altruistic and kind as the eternal issue of haves and have-nots becomes endlessly illustrated throughout the halls of the Paradox.

Many characters tend to be stereotypical and shallow rather than nuanced and realistic. And what’s with January’s constant over-the-top churlishness? From the outset, readers know she has issues, but, eventually, her behavior toward others becomes off-putting and problematic, especially with all the derogatory comments and vulgar references. [The rating for the book drops a bit due to the oft-repeated use of a particularly offensive word.] There’s lip service for inclusiveness, but it feels more like posturing and for show than for true character depth.

There’s a lot to internalize in the telling of the tale; a huge cast of characters and the lack of continuity caused by the timestream shifts top the list. Nevertheless, the story is worth the effort; readers will find it fascinating, dark, and, ultimately, smart.

Recommended.

I received a free copy of this eBook from Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine, Ballantine Books and NetGalley
#TheParadoxHotel #NetGalley

The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart is a highly recommended time bending science fiction mystery.

January Cole is the hard-bitten head of security for the Paradox Motel with an AI drone named Ruby as her constant companion. A former Time Cop, January is now Unstuck, a condition that resulted from entering the time stream too frequently which results in unexpected jumps ahead or back in time and will eventually be the cause of her death. She is still grieving over the accidental death of Mena, a waitress at the Paradox, but her brief glimpses of Mena during the day help keep her going. Now January's problem is keeping control over the wealthy clients staying at the Paradox, the only hotel adjoined to the Einstein Intercentury Timeport, and this job has just gotten more difficult.

A blizzard is rolling in, time travel destinations, flights, and transportation have been shut down and the ultra wealthy clients who can afford these luxuries are not happy and very demanding. Three raptors are running loose, clocks are jumping around in time, and electricity is flickering. Guests are demanding the best accommodations and unhappy when their demands aren't met. Time travel technology is about to be privatized and powerful people are present, wanting to stake their claim to it. But more concerning to January is the body in room 526, a body only she can apparently see, and a killer only she can catch.

This is an action-packed, detailed and complex adventure that moves at a rapid pace throughout. I enjoyed the melding of science fiction to a detective novel in a locked-room murder mystery plot. The Paradox Hotel does require your full attention while reading because Hart packed a whole lot of detail into the novel.

The large cast of characters can initially seem overwhelming, but they will sort themselves out as you read. January is an interesting, irresistible, and sometimes annoying main protagonist. She has an attitude. She is sarcastic, abrupt, insightful, funny, fearless, and vulnerable. She is also in a tense time-bending situation that only she can solve because she doesn't know who else she can trust or if she can even trust herself.

I loved Hart's The Warehouse but I didn't connect with The Paradox Hotel quite as much. I do think, yet again I need to caution an author to reign in their personal political/social views to a degree as it diminishes the novel, income inequality (the ultra wealthy vs. the rest of us) in this case. I am looking forward to Hart's next novel.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House.
The review will be published on Barnes & Noble, Edelweiss, Google Books, and Amazon.

There's a dead body in room 526 but only January Cole, former time cop and now head of hotel security, can see it. Actually, there's a lot January can see that others don't, because she took a few too many trips into the past and, well...this is your brain. this is your brain on too many time trips. She was booted from active TEA missions because she'd reached stage 1 of the brain erosion that's a side effect of time travel and sent to the hotel where the very wealthy stay before taking their vacations in the past. Time Travel may be a government-controlled operation, but it's only for the rich. The hotel is located a safe distance from the Einstein timeport, which really should have been named for the black woman who invented time travel, but no, let's name it after an old dead white guy.

Ahem. OK then. January's brain is falling apart, which is a little be odd because the hotel should be safe from time radiation but instead she's beset by grand mal flashbacks where suddenly the past overwrites the present and she's lost in time, if only for a few seconds, or minutes. Only now she's seeing future events as well, most of them very, very, bad, the sorts of things she's supposed to prevent as head of security.

Two things worth knowing about January. 1) she's angry and defensive and generally hard to get along with, and that was her baseline personality before 2) she fell in love with someone at the hotel who was pretty much her polar opposite, and died in an explosion. Running into her lost love repeatedly through her time slipping brain is a drug she's addicted to, but one that keeps her from actually processing grief, which makes her even more (See: 1)} she's angry and...).

The hotel is up for sale because the US Government needs the money, so a quartet of old white male zillionaires are here to haggle over the price. Granted, one is a Saudi crown prince, but let's count him in any way since he has a history of doing bad things to people without agency, which means he can join the OWG club.

The story. Right. Back to that.

January, and her sidekick Ruby, an A.I. drone she abuses, have to solve the mystery of the body in 526 as well as keep the zillionaire's from getting knocked off, a project which someone appears to be working on. At the same time the entire hotel is experiencing sudden chronological anomalies, like the sun setting an hour early and ghosts of the hotel designer appearing in the hall. And they have to do it before January gets kicked off the premises for being too far gone, which is due any day now.

