Well written, thought provoking and enjoyable. I seldom come across science fiction now in the current day that reminds me of when I was a kid reading Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov for the first time. This book does exactly that. It is a gem and not to be missed. The only problem I had with this book was that it was too short. The ending didn't quite satisfy either since it appears to be left open for a possible sequel, which I will snatch up and read the moment it appears if it does. The book is equal parts time travel adventure novel, thought provoking story about the dangers of time travel in the hands of an untrustworthy mankind, and humorous tale of what may be the end times, if the protagonist has his way. Highly recommended.

For starters… It’s important to know my thoughts on Time Travel writing, a genre that at times is not my favorite. Time travel writing always falls somewhere on the spectrum between hard core science-y and ‘poof’ magic. I’m happy to report that Tchaikovsky’s description falls somewhere in between. The credibility in his writing is created with an explanation not of the process but of the result. The end of time. The very end. Where one man remains: our nameless narrator.

He has lived through the Causality War. A conflict fought with time machines… dismantling, destroying, and infrequently detangling time. Now, he minds his farm, takes vacations to watch famous actors of days past, and sics his pet dino on any curious tourists. Yes, he spends his time sabotaging any other travelers in an effort to make sure that no war ever erupts again.

Filled with funny allusions and a narrator with a attitude, One Day This Will Be Yours is a most enjoyable novella. I have never cracked open a book by Tchaikovsky and I am happy to have this as a bit-size intro. With a veteran writer like this, you will get a plot arc that is expertly written and chapters which pull you forward with increasing tension. It seems like there was a chuckle, a aha moment, or a wicked reference on every page.

The one small piece of criticism is that the ending fell a little flat for me. I questioned over and over while reading about how he was going to end this trip through the sands of time. It was fun to speculate… and the path Tchaikovsky chose was interesting, but it didn’t work for me.

Pick up this novella for a meaningful adventure.

4 out of 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley, Rebellion Publishing, and the author for an advanced copy for review.

It's hard to take an old sci-fi trope like time-travel and come up with new ideas about how it works, and how it doesn't work. Since HG Wells speculative fiction writers have been telling time travel stories, but I've never read one quite like this. One Day All This Will Be Yours is funny and short. It deals more with the human condition than the physics of time travel and manages to leave you feeling both satisfied and bleak.

The narrator is the last remaining agent from the Causality War. Even he can't remember who started it, or when, or even why, except that it was the result of a natural escalation of a Cold-War type arms race. Once time travel was discovered and weaponized both sides used it immediately and simultaneously (as only time travel can allow) to change history and defeat their opponents before they were conceived. But the butterfly effect ripples through time brought an end to the super powers, but not to the agents trying to restore a future in which their side won the time war. Agents traveled through time and muddled with it so much that history became completely unrecognizable. The warring states no longer existed, and indeed, had NEVER existed. The narrator spent the rest of the war eliminating other travelers so he could be the only one left who could control the strings of time.

After winning the time war, not for his country, but for himself, he established his own solitary utopia where he and his pet allosaur, Miffly can live in peace. Anyone in history who discovers time travel initially comes to his far future farm where he congratulates them, interrogates them, and feeds them to Miffly. He is the guardian of time travel and will prevent any past power from harnessing time to create a new Causality War.

Tchaikovsky manages to introduce new problems and new solutions with weaponizing time travel. The book is funny and thought provoking. It deals with the narrator's grizzled cynicism rather than the physics of time travel, so hard sci-fi fans might not like this book as much as I did. The physics are never explained. Travelers show up on his end-of-the-world ranch from every time and place, including a cave man who banged two rocks together REALLY hard.

For such a short book it is really full of time paradoxes, butterfly effects, dinosaurs, Hitlers and Stalins, and reminders that you can't change the past without changing the future, and no matter how much you try, you can't change the future by trying to change the present. This was my first Tchaikovsky, but his other works that have been sitting on my TBR shelf moved way up in line. Highly recommend!

Most science fiction, for me, is incredibly hit or miss. This was a mix of both. Some parts fantastic, other parts less so. I definitely wanted to like it...but the book was all over the place. Great characters, fine plot, and a lot of desert in between.

You all are probably aware that Adrian Tchaikovsky is one of my absolute favourite science fiction authors. I've only encountered one of his sci-fi novellas, Walking to Aldebaran, and absolutely loved it. So when I found out that he was coming out with a new one, I had to get my hands on it. One Day All This Will Be Yours is a darkly funny book that tackles the ethics of time travel and how far you'll go to stop humanity from breaking the world (again).

