The book is set in the near future: one where AI has infiltrated several facets of daily life from self driving cars to education to clothes fitting. All of these feel well within our own reach in a few years, given the current trajectory of technology and ML. The true sci-fi aspect of the story is the causality violation device that some of the scientist characters in the story are working on and “they would greatly prefer it if you didn’t call it a time machine”. 

Not all the main characters are scientists but they are all equally well developed at the adept hands of Mr. Palmer—a feature commonly found wanting in many sci-fi books. But that’s because Mr. Palmer is a student of literature rather than Science.

And this shows throughout the book, and particularly so at the end. The Mechanics of time travel (or causality violation) are never fully clear even after careful reading—and I’m someone who will read parts of books several times just so the premise is clear to me (e.g. see my explainer for Recursion, another time travel book). Unfortunately what is possible and is not is never revealed leaving the scientific premise dissatisfying—my only nit with this book.