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!

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.

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.

I have always loved books about time travel, especially those that involve multi-dimensional travel, which made me immediately curious about Time's Agent. One of my favorite Young Adult series is Claudia Gray's Firebird series, which involves interdimensional travel, an intelligent group of protagonists, and a corporation that wants to exploit the dimensions for its own gain. Time's Agent by Brenda Peynado tells a similar story of dimensional travel, clever protagonists, and the fight against corporate take-over, but it's sharper, more mature, and has teeth. This wholly grown-up story also details professional disappointment, loss of loved ones, and grief. It also has a sapphic love story that fights against the passage of time itself.

Review:

Time's Agent took me off guard and wasn't exactly what I expected. It opens with Raquel celebrating her (presumably) 38th birthday alone over a mango that she can't quite enjoy. Time both rewinds and moves forward from there as we see Raquel make sense of her life as it has become. I especially liked the thread of professional grief and disappointment woven throughout the novella; that thread was one of the best of its kind I have encountered. Most of Time's Agent revolves around Raquel's relationship with both her daughter Atalanta and her wife Marlena. It is full of grief, longing, and threads of joy.

The pacing was interestingly slow for only 160 pages, but I don't count that as a negative. I prefer my sci-fi to be character-driven, and Time's Agent was absolutely that until it wasn't. All at once, the pacing picked up at the end at a break-neck, blink-and-you'll-miss-it speed. Time's Agent might have benefitted from being a slow-paced short story without the fast-paced plot added in at the end.

Final Thoughts:

If you enjoy stories about loss, motherhood, or fighting against corporatization, I think you will enjoy this quick read. I loved that the protagonist was in her mid-to-late thirties and that she was so smart. Time's Agent has considerable power behind it.

Rating: 4 Stars

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with an ARC! All the above thoughts are my own.

**Full Review will be posted on Back Shelf Books at https://backshelfbooks.com/2025/06/09/times-agent-by-brenda-peynado-review/ on June 8th 2025 at 8:00am CT.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy in exchange for honest feedback

Short and intriguing. Well-written and a compelling story, I’m definitely going to read more from Brenda Peynado.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Was an interesting short read. I like books I can devour in a few hours and this was enjoyable.. Loved the cover

My review was just published on line in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March/April issue. Check out the Reference Library Column. It is available here:

https://www.analogsf.com/current-issue/the-reference-library/

- TIME’S AGENT is one of the bleakest books I’ve ever read, and I could not tear myself away.
- Peynado creates a world ravaged by climate change and capitalism, all turbocharged by the existence of pocket worlds that can be used up in service of corporate greed.
- Inside of that larger vision is the tender grief of Raquel and Marlena, mourning a life that was ripped from them in an instant.
- All of this is held within barely 200 pages. I really hope to see more work from Peynado in the future.

In Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado (Tordotcom) humanity has discovered pocket worlds, tiny entry points into other worlds, sometimes a few kilometres square, other times barely large enough to fit a person. They hold beautiful opportunities to start over, find wondrous histories of small civilisations come and gone, discover and cultivate new flora and fauna, and to experience exploration like few in this modern era have done. It’s an opportunity for us to do better, but, we are humanity, and we are experts in ruining things.



Raquel and her wife Marlena work for The Institute, a scientific organisation on the bleeding edge of pocket world discovery. Pocket worlds run with time dilations, which can have some unintended consequences on time agent’s lives. When Raquel tries to help a woman who has just lost her son to a pocket world point, she breaks the rules and in a moment finds herself thrown forward in time from the excitement of her career and the rush of discovery, to a world where corporations have taken over from The Institute, commercialised pocket worlds, and her daughter has been killed in the ensuring war Raquel accidentally kicked off.

Time’s Agent is a novella I could not put down. The writing is just gorgeous throughout, delivering a story so layered in deep themes that I actually feel like I’ve imbibed a full-sized novel. Throughout this book, we delve into corporate greed, societal blind-spots, motherhood and loss, the impact of modern society on the spirituality of our history, time travel, relationships, and so much more. This is a novella for the awards lists, if I’ve ever read one. Peynado’s voice is on point, driving feelings of the weary excitement of discovery early on, and then going deep into the soul-crushing depression of late-stage capitalism, of a society eating itself alive for a dollar, that I would consider up there with T.R. Napper‘s cyberpunk voice.

What brings Time’s Agent truly to life, however, is not just the pocket worlds, or society’s decline–it’s the story of how Raquel and Marlena deal with the loss of their daughter. I really enjoyed the central story of what they had to go through to get what they wanted, and the way two people deal with what’s happened. I loved the message in there about understanding what you have, versus always striving for what you think you’re missing–something I think is quite poignant in our modern social-media driven society.

Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado is warning shot to our modern species. It’s a lens into humanity’s ability to destroy the naturally beautiful for profit, to sequester that profit for the fortunate few while the rest slave to live, and a mirror to our society who collectively allow this to happen by participating, turning blind eyes, and only realising what we’ve done as a society once it’s too late to undo it. An absolutely harrowing must-read novella.

Sadly ,I've had to do a soft dnf for now and come back to the book in the future. I think the writing was very good. Based on what I've read so far I would still recommend this to people I know would love this type of story.

