What's in a Name Challenge: size in title; Once Upon a Time Challenge
Very interesting book with time-travel to 1897 Vienna. Wheeler wakes up in Vienna, a city and time he's heard about in depth from one of his boarding school teachers. Esterhaze was a young man in the heyday of Vienna, before the wars, but in a time of great discussion and ideas. Sigmund Freud was part of the city. Wheeler is a forty something character who has always marched to his own beat. Relatively unfazed by his appearance ninety years earlier, the story backtracks to find out who Wheeler was, how he first met Esterhaze and how he came to be in Vienna.
As with all time-travel books, if I start to think about who and when I get confused, so I just read a long and go with it. The family and characters were well developed, and the epicness of Wheeler's family is a big part of the story. Edwards worked on this book for thirty years and the loops and historical times and implications were cool.
The idea of fixed history, and whether you can change what happens in the future is always a part of time-travel books. In this case, Wheeler travels back to a time when Adolf Hitler is a boy. Hmm, what would you do? Overall, good read. It started a bit slowly, but then books with a lot of story and layers take time to develop. I thought the end was well worth the journey.
