SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: Alice Payne Rides by Kate Heartfield

Alice Payne Rides by Kate Heartfield:

Alice Payne Rides is the second in a time travel novella series that began with last year's Alice Payne Arrives (Review Here).  That novella was a pretty fun time travel story, featuring a young woman from the distant future trying to change the future for the best, while dealing with others who have alternate plans for time travel as well as superiors who might not approve her method, as well as Alice Payne, a young mixed-race woman and her lover Jane in 18th Century England who struggles against the bounds of society - and even before the introduction of time travel moonlights as a highwayman in disguise.  It was a fun novella, but felt incomplete, with the two characters finally interacting in a major way by the very end, which included a major cliffhanger.

Alice Payne Rides isn't really that satisfying of a follow-up, with the story becoming bottled down with a lot of honestly confusing time travel shenanigans and losing some of the strong character moments in the process.  The story has a more complete ending than its predecessor, but I kind of wish the story spent more time with the characters in between time travel shenanigans, which was kind of a missed opportunity.



Plot Summary:  Alice and Jane have teamed up with Prudence Zuniga - now gone AWOL from the Farmers organization she knows betrayed her in one timeline - to try and help change the past in positive ways.  Joining them as well is Constable Auden, who is still searching for Alice's alter-ego as a highwayman as part of his job, but is committed to the cause of helping them change time for the better.  But when Auden's decision to change the past results in a pox-infected Prince Arthur coming to the future, it sets in motion a chain of events where Alice and Jane attempt their own rogue travels through history, in order to both better inform themselves and to help others.  Yet in doing so, they threaten others in the timeline, such as Prudence's sister, and Prudence's old boss is well set to exploit that to his own ends.  The crew will have to work together, despite their own secrets, to protect both their present families...and their future.

Thoughts:   This novella doesn't actually pick up right after the cliffhanger of its predecessor, but narratively time jumps, with what happened at the cliffhanger being explained a few chapters down the line.  It's honestly a little frustrating and confusion, which is a good summary of a lot of this novel, where the characters' time traveling often causes so many butterfly effects it's really awkward and just seems distracting.  And these characters are interesting at heart - but we never really spend enough time with them having actual moments together to take advantage of that!  So where the first book had as a theme the issues of Alice and Jane's relationship, there's basically none of that here.  Similarly, Auden gets kind of a starring role in this novella, and a major part of his development at the end just sort of happens....all of a sudden.  The only thing this novella does better than its predecessor honestly is that it actually has an ending that makes the story feel complete, resolving its plot threads in a cute way that works.  But I just wish there was maybe 30 extra pages for character development, as this novella could really need it.