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emtees's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Tom Hazard has a condition called anageria, which means that he ages at 1/15th of the speed of a normal person. Though he appears to be barely middle-aged, he’s actually over four hundred years old. And his life has mostly been a sad and lonely one. As a young person in the early 17th century, he faced prejudice and fear during a period of witchcraft hysteria; then came the long centuries alone until he fell in with the Albatross Society, a group of people with anageria led by Hendrich, one of the oldest living of their kind. Hendrich’s goal is to find and unite all the “albas,” as he calls them, in an organization of mutual protection. The Society helps its members establish new lives when their slow aging is noticed, and in exchange, they do favors for Hendrich - mostly recruiting other albas, but sometimes taking on darker deeds to protect their kind. The Society has rules, but the biggest one is to avoid attachments to what they call “mayflies,” regular humans, as summed up in their number one rule: “Don’t fall in love.” For Tom, that rule has never been a problem; even after four hundred years, he’s still mourning Rose, the lost love of his life. But in his new life as a high school teacher, Tom meets Camille, a woman who sees to see through his bland, untouchable facade, and begins to question the rules he’s living by.
The strength of this book is in the character work Haig does with Tom, and in the emotional effect of his long life. In an interview at the end of the book, he talks about how he wanted the flashbacks scattered through the story to show Tom in every century he’d lived through so the reader could feel the weight of those years, and he succeeded. Stories about immortal or long-lived beings are pretty common in the SFF genre, so it’s difficult to stand out; what worked about How to Stop Time is it didn’t really try to break new ground, but instead dug deep into the emotional effect of Tom’s long life. Haig always writes well about depression and other mental health issues, and though Tom’s situation is obviously fantastical, the drag of his despair and loneliness on the story is palpable in a way that feels very real, and the little glimmers of light when he finds something that makes him happy are a huge relief. I would have been happy if the story focused exclusively on Tom coming to terms with his condition and his relationships with Camille
Where the story didn’t work as well for me was, well, in the plot. The Albatross Society didn’t feel like a fully fleshed out idea; the concept made sense and was intriguing when it was first introduced, but by the end it felt like it only existed to keep Tom from learning the lessons he needed too early. There were two problems with it. One was that once the idea of a whole community of albas was introduced, it felt like they needed to be part of the story in a bigger way. The obvious solution to the loneliness of near-immortality seems to be other immortals, so any story that wants to tackle these themes needs to address that, whether creating enmity between the immortal characters or keeping their numbers very small or something. But How to Stop Time didn’t address that at all. There are a handful of other immortals in Tom’s life, but conveniently he isn’t close to any of them, and while we are told a whole society exists, the question of why Tom doesn’t seek more of them out or have any close friendships with them is left unaddressed. The other issue is that
In other areas the worldbuilding is really well done - I liked the twist that the “immortal” characters were actually just aging very slowly, so that rather than hitting a certain age and then stopping, they were experiencing every stage of life at a drawn-out rate, including old age. There’s a different kind of horror to that than you get with like vampires or the old guard. And the flashback segments were some of my favorites; it was clear Haig did his historical research, but he didn’t let that overwhelm the human story. And finally, the ending:
Moderate: Mental illness and Terminal illness
Minor: Self harm
Several characters experience different illnesses, including one character who has a seizure during the story. Another character talks about mental health issues, institutionalization and psychiatric treatment. There is a scene of a character self-harming and the scar is referenced several times in the story.dramagirl2003's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
Moderate: Abandonment
Minor: Death, Gun violence, and Terminal illness
froggydanny's review against another edition
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Grief
Minor: Cursing, Panic attacks/disorders, Pregnancy, and Alcohol
leonormsousa's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Moderate: Death, Hate crime, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Violence, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Colonisation, and War
skyegbooks's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Moderate: Death, Terminal illness, and Abandonment
Minor: Misogyny and Sexism
laurajones's review against another edition
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Mental illness, Grief, and Death of parent
Moderate: Chronic illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Xenophobia, and Murder
Minor: Alcoholism, Child death, Fatphobia, Racial slurs, and Forced institutionalization