New Pompeii (New Pompeii #1)
by Daniel Godfrey
★★★★★

If time travel technology existed, who should be able to control it? Should the state regulate it? Could it be used to bring back the dead? Should it be used to bring back the dead?

New Pompeii takes place in a world like ours, where a company named NovusPart has developed the technology to bring items or people from the past to the present. After performing a few stunts to bring some treasures of antiquity to special museum viewings, they move on to a new challenge -- transporting the population of Pompeii to a contemporary recreation of Pompeii. Our protagonist, Nick, is a graduate student studying the era, and is sent to "New Pompeii" to make sure everything stays historically accurate.

There is an often-confusing subplot in the shadows concerning the ghost of a murdered woman. Hang in there. It will make sense.

Time travel is difficult to write, and difficult to read. It opens up a world of paradoxes. Partially through this novel, I began to doubt that the novel would be able to address its own time travel paradoxes, but it managed to integrate them into the plot in a way that made sense.

I thought about this book often after finishing it, and I appreciate more in retrospect. The integration of the subplots was satisfying, and there were moments in the book that I was genuinely surprised. I will likely read it again in the future, and I would love to see more.