"As fresh and compelling as it is high concept ... Packed with dry humor, satirical swipes at the twenty-first century, and vivid characters....Immensely enjoyable."SFX"Welcome to the 21st Century....Echoes of Bradbury and Orwell, in the service of a crackerjack conspiracy plot; a seductively intriguing work of speculative fiction."Kirkus"The leaps of time, identity, and chronology create a dark, chillingly claustrophobic atmosphere."Publishers Weekly"Dickinson has created a bleak future world and spins a plot most appropriate for readers who appreciate ambiguity."Booklist"The story is slowly but surely teased out, intermittently dropping little details while advancing the plot at a breathtaking pace."SciFiNow"Riveting"The Sunday TimesAbout the AuthorRobert Dickinson lives in Brighton, England, and his life to date has been shockingly uneventful. His two previous novels were published by a small press. The Tourist is his third novel. is goodreads free to read books The Tourist
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Time travel is confusingBy jakob lindseyIt's hard to review this book without giving too much away. It was an interesting, dystopic, time-travel detective novel - sort of. Let's just say i wouldn't go back in time to stop myself from reading it.16 of 18 people found the following review helpful. Traveling In TimeBy prisrobThis was one of the more convoluted books I have read. I chose the book because it was noted to be a conspiracy thriller. This is in reality a science fiction book based in the future of the 24th century.We are introduced to someone who lives in isolation in a jail/prison. This person is allowed out to a room twice a day, for an hour at a time for meals. There is no human contact, only a voice that proclaims the time to go for a meal and the time to return to the space provided. On this particular day, this person is brought to a large room and told of their selection for a mission. This was preordained five years prior.In the next chapter we begin to understand that we are in a time travel space, and tourists are being selected for a guided trip to the 21st century. A bus load of carefully counted people start out, the travel back begins with the same amount of people, but somewhere along the way one has gone missing. The search for this person is the basis of this novel.This novel is confusing on several levels. It is difficult to know what century of the time travel we are in, the novel jumps from one century to another. Too many characters to keep track of. Trying to understand the chronology of the events is time consuming. This book was not a conspiracy thriller, nor was it much of a mystery. The novel had no consistent storyline, and it took time to try and comprehend the message. If you are a fan of science fiction, please give it a go.Recommended For Someone, Somewhere In This Century Or Future Ones. prisrob 09-06-165 of 5 people found the following review helpful. a sufficient time-travel thrillerBy William Merrill(3 1/2 stars)Robert Dickinson's *The Tourist* is a science fiction thriller that's built around time travel, or just "travel," as it is called in the novel. The main character is a "rep" who leads groups of 24th century tourists back to the early 21st century (roughly our time) for sight-seeing. What's interesting is that the 24th century corporations have established and built relationships with "Native" governments and people, although there are some 21st-ers who are NOT happy about the visitors from the future. Anyway, back to the tourists, where a problem develops when one of them goes missing. That sets off a detective element to the story. Parallel to the main storyline is a more mysterious one involving a 25th century prisoner who is possibly tied up in a plot of some kind against 24th century entities. This all sounds very complicated, but it fits together pretty well, with points of confusion gradually clearing up. As a thriller, *The Tourist* was satisfactory but not a real "page-turner." (Refer to Patrick Lee's sic-fi thriller trilogy for a strong example of superior suspense in this category.) Also, although one doesn't look to a thriller for good character development, it IS a problem here, with secondary characters that often seem merely there to "fill a square." Overall, though, this book was good enough to keep me reading to the end.