This was so incredibly beautiful, rage-inducing, and heartbreaking. 160 pages of love and grief and having to decide what you can really save at the end of all things. To decide what's more important: the discoveries we can make that set our name in the stars and let us make our mark on history, or the sacrifices we can make to protect that which is really worth preserving in this world. This book ripped my heart clean in two (and then thankfully put it back together again).

Believe me, it will not feel like a novella when you're reading it. The way that Brenda Peynado manages to fit an entire world, its history, its pain, and its hope into only those 160 pages, makes this book nothing less than a pocket world in its own right.

This is for the reader who prefers their fantasy at the more literary end of the genre. 2-4 stars depending on where you fall on the literary scale. It’s a bit dark, and the corporations being the source of evil is a bit to close to reality for some readers of the genre I think. And the trauma of losing family when the time dilation of a pocket world was against you is sad. The author does a good job building the weird universe of pocket worlds though.

Another little novella that hurt so good! This one follows Raquel, and we get to experience the grief of the corporate destruction of the climate and how Raquel experiences that in different pocket dimensions. Time travel will always get me right through the heart,

Thank you to Tordotcom for my review copy, my opinions are my own.

This is a story told out of order, reminding me that stories are not linear, yes there is a beginning, but that beginning is in the middle of a different story. In a world where there are doorways to pocket dimensions with time dilations, the world is at once both entranced with the idea of these worlds, and obsessed with the idea of a Universe 2, where we could escape our own dying planet.
In an accident, Raquel loses 40 years of time by accidently falling into a pocket dimension and pops out 40 years later to a world that exploited what Raquel once worked on in identifying the pocket worlds.

This science fiction novella falls into the speculative subset and asks some deeply probing questions and makes the reader really stop and think about greed and what one would do when faced with losing time.

I didn't really jive with the characters, but I was intrigued with the thoughts and questions about the world, and the possibilities that a power like pocket dimensions would offer. Recommend for those who enjoy science fiction - kinda reminded me of Past Watch crossed with This Is How You Lose A Time War.

This sounded so interesting but unfortunately it wasn't what I was expecting and left me disappointed. The idea of the pocket worlds is really cool. I think it could have been a bit longer and then the author would better be able to accomplish what they were going for.

What a fast and poignant read this was. I loved the concept of the pocket worlds and how time worked differently in those worlds, as well as how that time could be specifically manipulated, sometimes almost as a time machine. The amount of social commentary that this books brings in is fantastic as, surprise, surprise, corporations have decided to try to control these worlds and squeeze resources out of every one they can. Due to an accident our MC, Raquel, ends up stuck in a pocket world where time movies differently and comes out back on Earth 40 years later, when only a matter of minutes have passed. When she comes back, so much has changed and she is hit with some devastating news that is heartwrenching.

This novella pulls you in quickly and before you know it, time has passed all around you. Just like a pocket world of its own.

Thank you to @tordotcompub for the finished copy and @netgalley and the publisher for the eARC. All thoughts are my own.

I will say upfront I'm not a huge fan of time travel books, but I was intrigued by the idea of the commodification of time. Tordotcom novellas have lately engaged with different facets of capitalism within the speculative fiction space. I was a bit disappointed with the most recent Samatar book, but Time's Agent had a more nuanced exploration through the same perspective of a family. The speculative element of this world is that the technology has been developed to discover, catalog, and preserve pocket worlds, many of which run faster or slower than "Earth Standard." This detail leads to the dissolution of Raquel's family through a horrible time accident, thrusting Raquel 40 years into the future where corporations have gotten ahold of technology to find and create these pocket worlds, thus allowing them to commodity time itself. This set-up was very well executed; Raquel, her wife, Marlena, and her daughter, Atalanta, are very real-feeling characters, and they feel like a family. The time jump into the future and the description of that reality were well done. It was at this point (50-60%) that, unfortunately, I started to lose my interest and belief in the world that Peynado created. The theming started to get a little too pedantic, and the plot very quickly jumped around and felt too disjointed. I think this book should've been maybe 50-75 pages longer to accomplish what Peynado was trying to do here. Overall, I would recommend this book for a pretty interesting conversation about what time means to our bodies, our lives, our welfare, and more, but be prepared for a bit of muddled plot in the last third. Despite that, I did find the ending satisfying and appropriately bittersweet.

