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I am not a huge fan of multiple points of view unless I am engaged with each one. Sadly in this novel, I was not. Thankfully the opening chapter set in Berkeley California from which the novel makes a rather slow start shifts quickly to an intriguing (mostly true) story set in the dark days of Vienna during the 1930s.

This was the POV story that I found utterly fascinating. That period is so resonant. It features the rise of fascism under the government of Chancellor Dolfus. A conservative champion of the Catholic Church who sought not only to crush the communist menace in the working class neighborhood of 'Red' Vienna but to stamp out secularism at the universities. The novel gives us a glimpse of politics targeting intellectual movements and distorting them into enemies of the state, enemies of all that is good and true. This seems to lead to the all too sad axiom that once you dehumanize a person or group some people may feel justified into harming them.

In this novel that 'enemy' goes by the moniker of the Vienna Circle. A group of philosophers that 'asserted' that claims that cannot be scientifically verified, claims like the existence of God, do not make sense, those claims are simply nonsense.

There's a touching queer romance that begins under these awful conditions. Awful in the sense that during that period being exposed as gay and an atheist was tantamount to risking one's livelihood and even one's life.

I suspect the best science fiction being written today is outside of the genre but in this case, I thought the time-travel element was a bit underwhelming. But that's subjective on my part since I wanted to read more about the Vienna Circle and the cultural wars of that period.

Disclaimer: I received a copy from Netgalley for an honest review.