The Song Behind Today’s Review Title

Today’s review title comes from Cyndi Lauper’s first #1 hit, the 1984 release Time After Time. You can hear the tune and see the perfectly 1980s Lauper-esque 5-minute love story of the official music video on YouTube.

When I read the first "Madders of Time" book, called Hive, I praised the author’s skill at character building. (You can find my review of that book here.) As a reader you get a strong sense of these characters. This is a series of books built around the author’s interest in multiverses and time travel. Those concepts that can be difficult to grasp, so having characters you can root for is a must.

I also expressed my frustration at the cliffhanger ending. That was almost a year ago, but this week I picked up the sequel and learned what happened next.

Book 2, called Jump, is full of action as the world around these characters is verging on apocalypse. The main characters, Diego and Isabel built a relationship in the first book. But were forcibly separated at the end, and spend much of Jump finding their way back to one another.

Other returning characters are Dave, Isabel’s first husband and an end-of-capitalism evil tech titan, scientist Matthew Hudson, his daughter Cassandra, and more. They are joined by some new characters. Phil, a traumatized scientist who had worked on the first time travel project joins the good guys. Evil tech-bro Dave is joined by Yuki, his Japanese counterpart. Yuki proves to be much more capable of carrying out some of Dave’s more nefarious plans.

We also meet the Artificial Intelligence called Guardian. This AI will eventually be known as Madders, as it is influenced by Matthew Hudson. Madders, who uses “peeper” technology to see across timelines, is the ostensible author of the book.

Madders begins each chapter with a summary of the further deterioration of the world, and an assessment of how closely events are adhering to the original timeline. Each chapter is then told in the first person, from the viewpoint of the character Madders is peeping on.

Diego and Isabel’s journey back to each other is the heart of this book. As the story progresses it becomes increasingly clear that Diego holds the key to averting the looming end of humanity. That point is driven home by a couple of other characters, time traveling alternate versions of Diego who appeared in the first book but play a much larger role here.

This book ends on a cliffhanger just like the first one. However, in my opinion, it’s a much more natural place for the book to end, as it helps to emphasize the centrality of the relationship of Diego and Isobel. The series gets all its atmospherics from the time travel and the multiverse and the futuristic bot tech. It plays the capitalism-gone-too-far card for its bad guys. But at its heart it’s a love story.

I can’t wait to see what Book 3 will bring.

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

OVERALL COMMENTS: Book 2 of this multiverse time-travelling series puts Diego and Isobel’s love to the test as they must struggle to find their way back to each other.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I received a review copy of this book as part of the online book tour by from TheWriteReads.