I'm not wild about this as a murder mystery. Rob Hart has way too much fun throwing in flashbacks, courtesy of January's decline, and rather than illuminating the issues at hand they mostly just let her wallow in her grief. As a character study, we get that both her and her dead lover were rejected by their families for being queer and each health with it in different ways. As a class commentary, yes, all Old White Guys, and a fair number of women who've played the game to gain power are evil, and only the working class can generate heroes. Hey, I'm not arguing the point, but Hart lays it on a bit thick here.

Fun fact: if you google Paradox Hotel you're likely to wind up at the Hotel Paradox, a nifty boutique hotel near the beach in Santa Cruz. Be sure to ask the concierge if they have time travel tours...

The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart

Paradox Hotel detective, January Cole. is Unstuck. Because she worked as security for the U.S. government's time travel organization for years, traveling to various time periods to thwart people who try to alter the present and future by changing past events, her mental state is degrading. With increasing frequency, January is finding herself in past and future moments and she is unable to control when these "skips" happen. She won't admit to her boss that she is in Stage 2 of being Unstuck but instead claims she can continue to do her job while in Stage 1. Soon she'll be in Stage 3 and that is lights out for January, she'll be comatose and unable to take care of herself.

My favorite character in this story is Ruby, January's hacked drone who has been allowed to develop a snarky personality due to January hacking it. The book is full of characters, way too many characters, with hotel employees, four trillionaires, who are in a bidding war to take the time travel enterprise private, the minions of the trillionaires, "ghosts", and the hotel visitors. Add in that January is experiencing past, present, and future events and things are pretty confusing. It's bad enough that January is having these "skips" but something is also very wrong with the time-travel technology and the present timeline. Creatures from the various time periods are showing up in the present timeline, the master clock is malfunctioning, someone is trying to kill off the trillionaires, and the security video and other hotel tech has ben hacked.

On top of all of that, January's boss wants her gone from the hotel because her state of mind is interfering with her decision making skills. Oh yes, and there is a huge snow storm that traps everyone in the hotel, with not enough rooms and with super rich tourists making impossible demands. Despite how confusing things were in the first part of the book, I thought I was keeping up pretty well. Sure, I didn't understand half of what was going on but once we get to the climatic show down scenes, I was lost. After I finished the book and tried to work through what had happened at the end, I realized that I couldn't remember what had happened because we aren't shown that pivotal scene. Yes, January is an unreliable narrator but I need the story to be more cohesive for me to be satisfied with the end result.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books and NetGalley for this ARC.

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review Rob Hart's The Paradox Hotel.

Unfortunately, I really struggled with this one and I'm not sure why.

I loved many of the characters - January Cole should be the star of more novels - the premise is good and even though it's sci-fi it touches on real world issues of privatization of what should be publicly available (the internet, anyone?), grief at the death of a loved one, economic inequity, gender identification, and I really did enjoy the thread of humor that was evident throughout.

Maybe it was that there was so much to try to get a grasp on in the first quarter of the book but I found it hard to keep engaged with the story and it took me longer than it usually would to finish a book of this type and length.

Rob Hart has written an evocative science fiction/mystery/theological tome entitled “The Paradox Hotel.” I evaluate books by their ability to hold my attention by 1/3 of the way through the story. And Rob Hart’s book does capture one’s attention and with very few moments keeps the attention till the end. “The Paradox Hotel” is a time travel saga with all its attendant complications (thus the “Paradox” embedded in the title).
There are enough reviews already posted on line that summarize the plot. The protagonist is complicated and sympathetic. We learn a lot about her past (or perhaps present, maybe even future) love affair with her dead lady friend that is central to the mystery of why the fabric of time is being shredded due to a breakthrough in time travel that is being used by rich folks that want to go back in time to visit famous historical moments.
So I am struggling with how to rate this book. It has a whole lot going for it although the elevation of eastern mysticism left me frustrated. It was important for the author to proselytize; however, just think if Mr. Hart had threaded orthodox Christianity into the narrative? Hmmm. Still, four stars for his well-plotted, well-written speculative fiction.

I would love to stay at this time traveling hotel! January is in charge of security at the hotel where people stay before taking a trip back in time. She has time traveled so much that she is unstuck in time and sees past memories and now things are developing in stage two where she sees things that will happen in the future, such as a murdered body. Time begins skipping around the same weekend four billionaires vie to own the time traveling business. There's a lot going on including smuggled dinosaurs and too many people at the hotel. Will January be able to solve the murder and all the other problems before she loses her mind? I had trouble keeping with everyone from the hotel workers to the billionaires but other than that it was an intriguing story,

This twisty mystery, with time travel at its heart, certainly kept me entertained and guessing what was coming next. I enjoyed having a main character whose perceptions couldn't be fully trusted even though I didn't ever really like her.