2.5 rounded up to 3.
Time's Agent has a really interesting premise, the discovery of pocket worlds. Small realities that are accessed through doorways in our world. Places where time moves incredibly fast or incredibly slow. I wanted to like this story, the world-building in the beginning is exciting. but I just couldn't connect with the characters. This is also an incredibly sad story, built around unimaginable loss and grief. While I think that some readers will connect with this story, it was not for me. Thank you to Netgalley and Tor for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Time's Agent is a stunning piece of speculative fiction that manages to weave together themes of colonialism, corporate greed, entitlement, and grief in a tight novella about pocket worlds and time dilation.

Similar to the story of Rip Van Winkle, Raquel emerges from a pocket world forty years after accidentally falling in. Virtually no time has elapsed for her, but she returns to a world that has changed drastically.

Peynado's imagined future is grim. The miraculous discovery of pocket worlds has been exploited by corporations and many citizens now live as indentured servants. Peynado juxtaposes this exploitation with Raquel's search for indigenous people and cultures, drawing subtle parallels.

During the early chapters, I struggled at times to fully understand the world which was unfurling before me, partially due to the nonlinear chapters. However, once the pieces fell into place, I found this to be a thought-provoking and heart-wrenching story. I highly recommend this novella, though some patience and careful reading may be required at times.

This review will be posted to Goodreads on August 8, 2024 and Instagram (@goodquietkitty) on August 9, 2024.

2.5
I rounded up to 3 because I felt this book would be great for some people, I'm just not one of them.

What I liked
-I really enjoyed the setting and worldbuilding. The corporate use of pocket worlds seemed very plausible and made the world feel real. The author also had many creative uses for the pocket worlds which I really appreciated.
-I liked the plotline with Atalanta and impact it had on the main character and the story. I actually wish it had been explored more.

What I didn't like
-I had trouble connecting to the characters. I struggled to even connect with the main character though first person perspective usually makes it easier to do so.
-The pacing was a little odd near the end, things started moving very fast and I wish the author had slowed down to give us more time with the characters and to explain what was happening more clearly. Things got confusing near the end and the story wrapped up fairly quickly so I was a bit lost during the last 25% or so.
-The writing style was not for me, though I'm sure many others will like it. It was just a little too dramatic and wordy sometimes.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!

The concept is rather interesting—what would happen if our capitalistic society discovered pocket worlds with faster and slower time dilations?

As all good dystopians do, the future depicted in this book is not too far from the reality of the world we currently live in. The picture this book paints of such a world is all too plausible, given that, you know, *gestures vaguely at everything*. I don't expect this book to come up with a solution to late stage capitalism, and certainly not a solution that can be implemented by a single woman. I think the ending offers as much hope as can be realistic, but at the same time, I find that pretty depressing, that there's a limit to what we can realistically hope for.

I think this book could have done with a larger page count, just to flesh out some of the details, but as it is, this book manages to tackle a good range of topics, as well as bring up some interesting points of discussion.

I struggled a LOT with reading this, mainly because I live in constant low-grade anxiety about society's inevitable collapse due to capitalism and also the climate crisis, but I think that says a lot about how well this dystopia is written! Anyways, the main reason I read is for escapism and this book is definitely not that. However, I do highly recommend this book for how insightful it is.

This book had an interesting premise, but I had a hard time connecting to the story and characters. I think maybe if it had been a bit longer I would have gotten more into it. Certain parts felt rushed and some big things were skipped over. I'm not exactly sure why I didn't totally love this but it's still an enjoyable read.

