Book Review: SOMEONE IN TIME

TITLE: Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance

EDITOR: Jonathan Strahan

330 pages, Rebellion Publishing, ISBN 9781786185099 (softcover, also available in audiobook, e-book)

DESCRIPTION: (from inside front cover): Even time travel can’t unravel love.

Time-travel is a way for writers to play with history and imagine different futures – for better, or worse.

When romance is thrown into the mix, time-travel becomes a passionate tool, or heart-breaking weapon. A time agent in the 22nd century puts their whole mission at risk when they fall in love with the wrong person. No matter which part of history a man visits, he cannot escape his ex. A woman is desperately in love with the time-space continuum, but it doesn’t love her back. As time passes and falls apart, a time-traveler must say goodbye to their soulmate.

With stories from best-selling and award-winning authors such as Seanan McGuire, Alix E. Harrow and Nina Allan, this anthology gives a taste for the rich treasure trove of stories we can imagine with love, loss and reunion across time and space. 

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: In lesser hands, an anthology of romantic time-travel stories could have been very one-note and predictable. Thankfully, editor Jonathan Strahan is not “lesser hands.” Someone In Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance fully embraces diversity: not just in the types of romantic couples featured but also in the types of time-travel, points of view, and genres.

Eight of the sixteen stories feature LGBTQIA+ characters in a variety of relationship configurations (possibly 9; in one story I’m unsure of the narrator’s gender identity which is probably me not noticing context clues). Some of these queer protagonists are just discovering their sexual orientation, some have been out for years; some of the relationships are new and fraught with “will they or won’t they” tension while some are long-term relationships facing new challenges. Of course, the same is true for the eight stories in the anthology that focus on straight characters, but I still find it noteworthy when stories featuring LGBTQIA+ protagonists in anthologies like this aren’t focused on the trauma of being queer but rather on the ups-and-downs of all romantic relationships. Not that these stories ignore the very real consequences of being queer in certain times and places; they just don’t make that the sole focus of the stories.

Time-travel is thought of as an SFnal sub-genre, usually involving a specific and iconic (or iconic-looking) device: a tricked-out car, a TARDIS, a time-bubble or -machine. And a number of these stories fit that description, with varying degrees of detail as to what the device looks like and the science behind it. But several of these stories move time-travel into the realm of fantasy: the time-travel is an inherent ability, or something accomplished through magic. Part of the fun of starting each new story was wondering how the time-travel itself would be expressed, and the variety helped keep things interesting.

The anthology starts strong right out of the gate with the one-two-three punch of Alix E. Harrow’s “Roadside Attraction,” Zen Cho’s “The Past Life Reconstruction Service,” and Seanan McGuire’s “First Aid.” All three feature LGBTQIA protagonists (one who only relaxes into his identity as the story progresses, one mourning a broken relationship, and one who is out) who meet their romantic partners through different methods of time-travel (a roadside attraction that no one seems to really understand, a mental stimulation device, and a time-bubble that malfunctions).

Sarah Gailey’s “I Remember Satellites” gives us time-travel as a method of making sure history stays on track, and the sacrifices some time-travelers must make to be sure it does. It felt of a piece with Theodora Goss’s “A Letter to Merlin,” in which time-travelers inhabit already-existing historical figures, essentially taking them over to be sure they do what they’re supposed to.

The fantasy side of time-travel is explored in Rowan Coleman’s sweet “Romance: Historical” (who can resist a romance across the decades set in a mysterious bookshop?) and Carrie Vaughn’s “Dead Poets” (which involves an ancient drinking vessel and two quite different historical poets).

Smack in the middle of the anthology, but thankfully not one right after the other, are a couple of truly heart-breaking stories that play with the nature of time-travel: Elizabeth Hand’s “Chronia,” in which the narrator explains to a lover how many times they have and have not met as chronal fluxes mess with their interpersonal timeline, and “Unabashed, or, Jackson, Whose Cowardice Tore a Hole in the Chronoverse” by Sam J. Miller, in which the narrator recounts all the ways in which he might have saved his new boyfriend from being killed had he not been so afraid of the question “walk me home?”.

Leave it to Catherynne M. Valente to craft a story around the ever-changing, gender-fluid, age-fluid personification of the Space-Time Continuum in “The Difference Between Love and Time,” which is both sweet and heart-breaking.

The exploitation of past resources by travelers from the future infuse Lavanya Lakshminarayan’s “Bergamot and Vetiver” and Ellen Klages’ “Time Gypsy” with an extra layer of late-stage capitalism topicality that enhances rather than overwhelms the romance at the heart of each story.

The anthology also includes stories by Jeffrey Ford (“The Golden Hour”), Nina Allen (“The Lichens”), Margo Lanagan (“The Place of All Souls”), and Sameem Siddiqui (“Timed Obsolescence”) that are equally as good as the stories I’ve already mentioned. In fact, I don’t think there’s a weak story in the bunch.

Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance will appeal to romance readers and speculative fiction readers alike.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Because of how delayed I am in posting this, Someone in Time is already available in print, e-book, and audio formats.

Review of THE ORDER OF THE PURE MOON REFLECTED IN WATER

TITLE: The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water

AUTHOR: Zen Cho

158 pages, Tor.com Publishing, ISBN 9781250269256 (hardcover/ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from the front cover flap): A bandit walks into a coffee house, and it all goes downhill from there. Guet Imm, a young votary of the Order of the Pure Moon, joins up with an eclectic group of thieves (whether they like it or not) in order to protect a sacred object, and finds herself in a far more complicated situation that she could have ever imagined.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS:

In The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho explores issues of faith, honor, history (and who gets to preserve it), and identity through the lens of a classic magic-infused martial arts genre amid a back-drop of war.

The band of “contractors” (they don’t consider themselves “bandits” regardless of the wanted posters featuring their likenesses) at the center of this novella are a ragtag group who just want to survive the ravages of the long war surrounding them. Like many displaced by war, they are simply doing what they can to support themselves and the loved ones they’ve been forced to leave behind. They are together more by happenstance than any commonality: they come from different walks of life, different ethnic backgrounds. They are the very definition of “found family” at the heart of much of queer literature, and even though we don’t get to know most of them very well (outside of the book’s lead characters and a couple of supporting roles), their support of each other is evident on almost every page.

Speaking of queerness: it abounds throughout, giving us gay, lesbian, transgender and non-binary characters in lead and supporting roles. Their queerness is accepted and open for the most part. In the first scene, a male customer pinches the ass of a male waiter – and the only problem two of the leads have with it is that it’s an unwanted invasion of personal space that needs to be called out. From there, mentions of who the characters may or may not be attracted to are sprinkled in with no extra emphasis on the type of attraction. This is not anyone’s coming out story (although there is a coming out moment between two of the characters that is sweet and clumsy and just right). But again: we’re watching a queer found family in troubled times.

The war itself is largely off-screen: it’s part of the world-building, part of understanding how displaced Lau Fung Cheung’s group is as well as how sheltered Guet Imm was before leaving her tokong. Her faith, at odds as it is with the others in the band (notably Ah Boon’s lack of faith, Ah Hin’s yearning for something to believe in, and Tet Sang’s dispassionate knowledge of Guet Imm’s faith), gives her strength but has also put her at a disadvantage because of her seclusion. This leads to several awkward situations as Guet Imm misunderstands how the world works now and Tet Sang has to find ways to correct the problems caused. There is a great dynamic between the nun and the bandit, subtly developed as they get to know each other better, and as both characters’ pasts are revealed. At the heart of the action and the conflict between Guet Imm and Tet Sang is the acquisition and disposition of relics from the tokongs (temples/monasteries) of the Pure Moon, another indicator of how the ongoing war has ravaged this country. Both sides of the conflict have destroyed tokongs for their own reasons, choosing also to either destroy or appropriate holy relics (something we know has happened consistently throughout our own history both by colonizing forces and by religious groups). The question is: what does Lau Fung’s group intend to do with the relics in their possession? Are their intentions honorable? And can Guet Imm stay true to her vows while traveling with the bandits? (One of my favorite scenes early on involves a discussion of those vows and how they might affect “intimate relations” between Guet Imm and any of the men. I won’t ruin it further by trying to summarize it.)

The war may be back-drop, but that doesn’t mean the novella is free of physical combat. The book starts with a fight scene in a coffee-house that is wonderfully described and captured all of the giddiness of the fight scenes I loved in Shaw Brothers movies played on my local New York City television stations on weekend afternoons (long before I learned the term “wuxia” or that the genre has a long literary history). And there are fight scenes later in the story – but they’re almost all one-on-one or small groups, as befits the genre. And they all result in character development or revelation in addition to being fun to read.

And there’s another thing I loved about this novella: the humor. Despite the war-time setting and the fact that the main characters are living “on the run,” there is a light-hearted tone to the narrative and tons of good-natured teasing between the characters. Zen Cho clearly had fun playing all of these characters off of each other. There’s also wonderful interplay between the main characters and people they encounter who are less inclined to humor and more inclined to be judgmental. The more officious and “high ranking” the person encountered, the more obsequiously sarcastic the main characters get. There are points where the main characters are clearly treading just up to the line of disrespect that would result in bigger problems, and every scene in which it happens is so much fun to read.

I have no idea if Zen Cho plans to return to this world in future novellas. There’s certainly room for more adventures of this band. But if not, I’m happy with where the characters are left, and happy to have spent the time with them that Cho gave us.