Iain Pears' prose is very smooth and easy to read. There is excellent character development here too. With these two fundamentals in place, Mr Pears is off to a good start. I am not a big fan of fantasy literature, but I must say I enjoyed the part of the book set in Anterwold the most. I particularly liked the concept of the "story". The concept of having a time machine in the basement was both a bit wonky and yet charming at the same time. I found the linkage between the three parts of the book to be a bit tangled though, with some loose descriptions of past and future linkages and cause and effect. Overall, the novel is entertaining though, and in that sense it succeeds.

A mind-stretching panoply of increasingly suspenseful stories, which interconnect, diverge, spring against each other like literary pinball and lead the reader on a grand adventure through time. Absolutely one of the best time split/scifi novels I've had the pleasure of reading. For sheer surprise and delight, rates up there with Ready, Player One.

In Arcadia Iain Pears blurs the lines between cause and effect, power and control, the real and the imagined as he takes us on a rollicking journey through alternate histories where the real battles are fought with one's wit and intelligence.

A dystopian future where knowledge is punished, the nuclear bomb revered and where it becomes possible to alter the past through time travel. 1960 England, during the Kennedy-Nixon US election and when the Red Scare was red hot with security services on hyper alert. A Utopian world where knowledge is sacred and fatalism accepted. Not to mention the ability to be in two places at once. All of these combine into a story that combines the best elements of science fiction and fantasy. Author Iain Pears has outdone himself with this marvelous tale where the plot lines go in directions the reader would least expect.