First of all, can I say how incredibly funny and clever this book is? Much like Walking to Aldebran, One Day All This Will Be Yours is filled with dark humour, sharp dialogue, and clever twists and turns that make it totally unputdownable. Tchaikovsky infuses our extremely grumpy main character with such a fantastic voice and you can't help but root for him (despite how awful he often is). These novellas with Solaris have been fabulous so far, and I really want to go back and read the rest of them!

I absolutely loved the concept of this book. A grumpy misanthropic veteran of a war that broke time creating a paradise for himself while stopping other time travellers from fucking up time again? Yes please. Time travel books usually make my head ache, but this one worked the concept of time travel and how we'd inevitably misuse it so incredibly well. The story has so many layers that I still find myself thinking about long after finishing the book. Plus. there's a dinosaur named Miffly in it. What's not to like?

I don't want to say too much about this book for fear of spoiling the experience, but trust me when I say that sci-fi fans don't want to miss out on this one. Tchaikovsky is one of the best sci-fi writers out there right now, and One Day All This Will Be Yours is proof.

4.5 out of 5 stars

This is a darkly funny scifi novella about a grumpy soldier who has survived a war that messed up time and causality throughout history. He came to the a point in time in the future far away from the time war and created a paradise. And he spents his time working to ensure that that kind of time travel could never damage time and causality again. Of course, all does not go to plan.

This book is a different take on the we-must-save-the-future version of a time travel story. Its a little self indulgent in its time travel related witticisms and references, but it's a quick enjoyable read if you're in the mood for it. If you can catch all the historical references, it will make it more fun, but even if you can't, I think it's still entertaining.

Tchaikovsky has packed a lot into this fairly short book. I'm not 100% sure of the accuracy of the science, but it's certainly an interesting concept. And there is a lovable monster pet! This story is unexpected, irreverent, dark, and weirdly romantic.

Thank you to @netgalley and @rebellionpublishing for an advanced e-copy of this novella!

One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So, when you just HAVE to have a really messed up, misanthropic, let's-kill-all-the-universe-right-now kind of story, this one is always available.

Because, let's face it, we all sometimes need a fantastically misanthropic tale to get us through the day.

Of course, if you wanted a novella that reminds you quite a bit of This Is How You Lose the Time War with the love, the constant Princess Bride feel, the murderous intent, PLUS a bunch of time-hopping that isn't quite as poetical but is still definitely delicious, then this is ALSO a go-to story.

And, let's also face it, it's a Tchaikovsky SF and I'm absolutely sure from here on out that I'll never read one of his SFs that I'll ever dislike. It just can't happen, now.

A dude with a fetish for Soviet tractors lives a solitary but extremely contented life beyond the reach of time. He also has, of course, a partially feathered pet Allosaurus called Miffly. In order to retain dominion over his little corner of Eden he has to do certain things… I need to stop here because if I told you what that was, I might will be giving away the main plot of this extremely funny book.

Sometimes when I felt I need to cheer up due to living through these times of plague I have selected a few books from the NetGalley humour section. This book wasn’t under humour, but in the sci-fi and fantasy section, and because I had read and enjoyed a previous book by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Bear Head, see https://clarianabhc.blogspot.com/2020/12/great-bear-bear-head-by-adrian.html), I downloaded it. Apart from being sci-fi it is also one of the funniest books I have read: “… And if hunting someone down with a dinosaur is an old-fashioned, I don’t know what is.”

If you love the murderbot stories or Terry Pratchett, you will love this.

This is an absolutely fantastic little novella that explores lots of different concepts all while being incredibly entertaining and the main character having a pet dinosaur!

I have such a soft spot for sci fi short stories and novellas! "One Day All This Will Be Yours" is hilariously imagined and seriously entertaining. It had me giggling the entire time, but it held up that perfect sci fi undercurrent of dystopia without falling into cliches. I want to own a copy of this and a copy of "This is How You Lose the Time War" so I can set them next to each other on my shelves and re-read them both a million times. Where the latter is more literary, this story is more down-to-earth (but only slightly - you will, in fact, meet the character featured on the cover). I loved it, and like every good novella, it left me wanting more!

