Review: 'Time's Agent' by Brenda Peynado

Time is ever-moving, but what if you briefly, just briefly, stepped outside of it, into a little pocket world, only to come out to having lost everything? Raquel finds herself in that situation and Time's Agent explores all the issues and questions that brings with it. I wish I had enjoyed Time's Agent more than I did, but it is a fascinating exploration nonetheless. Thanks to Tordotcom and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay in reviewing!

Pub. Date: 13/08/2024
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group; Tordotcom

Pocket World—a geographically small, hidden offshoot of our own reality, sped up or slowed down by time.

Following humanity’s discovery of pocket worlds, teams of academics embarked on groundbreaking exploratory missions, eager to study this new technology and harness the potential of a seemingly limitless horizon.

“What would you do, given another universe, a do-over?”

Archeologist Raquel and her wife, Marlena, once dreamed the pocket worlds held the key to solving the universe’s mysteries. But forty years later, pocket worlds are now controlled by corporations squeezing every penny out of all colonizable space and time, Raquel herself is in disgrace, and Marlena lives in her own pocket universe (that Raquel wears around her neck) and refuses to speak to her.

Standing in the ruins of her dream and her failed ideals, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself and confront what it means to save something—or someone—from time.

Humanity is capable of creation and, unfortunately, destruction. Double unfortunately, we are extremely good at destroying ourselves and our environments, largely by being careless and/or too profit-driven. An element of the novella which surprised me was how strongly it explored the way in which our capitalistic society would exploit the idea of Pocket Worlds. I adore Speculative Fiction that allows us to consider new ways of living, of being, of traveling, but there is always that worry in the back of my mind of how these new technologies and discoveries would actually be taken onboard. There would be a lot of fear and speculation, sure, if something like Pocket Worlds became manifest and tangible in our world today, but I think Peynado's strongest contribution in Time's Agent is to draw a bleak picture of how we would exploit it to the last drop. It makes for a rather depressing reading experience, but the way Peynado depicts how Pocket Worlds become marketed, first as luxury goods and then as ways of exploiting the labour and lives of the under class, well ... it felt genuine in a way only Speculative Fiction can be. This also plays into the idea of time, how it dilates and shifts between the different worlds, thereby turning the time given to us in life into another commodity that can be sold off. It reminded me of what I read in Naomi Klein's Doppelganger about the dark underbelly of our (Western) societies in which humans and nature are exploited and pushed to the brink. Peynado's characters are pushed towards deciding whether the world, the actual one, can be saved, if its humans could be saviours to other worlds, or if it is already too late for us.

In Raquel and Marlena's world, Pocket Worlds (PWs) have gone from things of folklore, like Rip Van Winkle, to things that can be scientifically explored. Each little PW is a version of the world which has separated from the main world, with its of ecosystem and its own time dilation, meaning time there either passes more quickly or more slowly than in our world. Raquel is an archeologist, hoping to find remnants of, if not living members of, the Taino people, while Marlena, a biologist, revels in the different flora each PW has to offer. But one day, something goes wrong, and 40 years pass in the blink of an eye. Not only have their lives changed, but so has the world. PWs have gone commercial and in typical human fashion, destruction follows. What can Raquel, with Marlena hiding away, do? As I mentioned above, I find the themes discussed in the novella fascinating and the idea of the PWs is a perfect way of exploring it. The themes in and of themselves are also important and I really appreciated a chance to think through them with Peynado's characters. However, I did not fully connect to the characters and sometimes they felt a little blurry to me. We get little glimpses at their background story but I felt a little more was needed to make the choices they make a little more cohesive.

The thing that makes Time's Agent for me is its concept, which is not wrong for a novella. There is only so much space and the concept needs to work for the whole thing to make sense. With Pocket Worlds, Peynado has a great idea which is ripe for the kind of themes she wants to explore. I would have liked, however, to feel a little more connected to Raquel. Peynado opens with Raquel on her birthday, a year after having returned from a small Pocket World, and then the novella flashes back for a kind of "how did we get here" explanation. This worked to pique my interest and to make the reader question things, but I think perhaps showing events chronologically could also have allowed the reader the time to attach value for themselves to the things Raquel has lost. Alongside this, the ending felt a little too rushed to me, attempting to tie various things together into such tight knots that I wished for a little more breathing space. Perhaps the novella could have benefitted from being a little bit longer. However, there is a lot of promise in Time's Agent and I look forward to reading more by Brenda Peynado in the future.

I give this novella...

4 Universes!

Time's Agent is an intriguing novella, full of interesting concepts and high, emotional stakes. Readers interested in the kind of social commentary Speculative Fiction can contain will definitely enjoy it.