In honest truth, I am conflicted about Time's Agent. It's not that I don't think the book is good (it really is), but whether or not I really enjoyed the process of reading it. The book is full of cerebral ideas about the nature of human greed and the destructive tendency of colonialism and, by extension, capitalism. It's incredibly smart, highly ambitious, but it's also relentlessly sad, its hope hinging on a brutality of loss and grief.

In more than a few ways, the book reminds me a lot of the story concepts and ideas familiar to writers like Brian Aldiss and Philip K. Dick, but Peynado's craft far exceeds the both of them in terms of her prose. As contemporaries, I place Time's Agent firmly in the company of writers like A.C. Wise and Amal El-Mohtar, whose work focuses not just on the world-building but also on the dedication to strong prose, wielding something beautiful and elegiac from the thematic elements of their work.

Time's Agent is beautiful and powerful, and Peynado crafts a highly memorable setting, but its message is deafeningly bleak at times, sorrowful and grief-ridden. Reading it was like constantly picking at a wound, soul-deep and traumatized continually by the way our world cuts at it. Peynado reminds us that the greed is the point of capitalism, that it is relentlessly obsessed with destruction and consumption as its entire point of being--and that we are doomed on account of it.

But the book's alternative, its thread of hope, is also buried behind the human wounds of time and regret, every glimmer of sun tinged by the smog of memory and the violence of our past selves. To move forward in whatever timeline is to hurt, and that ache proliferates throughout the book.

Yes, it's beautiful, but it's also a blade through the stomach. I recommend this book to any and all who need to see art reflected in the hurt, capable of galvanizing our consciousness and reconfiguring our attitudes toward the present and the past, but I also cannot cope with it. This book was painful to read, because it is a reminder of all the things we lose in our current position, all the ways we've contorted ourselves to live in the now, and how much we lose through every second we spend here.

Disclosure Statement: I received a complimentary copy of this novella from the publisher for review. My thoughts and opinions are entirely my own and have not been influenced by the publisher or the author in any shape.

The beginning of this one was rough. Big long paragraphs that were a slog to get through, no dialogue, a skip forward in (relative) time to start us off in a more confusing spot than if we’d just experienced everything sequentially alongside Raquel. I had to read it on my phone so I wouldn’t be as aware of how long the paragraphs were.

The concept is so cool - pocket worlds with vastly different rules of time and space, the balance of scientific discovery and corporate greed, the very human hand behind climate change, and the rampant destruction of consumerism and the commodification of convenience. Every character, even our lead, is taken to the extreme, to the point where what they say and do doesn’t make sense to a normal person. I’m also not really sure how exactly the ending happened and I think that with a longer book, we could have gotten there a little cleaner.

For such a small book Time's Agent packed one hell of a punch! Every chapter brougt another level of emotion- from losing 40 years in a pocket dimension, to finding out her daughter is dead, to facing her wife, to seeing what an absolute mess humans made of the world... I think this one hit so hard, because Petnado told us exactly what humans would really do if we discovered pocket dimensions. Sure, we'd probably start out at least trying to appear noble, but we'd corpritize and monitize and strip those worlds until there was nothing left. And Petnado is right, we don't deserve nice things.

This is a pretty quick read; it relies on the reader already being familiar with some sci-fi and time-travel basics to hurry through some world-building, so this isn't a good book for readers new to the genre. I was able to follow just fine, but I felt the pacing a bit rushed. There's a little bit of feeling like the hurry is to avoid having to do any hand-waving.

Buy this at libraries were non-space-opera sci-fi is appreciated.

eARC from NetGalley.

The narrative style wasn't a good match for me, and I struggled with the characters. However, it might be for others.

Remember that scene in Interstellar where they get stuck on a planet for an hour and it costs them 27 years of their family and friends lives on Earth? Well that is basically this book but without leaving Earth!

