Time travel? Victorian England? Real authors in a fictional setting? I'm on it! 
 Unfortunately, it's not quite what you think it is. It's really hard to review this without spoiling everything, because a lot of it is quite clever. In short, time travel isn't what everyone thinks it is. That causes a lot of issues and skeptics, of course, but my real issue here is the book's description has nothing to do with the book. 
 The Map of Time boasts a triple play of intertwined plots in which a skeptical H.G. Wells is called upon to investigate purported incidents of time travel and to save lives and literary classics, including Dracula and The Time Machine, from being wiped from existence. 
 This only happens in part three, about 500 pages in, and isn't even the bulk of the story. I feel cheated. 
 I enjoyed part one of the novel. Andrew is planning suicide because his lover was murdered. His cousin offers a wild opportunity--travel back in time to kill the murderer before he has a chance to kill the lover. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about! Then in part two, we meet another group of people who I didn't care anything about. They weren't memorable or endearing, and they took up the majority of the book. Well that sucks. 
 If part three stood on its own, I could have enjoyed this book. That is what this novel is about, but it took 500 pages to get there. It's all presented quite awkwardly and, to be honest, I'm just grateful that I finished it. 
 It has a beautiful jacket, though.