2025-10-13 HtBtDaDT review

Oof. Where to begin? Between the frankly disgusting sexualization, the pointless footnotes, the Redditor reference humor, and absurd misuse of potential, this book is just plain bad.

The sexualization is where I have the least standing from which to criticize it, but also the part that squicks me out the most. Like Artemis, it's another case of a man writing a female protagonist who constantly thinks about sex, masturbation, and who's the most boinkable. In this case, though, it's even worse, because she's using her time-travel powers to effectively roofie people. I'm a (mostly-)cis, (mostly-)het, (completely-)white guy, but I've known a fair number of women, including some very sexual women. None of them acted anything like this, including the literal nymphomaniac.

Of course, I'd expect this kind of misunderstanding of women from someone who wrote the Western equivalent of a Japanese light-novel and stuffed it full of the worst Redditor humor. Nearly every page has some sort of stupid pop-culture reference, usually accompanied by a random footnote that adds nothing but more cringe. Imagine Deadpool, but strip out all the self-deprecation. Then imagine the protagonist writing that sentence in her narration, possibly in a footnote.

So why did I even finish this book? Because of the genuinely interesting setting. I'm guessing that's stolen from somewhere (probably anime), but it's still a setting worth exploring. Unfortunately, after the second chapter, it's just not. The penultimate chapter has a "twist" in the time-loop mechanics that I predicted during the third chapter. That's how little this book explores its own ideas.

Violence, profanity, constant sex, and missed potential (that probably wasn't even there for this sorry excuse for an author). 2/7, and that's being generous. Don't touch this book unless you're an author who wants to steal the setting/mechanic and actually explore it in better writing.