Top Gun is probably the better movie, but if I had to watch one US Navy aviation recruitment video dressed up as a blockbuster film, I think I’d pick this one. It wrestles with more interesting ideas, and more of it happens on a carrier, which is fun.

And yet, I am annoyed by two things that I recognize stand in tension with each other: 1) the jingoistic “look how cool our war toys are” vibes and 2) the shaggy dog nature of the story that ultimately rules out showing off those war toys and doesn’t do anything with the time travel premise that a short story couldn’t do better.

The story itself didn’t captivate me much. I felt like there were sudden developments for the sake of the plot moving forward, and even an twist that comes partway through the book felt like [insert sudden development here] rather than the surprise it was supposed to be. I also didn’t catch some of the character connections and payoffs at first, though I suspect that’s due in part to my own inattention.

If I were allowed one religion-related time travel shenanigan, I would go to the late 1960s and arrange for very left-wing RLDS apostle Charles Neff and Bircher LDS apostle Ezra Taft Benson to be in the same room, just to see how things would turn out.