Well Dazrin and gmw have both said most of what I wanted to say.
I did enjoy it but there were things that took me out of the story:
- the first few historical chapters turning out to be his thesis. This just literally made me stop and go "what?" so that I was thinking about the format of the writing rather than the story. Similarly...
- screenplay formatting. Why? Screenplays are working documents for making a movie, they are not made to be read. I wondered if this had originally been a screenplay and got converted to a novel and he ran out of time. Probably not.
- the Jane-Michael relationship. I alternated by being irritated by how patronizing she was to him with how immature and jerkish he was to her. I get that it wasn't supposed to be a good relationship but it didn't endear me to the main character early in the book. I did end up rooting for him, but despite the impression this section left with me.
- Michael being gay/bi. So I suppose the relationship with Jane was meant to hint at this. But it didn't read that way to me. It just read as a bad hetero relationship not a sign that he was closeted or unaware of his own sexuality. I can see how it might be read that way now, but if that was the intent it was a little too subtle. Maybe Fry didn't want to tip his hand. So what it meant was that when "the kiss" occurs it felt like it came out of nowhere. It felt a bit too neat and deus ex machina. You know what? Now that I think of it, this also could have worked better if in the second part of the book the Mikey-Steve relationship was played as a bit more romantic from Mike's end. It was clear from the start that Steve was into Mikey but there could have been a gradual realization from Mike's side. Rather it read like a lot of understandable gratitude then a sudden gearshift.
- pacing. By which I mean in the second part it took a long time to get to the obvious things you wanted to know i.e. how is the world different? Instead we got tiny glimpses then back to a long historical passage. And those passages were fascinating, but it felt like it took a long time to get to the modern day changes. At one point early on Mikey is startled when he see the cars in the street. At first I was thinking they were different in some technical sense, rather than simply driving on the other side of the road.
- lists, lists, lists. gmw gave one example, I'll give another. When his parents turn up in the second half, his mum notes how the place where they are to stay is nice, "like an English hotel". Mikey, mentally, gives a list of what English hotels are like ending with "when were you last in an English hotel?" out loud. This is clearly a joke. But the joke is ruined because it takes half a page to get to the punchline. Two or three things suggesting that English hotels can be somewhat sad naff places and then the question.
That said, I did enjoy it. It was worth a read and the how-would-things-be-different is a trope but it's one that exists for a reason, it's fascinating to speculate.