1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
A gorgeous, understated, fascinating novel about the malleability of reality, connection, destiny, and human faults... in its our protagonists Aomame and Tengo unwittingly end up in an altered timeline where police carry different guns and there are two moons... and a vengeful team of "Little People" seek to alter reality for their own ends. Masterful prose unwinds a captivating tale about the patterns that we move in in the world, the interconnectedness of everything, and the necessity (or not) of brutality... all with an ambiguous element regarding the surreal where the ending could be as dark or as hopeful as the reader chooses. But if I choose hope, am I really just closing my eyes to the darkness?
I highly recommend these 3 books (collected in 1 volume) to anyone with an interest in the multiverse or what the consequences of time travel might realistically look like.
On deck:
11/22/63 by Stephen King. Funny how books like these like to use numbers in their title, huh?
I also read
The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart, which I found unimpressive and pulp-y,
This is How You Lose the Time War, which had the opposite problem and read more like poetry than anything, and
The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry, which is also a little more multiverse-y than time travel, but I think they have a lot in common. It introduced a really cool worldbuilding piece about "anchors" where different artifacts that you take with you while traveling can help things remain consistent across changing timelines.
I read these books while doing research for my own novel,
found here. It is written in the 2nd person in the choose-your-own-adventure style to simulate short term time travel based on changing choices. It contains 23 illustrations.
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