Thank you to Emily@ Tor who provided me a copy of this novella through Netgalley.

I didn't end up enjoying this book as much as I thought I might based on the summary. It is very well written, the world building is great and so relatable in the way that a lot of scifi portrays worlds where capitalist, corporate greed rules, but I just couldn't get into it, or the main character, and be compelled to finish without forcing myself.

Primarily my disenjoyment revolved around the main character and her child-related grief and the fact that the summary made it sound like Raquel's loss would be relationship focused instead. Stories and characters that have a heavy focus on parent-child bonds, love, etc. do not interest me, especially if I don't have any attachment to either character. I wouldn't have accepted the offer of this title if I had known this before hand.

Despite my own preferences here, I do think that this book was interesting and explored speculative concepts that others would like.

"Times's Agent" is a quick speculative fiction novel, where pocket worlds exist, all having their own ecosystem and being only a fraction in size compared to "our" world. They also all have their own time, some being quicker or slower than "earth time". We follow a scientist, who works for a renowned Institute, exploring those worlds until one day, there is a mistake. The story then unfurls around quite hard themes like corporation greed, technologies, AI, and endeless cycles, as well as grief and guilt.
It is an interesting and ambitious story, rendered through a quick, quite straightforward narration (maybe a bit too much of that for me, I felt a tad rushed and had a hard time feeling for the world or the character). if you life speculative sci-fi, this novella might be for you !

A fast-paced and shorter read that I found delightful. I do feel like some of the background went over my head, but I really enjoyed the characters and the plot. I was mildly confused at first, because I didn't even catch the time jump between her cutting herself off in the present to explain the past, but it clicked together eventually. I like the world dynamics and the pocket worlds and the parallels to how our world would absolutely use these new discoveries. Like manipulating time travel to reverse the aging process on your hands, etc.

4 Stars

Truly original and truly steeped in speculative science.

Here, this is a future where small pockets of worlds exist, each with their own ecosystem and time dilation (either super slow or super fast compared to current reality). They represent every hope and opportunity to make life on earth better, learning about old civilizations, discovering new flora and fauna, and in turn, seizing a chance on renewable resources.

Following scientist Raquel, who is part of the venerated Institute that spearheads exploring these wondrous worlds, she makes one small mistake, setting off a chain reaction where every good intention goes horribly wrong.

In this alternate reality, Peynado unfurls a grim outlook on corporate greed and voracious negligent consumerism that is an endless cycle of depletion and enslavement to the big machine that keeps things turning. As Raquel tries to right her wrongs in a world that is hostile and hopeless, how Peynado brings forth Raquel’s enlightenment and ultimately, how she tries to resolve her issues was actually quite ingenious.

Overall, this story wasn’t an easy or happy read. It is seriously mired with tech, AI, scientific advancements, and unfathomable repercussions of all these small alternate realities that are readily accessible and exploitable. However, Peynado surprised me through Raquel’s grief and guilt as she offers her protagonist a miniscule chance of healing redemption through her drive for an unobtainable utopia, forcing her to make a grand sacrifice.

Again, this is far from a tidy HEA, but it made me think hard, and I only hope that Raquel’s offering was enough to keep a part of the universe whole and untainted.

Thank you to the author and Tordotcom via NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review posted to Goodreads.

Pocket worlds are small offshoots of our reality. They can be tiny and time can flow differently inside them. Raquel and her wife Marlena work for the Institute- an organization that discovers and explores these pocket worlds. Raquel causes an accident that returns her and Marlena to the standard Earth 40 years later and everything has gone to hell.

Time's Agent is a smart, emotional gem of a story. It's an exploration of how science is appropriated by corporations. It's a science fiction novella with excellent world building. It's a meditation on grief. The book covers a lot and covers it quickly.

The speed of the read is both the story's greatest strength and weakness. The pace allows the author to show Raquel processing her grief at the loss of her daughter and her world without getting bogged down in the emotional arc. But it also means that the culture Raquel finds herself in is a little one-note.

This was a good, quick read that helped me overcome a reading slump that's been going on for a little bit. I enjoyed the writing very much and will now seek out other works by this author.

Thanks to publisher and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honestly review.

This book was a fascinating exploration of grief, loss, parenthood, results of unchecked ambition, and the horrors of end stage capitalism.

The concept of how the pocket worlds work is truly engrossing and it is deftly integrated into the development of the world while keeping it in line with the very real issues we currently face and and issues we are headed towards.

The book manages to keep verisimilitude to while exploring how someone can deal with such a devastating loss and what choices she would make in light of it. Raquel's journey is heartbreakingly raw.

For a work this short, it manages to touch on a lot of fascinating topics and provides a complete and satisfying narrative, which a lot of novellas struggle with. The one issue I really had with the book is that it slows down a fair bit in the middle, which while is a great depiction of grief and a deeper dive into the concept, takes up a bit too much page real estate for things we already know from the set up for such a short book. This leads to the climax feeling just a bit rushed.

Overall though, Time's Agent is a great work of near future sci-fi that manages to accomplish a lot in its short length. If you enjoy near future sci-fi at all, I highly recommend picking it up.

I personally found the writing stilted, but I felt like it was a stylistic choice that just didn’t work for me. I stopped after chapter 2 (6%), but I’d guess 3 to 4 stars for the target audience.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the ARC.