I did have a few frustrations with this book. The main one being that I kept getting confused about which character was being discussed. I think this happened because the author switched between using first names and last names for some characters and there also wasn't enough background about some characters to make them stick in my mind.

Overall an interesting book with some interesting ideas to think about.

Whoa! Such a relevant topic for rich people and unique travel right now AND this one has time travel with it? I really enjoyed this story and will definitely recommend it to my friends and their book clubs. It's a little like Westworld mashed with Jurassic Park.

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

The Paradox Hotel has a fascinating premise about time travel for tourists and a hotel that oversees it. I liked most of the characters and was pleasantly surprised when Mena came into the picture. However, I never fully connected with this book. It felt like there was something missing... perhaps I needed to know more about the MC, along with Mena. It also could have been the fact that it was a time travel book that barely showed any time travel.

Whatever it was, it prevented me from fully enjoying The Paradox Hotel. I liked it and would probably recommend it to someone else, though, even with my reservations.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

I love books related to time and this was a fun book to read. It’s a fast-paced closed room mystery taking place in a hotel for time travel tourists. I enjoy snarky characters and even better when there is some AI sidekick to annoy, and January Cole and Ruby fit the bill. January, the MC, has a lot of issues with getting close to people and just wants to solve a murder but her medical condition from past time travel (plus her behavior toward her co-workers) is making it difficult for people to trust her to do her job. I like a mystery that I can’t figure out and the time travel concepts make the mystery difficult to solve but it can get a little confusing at times.

Clever, relentless, and unusual, The Paradox Hotel reads like my favorite kind of movie: A heaping spoonful of mind-fuck, a little action, a prickly hero, and a mystery you get in pieces. There are a couple of quips (especially in the beginning) that go a bit too far, but January pays for every harsh word, particularly since you know she doesn't really mean them.

It is partially a rage against the 1% wrapped up in a twisty locked-room mystery with a sci-fi twist. I loved seeing the consequences - both big and small - of time travel, from seeing snatches of moments from the past and the future (and the brain essentially bleaching that future knowledge from your brain almost as soon as you have it), from stealing dinosaurs (do they carry diseases??) to manufacturing ghosts.

I got rather frustrated with January as she pushes people away again and again, but her tenacity and shame mixed together to create such a realistic main character who lives through the worst 36 hours ever - second to a very defining moment in her life. It seems like a whole lot takes place in less than two days, but... Time is a lie, right?

CWs : blood, prescription drug abuse, gun violence, racism

The Paradox Hotel is a very complex and disorientating book. While I overall enjoyed it, the many complicated threads that the author tried to weave did not all come together in a conclusion that I found satisfying. I found the chapter blocks to be extremely long. But the character of January Cole being Unstuck was the most challenging thing to understand. The way time moves in this book is not linear, which makes sense for the type of work it is, but there are just way too many things that don’t really make sense even by the end of the book.

A hotel that’s a sort of weigh station where time travelers catch their “flights” to the past – what an amazing concept. Throw in a murder with a corpse that only the investigator can see, a seemingly endless cast of suspects, and a group of trillionaires bidding to take over the hotel – there’s a lot going on in this novel, and I wanted to see how it played out.

MC January Jones is intimidating. She’s a no-nonsense, intelligent, take no prisoners kind of gal who doesn’t suffer fools gladly and has little patience for entitled rich hotel guests. Extensively trained in martial arts, she’s not someone you want to tangle with. She’s also “unstuck” – time is fluid and she sees memories from the past playing out as if they’re happening in the present and occurrences in the future that may or may not come to pass. It’s a result of the extensive time traveling she did while working for the Time Enforcement Agency – which makes her an unreliable narrator at times. Still deeply grieving from the death of her girlfriend, she’s abrasive to everyone she encounters.

Between the guests and hotel employees, there’s a long list of suspects, and it was difficult for me to keep up with everyone – I flipped back several times to refresh my memory. Despite that, I guessed who was behind everything from nearly the beginning, so I gave myself a pat on the back for that one. In addition to the murder and attacks on guests, someone is messing with the timeline resulting in catastrophic consequences. January has her work cut out for her.

A lot is packed into this novel – themes of deep grief and guilt, wealth inequities, found families, and Buddist philosophy. Oh – and dinosaurs. This is a mind-bending, complex story you absolutely can’t skim through, but it enthralled this sci-fi fan, and I thought the epilogue was perfect.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Fans of THE WAREHOUSE will immediately recognize Hart's engaging narrative style and brisk pacing that makes his new novel such a compelling read. Like Andy Weir, Hart has a knack for making futuristic technology seem entirely plausible by so adeptly weaving it into the characters' everyday lives. Yet, as satisfying as this book is as a sci-fi thriller, the real payoff of THE PARADOX HOTEL is its intellectual and emotional depth--revealing itself to be both a parable of increasing wealth inequality, and a heartwarming tale of the human condition.