Alice Payne Arrives combines time travel shenanigans with some very adventurous ladies and a war that's fought across the pages of history. In 1788, Alice Payne is a gentlewoman (not nobility but not dirt poor either) who moonlights as a highwayman, the Holy Ghost, robbing the deserving men who cross her path with the help of an automaton named Laverna. Meanwhile, in 1888, Major Prudence Zuniga is attempting to change history to suit her side of a war which has been waged for decades and throughout time. When Prudence develops a new plan to win the war for good, she'll have to do her best to recruit Alice Payne or one of her companions and hope that everything turns out alright. It'll be up to these women to finish this time war one way or another.

That I enjoyed this book at all is, quite frankly, a miracle. I'm not much of a fan of the timey wimey sort of stories and only picked this one up because it was nominated for a Nebula this year. I really enjoyed the main characters, both Alice and Prudence as well as Alice's companion Jane. All three were strong-willed and intelligent and interesting in their own ways without all fitting exactly the same mold. And all struggled in some way over restrictions placed on them because of their station. However, there is a LOT of time jumping in this one and a lot of games played with the effects of messing around in the pages of history and that's exactly the aspect of time travel that both confuses and annoys me. Which is why it gets three stars from me rather than four or five.

If you're a fan of time travel, history and kickass ladies, Alice Payne Arrives is a great novella. It got too embedded in the threads and consequences of time travel for my tastes but it still managed to be entertaining and that's saying quite a lot for me.

This is an interesting take on time travel with some interesting women at the core of the story, but it ultimately left me a little cold.