I want to thank NetGalley, Tor Publishing Group, and Brenda Paynado for providing me an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

As someone who does not read a lot of sci-fi, this book was fascinating! A conversation on grief, love, loss, time, and also end stage capitalism and what it does to the environment and the people in it. Archeologist Raquel and her wife Marlene are on an elite team who travel into “pocket worlds” (offshoots of our own reality, other dimensions). They travel often, explore new worlds, and are at the peak of a society that values exploration and learning, not financial gain.
Because of an accident in one of these worlds, forty years pass in the blink of an eye, and suddenly Raquel has lost everything. Her relationship with her wife is suffering, and her thriving research job has been bought out by industry focused on making money. What does it mean to save one’s self, and what one loves, from time itself?

There were so many things I liked about this book! The pocket worlds were fascinating, especially the concept of some of them having different timelines than earth. Slow time and fast time worlds. Raquel is a convincing heroine, her guilt and grief are palpable. It makes the book seem almost cyclical, which is an accurate description of grief.
I love the conversation surrounding end stage capitalism. When we sell time itself, what do we lose? And what must the world and people in it give up due to the greed of corporations?

A few things I didn’t love as much. The book felt slow at times, a lot of description and names and I got lost in the details at times. Because it dragged in the middle, and really sped up a ton at the end, I was left with a feeling of whiplash. But, in many ways that makes sense with the plot of the book, time is confusing and can leave you lost and spinning.

Overall, I enjoyed dipping my toe into sci-fi, and this book made me want to read more in the genre!!

This may be one of the my favorite sci-fi reads of the year. For a novella, the scope of this story is massive, both in world-building and the emotional landscape of personal and inherited cultural grief. The use of pocket worlds and associated technological revolution/anarchy is so cleverly interwoven with the story of an Afro-Carribean queer family with Taino ancestry, every strand of which is used masterfully to communicating the impact of human greed vis-a-vis capitalism, colonialism and so much more. Raquel and Marlena, and their daughter Atalanta, their journey through time, many worlds, grief and reclamation is really a dizzyingly celebration of everything intersectional the speculative genre is capable of at this moment in time, and I cannot wait to read more from the author. If you've enjoyed works of Simon Jimenez, and Sequoia Nagamatsu, I cannot recommend this enough.
So grateful to Netgalley and Tor for the free ARC of this beautiful book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor publishing for the ARC!

Time’s Agent sucked me in with the setting's premise; a multiverse filled with alternate realities tucked into pocket universes that move along timelines at different speeds. I stayed for the compelling character journey through grief and loss to find hope and new purpose. This was both the fast-paced adventure novel experience I was craving, and an exploration of an inner struggle I was drawn into deeply. The world building was intricate and complex but easily digestible and well explained. This was a fast read for me, yet it was one of those stories that will stick with me.

An inventive novella about grieving across times and spaces.

Raquel Petra has everything she could ever want - her wife Marlena, their daughter Atalanta, and a job working alongside Marlena as researchers for the Institute. Specifically, the Global Institute for the Scientific and Humanistic Study of Pocket Worlds, which investigates little bubbles of parallel reality, and the elusive points that connect them to our own. Then, with one tiny mistake, Raquel loses everything in an instant.

Time runs fast in some of these worlds, slow in others. This leads to a wide variety of imaginative uses for time dilation, which is one of my favourite things in the story. Grow crops very quickly in a fast world, then store them in a slow world so they don’t go off. Calculating how old somebody is requires keeping track of all the worlds they’ve been in.

Because the points where you enter a world can be attached to a movable physical object, which can itself be brought inside another world, you end up with worlds within worlds, and all the complexities that might imply. It’s a great science fiction concept to build the tale around, but all the other aspects here shine just as much.

This is a story anchored in the Dominican Republic. Raquel works as an archeologist, exploring the pocket worlds for evidence of the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean, something that becomes more relevant as things progress.

On a broader view, it is very much about colonialism, capitalism, environmental disaster, and war. But, primarily it’s about one person’s sadness, grief, and complete self-destructive refusal to let go of what she lost. Those are the parts that really stuck with me after I had finished reading. Ultimately, it’s also about hope, something I am personally very glad for, and you will be too. This story hurt in all the right ways.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to Tor for the early review copy.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review! (I’m inordinately excited over being the very first person to properly review it lol.)

Time’s Agent made me sick to my stomach. The grief and pain written into the narrative was so palpable that it physically horrified me, especially in the parallels of our current lives under capitalism, and what the future and technology hold for us. It threw me off originally when I saw it was written in first person POV, but after the first chapter I realized it couldn’t have been written any other way and still be given the justice it deserved.

I read most of the book in bits and pieces at work, hiding in a corner so I could devour as much as I possible before a manager came looking. It actually reminded me quite a lot of How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu; atmospheric, full of loss and grief both personal and environmental. Time’s Agent is an ambitious and intricate story that spans decades through time travel in the way of pocket worlds that have been commodified, colonized, and pillaged by corporations. The main character is a woman lost in time by way of one such pocket world, and has found herself entirely alone beside the tiny PW her estranged wife lives in that hangs around her neck.

Loneliness plagues this story. Set in an ultra-capitalist Dominican Republic, it’s atmospheric and marked by despair at every turn, which makes each moment of remembered happiness all the more bittersweet. But there is hope. Even when it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, there was always hope.

This book made me ill. I wish I could give it ten stars.

I loved the use of multiverse elements to this story, it worked with what I was looking for. The characters felt like they were meant to be there and enjoyed the overall feel to them. I really felt for Raquel and thought the rest of the cast worked. Brenda Peynado does a great job in bringing us to this world and characters that I was hoping for.