One Day All This Will Be Yours

The main character and narrator of this novella starts out defending a pastoral farm setting against leftovers from the Causality Wars. He's the last soldier standing against the chaos that came out of that, in this last unspoiled part of the fractured timeline where everyone enters a sort of funnel to this particular place, and he has rationalized dispatching everyone who arrives as a way to stop the war from re-erupting. To help him in this self-appointed task, he has a pet allosaurus and an assortment of technology he has picked up over the course of history. Midway through the book, however, he receives some visitors with a very different story coming from a place he that provokes a strong negative reaction, and the way he changes his mission boosts the story into a different realm altogether. There is a twist in the last couple of pages which changes his situation in a radical way with an open-ended feel to it, suggesting that we might have more to hear about all of this.

The tone is light, farcical at points. The character is roguish in a way reminding me of what I'd see in New Wave science fiction of the 1960s and 1970s. The author has built his universe in which people travel through time to alter or obliterate history. By the end, I don't completely understand how it is supposed to work, but that's all right. It seems like there's still a lot of playing around with the ideas raised by this brand of time travel, but it doesn't come across as heavy philosophy in any way. I have not read this author's other works but it is my impression that it is a departure from the usual kind of thing he's put out there. I think it's a good choice for readers who might be interested in a different take on themes of time travel.

I obtained my advance reading copy of this as an ebook through Netgalley in order to provide my honest impressions in this review.