One of my favorite mental posers to think about is where and when I might go if I had a time machine. My answer always changes, partly based on how recently I’ve read something about witchcraft trials (which rule out a lot of history for me) or medical history (which rules out a lot the rest). At the risk of being hyperbolic, I would never in a million years think up what the narrator of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s lightning-fast novella, One Day All This Will Be Yours. The narrator has chosen to use his time-traveling equipment to set up shop at the end of time and destroy any other time travelers he can find.

Our narrator is a veteran of the last war humanity will ever fight. At least, that’s what he’s trying to be. In the last war, humans not only invented time travel (used to try and thwart the other side before they could make a move) but also bombs that are capable of shattering causality itself. He tells us his story, his deep dissatisfaction at seeing history come apart around him. As soon as people start messing around with the time stream, history gets overwritten. The other side—and the side the narrator is presumably on—sometimes disappear from one moment to the next. It’s hard to stay loyal when the faces keep changing and the reasons keep shifting. So, there he is, at the end of time, with his pet allosaur and a bunch of farming robots, waiting for time travelers to show up so that he can kill them and wipe out their timeline so that it can never happen again.

Who knows how long things might have continued this way if two travelers hadn’t shown up from the narrator’s own future? This isn’t supposed to be possible. Worse, these travelers claim to be the narrator’s descendants. Even worse than that, these travelers who are the narrator’s descendants are so damned chipper that it sets the narrator’s teeth on edge. The plot kicks into high gear at this point as the narrator begins his plan to un-create the utopia that he apparently unwittingly spawned. This is also where the hijinks start to ensue. The narrator gets into all kinds of shenanigans that had me laughing in spite of myself, especially when he starts to pull baddies out of history to fight for him. (He notes critically that he forgot to include time for team-building exercises.)

One Day All This Will Be Yours was a surprisingly entertaining read, with one flaw. The narrator tells his story a few too many times. Tchaikovsky commits the writerly sin of telling more than showing in this novella. A little more editing on those would’ve left room for what makes this story so much fun: screwing around with history. It’s a relatively small flaw considering how imaginative the rest of the story is. I would recommend it for fans of time travel stories looking for a bit of fun.

Tchaikovsky explores the wonders of time travel and being the ultimate loner in this new novella. There are very few sentient animals in this one but you wont mind because, as usual, the story is full of big ideas and "what if" moments. I am sure a careful and nit picky reader could find a few paradoxes with the time travel scenarios but I just took them at face value and enjoyed the wonderful prose like this:

“I’ve a specially curated selection of box sets, because one thing that spins like a weathervane when you change causality is entertainment, and if you have a deft hand you can collect all the really good versions of things, like the final series of Lost where all the loose ends actually got tied up, or that peculiarly tangled timeline where William Shakespeare, Helen Mirren and Orson Welles got together to make a Transformers movie.”

The only thing that stopped this from being a 5 star review is that the ending was quite abrubt and not fully fleshed out. I was definitely left wishing for more and a little disappointed.

I continue to be amazed at Tchaikovsky's wide range and proliferation of fantastic stories. Highly recommended.

4.5 / 5 ✪

https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com/2021/02/28/one-day-all-this-will-be-yours-by-adrian-tchaikovsky-review/

One Day All This Will Be Yours is a love story for the ages.

Kinda.

I mean, there’s some sort of romance within, along with plenty of ages (since time travel and all), and it’s definitely a story, so there’s that. The rest of it basically answers the question: What would happen if a sentient nuclear warhead fell in love? Could it forever deny its baser instinct to eradicate life, or would it… boom?

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

‘“Stalin and Hitler is cheating.”
“I don’t see why. Achilles is cheating, he never even existed.”
“Says the woman with three Jack the Rippers.”
…
The fight’s begun by then. It is…
Strangely hilarious. ‘

Nobody remembers how the Causality War started. Really, there’s literally no one to remember—except for me. And I’ve forgotten.

See, the thing about screwing with causality is that eventually, it’s really hard to remember where the start of things and the end of things actually was. And that was before we broke time.

While I don’t remember who started the war—much less whose side I was on—I was the one to finish it. Then I tidied things up as best I could and came here, to the end of time itself. There was no place left for me where I’d been. Or should I say, “when I’d been”. But with time irreparably broken, there was only one place to go. And only one thing to do: see that it never happens again.

This is one of those stories where we never learn the narrator’s name. But his name’s not all that important, to be honest. Probably doesn’t even remember it himself. That’s the thing about causality and time-travel; it really messes with the old noodle. Sufficient to say he’s a time warrior—the last of his name.