The intricacies and wordiness of the writing style combined with the triggers for grief in this story made it not right for me. I was entirely intrigued by the premise and the cover is beautiful.

I wish the pacing had been more consistent (lagged in parts and was dizzyingly quick by the end) and the characterization deeper, but I admire the originality and worldbuilding Brenda Peynado was able to accomplish. I'd enjoy learning more about pocket worlds, and I appreciate how she tied the work of the agents to the rise of corporate power and greed.

This book just didn’t connect with me as I’d had hoped it would. It’s more about the devastation left in the aftermath of a time agent’s poor decision rather than the life and adventure of a time agent. There was so much grief and despair filling this Earth of pocket universes that the story got lost although it was off to a good start.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for an ARC of this book.

Brenda Peynado (https://brendapeynado.com) is the author of two novels. Time’s Agent was published last August.

Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own!

Pocket worlds had been discovered. These are geographically small spaces with hidden entrances. Time runs differently in many. The Institute was created for academics to explore these pocket worlds, however after 40 years the corporations have taken over. The primary character is 38-year-old Raquel Petra, an archeologist with the institute.

I invested 1.5 hours trying to read this 208-page science fiction novel. After spending a little time with this novel I was not at all engaged in it. I called a Rule of 50 and gave up on it. I do like the chosen cover art.

This was a super enjoyable read! Time travel is often a tricky topic to handle in fiction, because sometime it can come across as a bit too complex or nonsensical to the average reader- yet I enjoyed this a lot. Even more surprising is how the book handled themes of capitalism and grief, which, I think, are all part of the human experience, and it's captured in this book really well.

Thank you to NG and the publisher!

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available for me.

Fascinating book about grief, time dilation effects, corporate greed, found family and archeology. Give it a try, I doubt you'll be disappointed.

"...time the thief is grabbing for it all with snatching hands."
As soon as I saw the cover I wanted to read this book, and then the premise turned my eyes into hearts and I couldn't resist this queer sci-fi with time travel and alternate worlds and a bonus! Robot dog companion that may or may not have the main character's daughter's memories. The way pocket worlds are described is so fascinating, I kept imagining that cat wearing the universe necklace in MIB and I'm pretty sure that's exactly how Raquel was wearing that PW that her wife was hiding in.
Throughout the whole book I got the interstellar+this is how you lose the time war vibes mixed with a little bit of A.I Artificial Intelligence and I loved everything about all of those things.
The way corporations are using the worlds is exactly how I think it would be in real life, it's so close to reality I wasn't actually thinking about that part as fiction.
"Once she told us that no humans were allowed to live there, only the animals, because they would never cut it down, and we grinned at the quaint things she would say."
Atalanta had my heart entirely, she was so sweet and I needed her mom's to have all the time in the world to spend with her, but we all know how the world is, ours or the parallel, doesn't matter, there's always something that gets in the way of being with the ines you love. The way she kept asking "What did you save today?" had me tearing up and every time I wanted to answer that question so that if she were asking me I would make her happy and proud too.
I got really attached to this story, probably because it has my favourite elements but mostly because it's short but full, the way I like my sci-fi books, it didn't leave me hungry for more, I had a sad and happy feeling at the same time and I would love to see this story adapted into a movie, I think it'll make a beautiful film.
"What would she see, if she looked hard enough? What would she realize about us? I turned her off, closed my eyes along with hers, both of us rebooting."
I only saved quotes today, but everyday I try to save someone, a cat, a dog, myself even, it's not easy saving someone, but it's not hard either. What did YOU save today?

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

There was a LOT packed into this little novella! It was really impressive how deep the worldbuilding felt and how much thought Peynado obviously put into the workings of the pocket worlds. This novella was simultaneously about a broken family and about incredibly big ideas like colonialism, grief, and inequality.

Loved this!

The characterization felt weak, despite the interesting premise! Unfortunately this wasn't a winner for me.

I'm going through my time-related melancholia phase, and this fits right in with The Other Valley and The Never Ending End of the World. I cried. It felt longer than a novella with the depth of worldbuilding. As an archaeologist, I felt like I understood Raquel - it's a job but also a paradigm through which we see the world, and Peynado captured that.

I'm wrung out after reading this, what an absolute stunner! Peynado has offered both hopeful and devastating possible futures, wrapped up in one tight package of grief. It's wild how much happens in this novella, and how much of it had me by the throat.

The premise is fascinating: the discovery of pocket worlds, different sizes and biomes and time dilations, accessed by doorways that humans have stumbled on accidentally for the entirety of our history on Earth. But these worlds, like any other discovery, are eventually at the mercy of human greed. It's a book about the violence of colonialism and capitalism, and the longing to undo those harms or find a way out from under them.

But these huge-scale themes are distilled through Raquel, an archaeologist in the Dominican Republic, part of an institution that studies pocket worlds, alongside her botanist wife Marlena. The action of this book—and there's a lot of it—is full of dazzling technology and hops in and out of pristine or utterly ecologically ruined dimensions, but the heart of it is with Raquel and the grief of her mistakes and the desperate hopes she tries to make real.

I barely even know what to say about this, even though I've now rambled for three paragraphs. It's breathtaking. It knocked my socks off. I have a sudden craving for mango.