So… time travel.

After the events of The Lost Colony, it’s not entirely surprising that we’d get one where they’d outright go back and try to change the past. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t worried about it though.

Time travel is hard to do without having planned for it from the very first book, which in this case didn’t happen. You run into having to make sure that people either magically never remember what happened (even though we’ve established that memories can come back) or trust that they won’t mention it in time.

Plotwise, it feels awfully convenient that the one thing that can save Artemis’ mother is an animal that Artemis himself had killed, although I guess that is tied up neatly by the end. It’s a bit mind bendy to think that the only reason they went back in time is because… they went back in time though.

The Extinctionists–a group dedicated to killing / eating the last of rare animals–aren’t a completely new idea in fiction, but I think they were done well. They, combined with young Artemis, would have been sufficient villains in their own right, but of course that’s not enough.

It’s interesting seeing the interplay between Artemis the younger and the (slightly) older. He really has grown throughout the series. I didn’t care as much for the magically de-aged Holly though. It just didn’t seem necessary.

Overall, the plot pushes just past even what suspension of disbelief I already had for the series while at the same time treading on plotlines and characters we’ve already explored fairly extensively. It’s still an enjoyable read, but I feel like the series is starting to get a bit stale.