The concept works really well. A time warrior, trying to prevent another time war before all of time is destroyed. Or, MORE destroyed, I guess. It being a time travel story, it made my head hurt if I tried too hard to sort everything out. The good news is: the book never tried very hard to sort everything out. Didn’t even really take itself seriously. Oh, there’s a plot, and a story, and they’re both lovely to boot. But it’s filled with tongue-in-cheek, sarcasm, and dark humor. Combined with the detailed, if not intricate, plot—it makes for an entertaining, intense, and often hilarious read.

And that’s all before the love story kicks off.

I won’t say much about that, just that… it’s certainly something. I mean, I would read more romance novels if they were like this.

While the ending makes for a bit of a letdown (again, no spoilers), One Day All This Will Be Yours is another excellent example of the author in novella form; quirky, creative, unique, and incredibly entertaining.

TL;DR

One Day All This Will Be Yours is the idea time-travel novella—not too intense, not too serious, not TOO hilarious, but just enough of all those combined. Also, entertaining. Very entertaining. My personal choice for the greatest love story of all time (pun intended), the time warrior’s adventure is by no means boring before he meets his perfect match. And while there is a bit of a slump at the very end, ODATWBY provides a unique, amazing take on time travel, and causality itself. Definitely recommended!

You only have to mention time travels to me and I’m usually already on board, but time travel AND Tchaikovski equals to a very high hyper percentage. I was not disappointed. Ok, I literally just checked the details and saw that this is not a novella but a nearly 200 pages book. That may give you an idea of how little it took me to immerse myself in this world.

The plot is quite simple. There was an ultimate war, known as the Causality War, where the weapons were time machines, and that nearly destroyed the world. In order for humans not to repeat history, our main character waits at the end of time to take out of the way, and from history, whoever get to him. And he has a dinosaur! And of course, we are going to get a very interesting view on the grandfather's paradox.

The characters are one of the highlights of the novel, as they carry most of its humour and tone. As a lonely and bitter character, I absolutely enjoyed his interactions with people and his vision of life. I saw myself cackling out loud more than a few times. I think in this book we can approach a less “serious” Tachikovski and the result being, both the author and the reader, having a blast. On the other hand, we have the use of time as the ultimate weapon, which is in itself, terrifying, but this is what makes the book so great, from my point of view, how it mixes very serious concepts with funny or even ridiculous ideas, creating something that would not leave the reader indifferent.

Although short, (for what I am used to) the book does not lack in plot twists and turns. Overall was a very fast paced read with likeable characters and compelling ideas. One that I would absolutely recommend for readers who are not yet familiar with the author or those, like me, that would read even his shopping list.


P.S: I'm sorry but, for my taste, that is one ugly cover.

As usual with the author this read was fun and enjoyable. The main character is clearly a sociopath (I couldn't help thinking of Billie Butcher in "The Boys" series!) but interesting to follow.
I really loved how the context unfold slowly, with hints that take all their full importance and reality by afterthought (Miffly!).
The global reflexion about the limitations and repercussions that would have travel machines, if they did exist, is really interesting, particularly in the way it would dehumanized people for the time-travellers and, of course the travellers themselves, would couldn't stay sane, eventually.
I appreciated less the second part, as the narrator became more and more unpleasant, as we plainly realise how completely amoral he has become (had to become). The tête-à-tête "game", supposedly funny, made me somewhat uncomfortable, as this kind of toxic relationship always does (well, to be honest, toxic in a romance story, there it's plainly to be taken with a pinch - a ladleful - of salt ^-^).
The end is good, I wouldn't have seen it coming.

All in all a good read for me, but not a very good one, probably because I never feel that mixing very serious reflexion (about time travel there, the author has clearly given much thought about the theory of it) and this kind of tone, irreverent, sardonic and over the top, really mixed well.

