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Nancy Foster's review
Dec 23, 2025
bookshelves: space-girls, spsfc
I am one of the judges of team Space Girls for the SPSFC5 contest. This review is my personal opinion. Officially, it is still in the running for the contest, pending any official team announcements.
Status: Yes
Read: 30%
Continuing with my scout phase reads, I sampled this book without reading the synopsis. Which to me was great, because I didn't want to be spoiled with the trigger event that forces the protagonist into full action.
There's some plot overlap between this book and A sudden and swift exit by Nico Vicenty. Replace the sapphic romance elements with a brother and sister dysfunctional family comedy. Similar to Nico's book, there is a strange time travel related event known as the Omega disturbance. In a twist, this event is known to happen in the near future and the current timeline is the pre-doomsday preparation phase. Curiously enough, outside of shoddy public transportation and some business closures, life is still pretty normal. The government is still working by allowing land purchases, cops work like usual keeping order and there are operational garbage and electricity services. One of the few notable changes is the universal adoption of a crypto coin due to the dollar collapse. This offers a useful means for the story's morally grey protagonist Logan to launder money for a living.
Within this story is a time travel scientific research program where volunteers named Voyagers are sent to the past with scant instructions. Study subjects are expected to follow inane daily activities. These silly tasks may or may not be distractors from the true purpose of these tests. For initially unexplained reasons, Logan passed a series of honesty tests to ensure he wouldn't make ill use of his trip. Conscious doomsday is just a few months away, he is willing to bend the rules and attempt the same thing Biff did in Back to the Future II. The results are hilarious and I was laughing nonstop.
Things get wackier later in the story and within the 30%, we are having hints Logan is going to be forced to stop being a selfish confrontational doofus and turn into an unlikely hero. I like how the book makes him a morally grey character who is willing to commit fraud without being totally heartless. My favorite scenes are when his selfishness get the best of him and he says... oops, spoiler!
His sister Allison at first sight seems equally amoral with the addition she lives on a high horse due to ther volunteerism and stable employment. This is one of those stories where the main focus is the toxic family dynamic and how the key to saving the day is dependent on both siblings setting aside their personal differences. For the most part, the book is setting into motion with tons of unanswered questions within the 30% point. I am voting Yes for the book to continue in the competition.