I’m a fairly eclectic romance reader. Although there are a few genres I don’t read much, I’m open to most of them and I’ve sampled lots. There’s one big exception, though: I’m just not a fan of time travel.

I think my problem with time travel is that it strikes me as a somewhat limited concept. Basically, time travelers either adapt or they don’t. Either way, you inevitably have a period where the modern person wanders around going “why are these people all dressed funny” and transgresses various cultural norms without realizing his/her mistake. The locals correct the time traveler who either figures out she’s in another era or spends an even longer period tripping over unfamiliar customs and behaving like the worst kind of tourist.

Some readers must enjoy this, given the number of time travel books that are published each year. I don’t much. I’m particularly annoyed by time travel books where the heroine is a stereotyped feminist who keeps demanding her rights while her medieval hosts prepare to burn her at the stake. As a feminist myself, I assure you we’ve got as much sense of self-preservation as the next person. If I’m surrounded by misogynists dressed in armor and carrying swords, I’m definitely going to keep my mouth shut.

Which leads me to another point. One of the not particularly subtle subtexts of time travel books is the idea that modern women would really prefer hot guys who hadn’t been ruined by modern attitudes—some hunky highlander who’ll skip the whole “sensitivity” thing. As somebody who read a lot of medieval and renaissance lit in college, I’m here to tell you that guys in the past were just as screwed up as guys are today. In addition, in past times there were a lot fewer cultural taboos about knocking women around as long as they were either spouses or women of a certain class. Being ravaged by a highlander is still being ravaged. And given the general lack of personal hygiene at the time, even mutual ravaging probably wouldn’t be all that great for somebody from this century.

Of course, you’ve also got the reverse kind of time travel book where somebody from the past ends up in the present. I may have a limited experience with this type of book, but in the ones I’ve read, the person who travels is always male. As usual, you have a period where the guy wanders around staring at the television and muttering about witchcraft—if the heroine is really unlucky, he destroys some of her electronics in order to defend himself from alien magic. This is supposed to be funny, but for me it’s usually more annoying than anything else, largely because it’s so predictable. Eventually, of course, the hero and heroine get down to the two-backed boogie, and once again we find that “real” men from the past are far better than the emasculated versions in the present. At least in this case the heroine sometimes gets the hero to take a shower before she takes him to bed, eliminating one of my complaints about the whole trope, but my previous objections still stand. Men in the past are pretty much the same as men in the present, with fewer scruples regarding women’s rights.

So give me a historical where everybody is in the right place and time. I’ll gladly read about highlanders getting it on with highland lassies, assuming those highland lassies aren’t modern archaeologists in disguise and assuming the highland lassies are fully in agreement with those highland lads as to the desirability of having sex in the heather. But please, keep the time travel for somebody else. I’m just not interested in making the trip.