Okay, I just finished "Downtiming The Night Side" by Jack L. Chalker. It's not recommended. It's a time travel story, and thus is necessarily convoluted, but this one just adds stacks and stacks of complexity on top for no reason. It has this really weird concept of how time travel works, involving jumping into other bodies (like Quantum Leap!), except some people don't... and if you stay too long you become one with the body... and if you don't, you still merge partially with that personality... and you can intentionally swap bodies... and something about being 'in phase' and 'out of phase' that I completely didn't follow. Confusing, and not feeling terribly scientific. There was kind of this generic concept that time would do what it had to to straighten things out, like modern objects (sometimes, gradually) becoming older ones to fit the time period they're brought to. It all seemed quite arbitrary and illogical. But it had pluses - there were some fun time loop issues (people going off to do things they had already seen happen, that kind of stuff), which I enjoy.
All in all, not recommended, and shlocky despite the highbrow complexity. Pretty much what I expected, although I had no idea it would prove to be so complex. I don't know what book is next. There's one more I got at the library bookstore, also of a sci-fi nature. I guess I will delve into that. Good day to you.
