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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 1213631" data-attributes="member: 63">Yesterday I read The Time Traveler's Wife, by (and I'm sure I'm misspelling this) A. Niffenegger.  It was an interesting book, sort of an over-glorified romance novel with an interesting time travel twist, but it managed not to be goofy, and the only thing I disliked was the ending.  I ended up liking the characters and enjoying the quirkiness of the relationship in the story, but dang, the ending pissed me off.Anyway, here's a quick set up of the story.  The main character, Henry, has a condition that causes him to time travel at random.  Most of the time he'll be in the present, but every week or so he might hop into his own past or future, bodily teleporting through time so there are briefly two of him at once, in completely different parts of the country.  The reason behind it isn't that important; it's just an excuse for us to see a story of 'love that transcends time.'   When he time hops, he goes to moments that are emotionally important to him.  For instance, when he's older, he ends up time traveling back to see his future wife Clare when she was very young, so Clare first meets Henry when she's 6 and he's in his late 30s, though in a straight timeline he doesn't meet her until he's 28.  He keeps on visiting her at different times, forcing her to not look for him until she actually runs into him.  There are some fun moments along the way as we see these people coping with the weirdness of the situation, and managing to fall in love even though the normal order of things gets messed up (like when the stress of getting married causes him to blink out before the ceremony; thankfully an older version of him shows up to go through the vows).  But ultimately, the ending left me frustrated.Throughout the book, it's clear that you only get to choose what you do the first time around, so if Henry gets in trouble, a future version of him can't go back and warn the original version of him, though one time a future Henry meets with present Henry in the late 80s and tells him to buy computer stocks.  It bends the mind a bit, but there aren't any paradoexes.  The whole freedom of choice/predestination thing is discussed.  Like, Clare knows by the time she's 14 that the guy who's been popping into and out of her life is her husband in the future, so does she really have a choice when he asks her to marry him 10 years down the line?Spoiler:[spoiler]The problem is, there are no paradoxes, so when a time traveling Henry in the future looks up his own death certificate, and we figure out how his death will happen, there's no way to avoid it.  And the death is horrible, depressing, and you'd think that if there were one thing you'd try really hard to avoid, it'd be getting shot randomly when you're 43.  It didn't feel like he deserved to die; in fact, by the end of the story he's got a nice, happy family and circle of friends, and I wanted to end the story on a happy note.Instead, we end with Clare, 40 years after her husband's death, having a conversation with him when he time hops into her presence.  But we don't get to hear the conversation or see what happens, so the last emotion we feel in the story is sadness, not love.It's a romance novel, I know, but it was an engaging story most of the time, and sappy ol' me enjoyed it.  I wanted a happily ever after.[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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