In this new Adrian Tchaikovsky book, we follow the events of the end of time, or so we are repeatedly told by the Narrator. The Narrator, the last survivor of the Causality War, is defending the future from possible time travellers, accompanied by his lovable fluffy allosaurus, Miffly. He stands guard there in the future and whenever someone from the past comes there, he hunts them down and feeds them to Miffly. Things change once he gets a pair of visitors not from the past, but from the future.
The Narrator also tells us about the events that led him to this point in time. The War that destroyed everything and the inability of people to just leave the past well enough alone once time travel is discovered.
Like all time travel stories out there, this one comes with a specific set of problems: what is the technology that enables him to travel (we are never told), what happens to the “grandfather paradox” and the “butterfly effect” (we are sort of given an explanation, but it’s an offhand “it doesn’t affect those who travel” explanation), what the hell is really happening (no explanation there). What we do get is a romp through time that almost feels like a series of vignettes that touch on the nerdy historian aspect of time travel and that’s that.
In reality, to be more honest, it feels like the author is trying too hard. Let's visit ALL THE POINTS IN HISTORY! But of course, only the points that are in the past relative to our time. He never visits his past that would be our future. He visits Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, has lunch with Caligula, parties with people in fin de siècle Paris… but never let’s say Australia in 2334. Like I said, a nerdy romp though history.
And the point of this? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a judgement on our inability to be satisfied with anything. Or it might be a way of warning us that unchecked scientific development can cause more harm than good. Or it just might be a way for Tchaikovsky to create an idiot who believes that in order to create the best group of fighters one just has to put together Elizabeth Bathory, Achilles (not the immortal one), Stalin and a bunch of other easily recognizable names and throw them into a battle. How the hell did the Narrator believe that would work? He, who’s been all over the world and has been fighting a real war for ages doesn’t know that those leaders and sadists are basically paper pushers!
I’m sad this was the first Tchaikovsky read for me. I wish I’d chosen a better one. Perhaps in the future I’ll try something else from him. We’ll see. But this one gets a no from me.

I really enjoyed this book.
A quirky, humorous view of time travel, and what happens (or doesn't happen) when it gets out of control.
Set at the end of time, where Time has been decimated by the Causuality War. The nameless hero, the last survivor in this era, is trying to live a peacful life farming, and playing with his pet dinosaur. However the quiet life is about to be disturbed ...
Adrian Tchaikovsky at his best.

Thanks to NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing for sending me an ARC of One Day All This Will Be Yours in exchange for an honest review.

One Day All This Will Be Yours is a fairly original time travel story. In the aftermath of the Causality War—when humanity tried to use time-travel as a weapon against each other and instead wrecked our shared history—our unnamed narrator lies in wait at a quaint farm at a far distant time. Whenever some remaining time traveler arrives, he kills them and then goes back and grandfathers out of existence their culture’s very ability to time travel. Until one day, when a new group of time travelers arrive and upset his understanding of the effect of his actions. Soon, he’s engaged in a Spy v. Spy battle with Zoe, a time traveler who just might be his homicidal equal, before things get even stranger ....

The plot takes a little while to get going, but once it does, it flies through the rest of the book. The narrator is so funny and sarcastic that you can forget for stretches that he’s responsible for an unknowable number of genocides. The plot is largely unpredictable and the story is very inventive—I can think of no other book that combines Soviet-era tractors and a pet Allosaurus. One Day All This Will Be Yours is one of those very rare books that could have been enjoyably longer. A quick, fun read. Recommended.

Clever and dark, "One Day All This Will be Yours" is one of my new favorite time travel stories. Our unnamed protagonist sits at the very edge of time, busying himself with a life of idyllic farming. He was once a fighter in the Causality Wars that destroyed the fabric of the universe. Now he sits patiently like a spider on its web, waiting for time travelers to venture to the furthest reaches of time where he sits. When they do, he kills them (or has his pet allosaurus do it) and then makes sure the circumstances that produced their time machine never happen. But one day, he gets a different set of visitors…

I've read several of Tchaikovsky's other works and enjoyed them immensely, though I wasn't expecting this to be as tongue-in-cheek and whimsical. Parts of it remind me a bit of This Is How You Lose the Time War but with a very different feel.

Adrian Tchaikovsky writes about a time traveler in an ironic and witty style. The main character of “One Day All This Will Be Yours” is determined to be the last time traveler in existence. Seeking to accomplish this, he hacks the time stream in a way that redirects all time travelers looking for the end of time to his robot-harvested gentleman farm. He ingratiates himself to these time travelers when they arrive to put them at ease so that they disclose the time and place that they came from. After feeding them to his pet dinosaur, Miffly, he travels back to the time of their origin and makes subtle scientific and political changes to assure that time travel from that era is never discovered. Of course, he being immune to the effects of these changes, his existence is not impaired.

The book is a fun read. It had me laughing and had my head spinning as I tried to follow the author’s convoluted descriptions of time travel anomalies.