Brenda Peynado's Time's Agent offers an intriguing dive into a world where pocket universes—geographically small, hidden offshoots of reality with varying time dilations—hold the key to unlocking scientific mysteries. Archeologist Raquel and her biologist wife Marlena once dreamed of the potential these universes held for their fields and their daughter’s future. However, forty years later, Raquel finds herself in disgrace, Marlena resides in a pocket universe that Raquel wears around her neck, and their daughter's consciousness is trapped in a robotic dog. In a world where time is a commodity controlled by corporations, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself when a new pocket universe appears, potentially holding the key to her failed calling and a chance to confront what it means to save something—or someone—from time.

Time's Agent is an insanely unique story filled with mind-bending concepts, especially the idea of pocket universes. This fascinating premise kept me engaged and eager to explore the potential of these hidden worlds. However, the overall plot and main character, Raquel, fell short of expectations. The story spent too much time on Raquel's wallowing in self-pity and not enough on the exploration of the pocket universes and their corporate exploitation. The narrative's focus on Raquel's accident and her quest to find the world her descendants escaped to felt less compelling compared to the broader implications of the pocket universes themselves.

Despite these shortcomings, Peynado’s world-building and the unique concept of pocket universes make Time's Agent worth reading. Fans of speculative fiction and thought-provoking science fiction concepts will find much to appreciate, even if the execution doesn’t fully live up to the story's potential. The novel leaves readers pondering the impact of time, corporate greed, and personal redemption, making it a memorable, if not entirely satisfying, read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

TIME'S AGENT is a multiverse story, which sounds like it should be right up my alley. I found the multiverse exploration and concepts well executed and there were some unique elements that I haven't seen in a multiverse story before. However, the way that this book was executed seems like it skipped through all of the interesting parts and just showed the in betweens, think almost a 'slice of life' of 'what happens after you disappear into a multiverse and return to a world run by corporations that you don't recognize'. This might work for some, but was not a satisfying story to me.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the gifted eARC!

TIME’S AGENT was a unique concept about a future in which time is commodified and exploited for profit. Despite my reading experience being marred by a few characterization and pacing issues, I was still impressed overall, and would recommend it especially to readers who appreciate more conceptual and intellectual speculative fiction stories.

TIME’S AGENT revolves around the concept of “pocket worlds”, spaces outside of our universe that can be smaller than the size of an average adult human or infinitely large, accessible via small doorpoints in our world. PWs can contain new ecological species, and they run either slower or faster (“time relative”) than time in our world (“time standard”). This makes for exciting possibilities in our capitalist economy. For instance, you could step into a Tiny Transport—a PW doorpoint carried by a mini-drone—and experience an hours-long commute as just a few seconds. How convenient! Or an agricultural company could cultivate fruit in a PW, where a few months relative produces a harvest every day standard. Not bad. Or… trash in our world could be shoved through these doorpoints, out of sight in PWs. Hmmm. Not so great.

The story begins when Raquel, a scientist for the institute tasked with entering newly discovered PWs first to document its novel features, accidentally touches and gets sucked into a PW. By the time she manages to make it back to our world after a few hours relative, forty YEARS standard have passed, and the world is nearly unrecognizable, PWs have become profitized. The severely underfunded and understaffed institute can no longer carefully document new worlds, but is instead only sent out to seal or unseal PWs depending on the amount of ecological disaster that humans have wreaked there. Even more devastatingly, Raquel and her wife Marlena’s daughter, Atalanta, has died in the intervening forty years during a war long passed. Devastated, Marlena escapes into a PW, and Raquel reuploads the final memory scan of her daughter into the programming of a robotic dog.

TIME’S AGENT cleverly and insightfully depicts the environmental devastation inflicted by unchecked capitalism. There is no doubt in my mind that, were capitalists able to commodify time, the resulting dystopian world would be similar to the one created by Peynardo.

The worldbuilding is so rich that I was tempted to forgive issues I had with pacing and characterization. The first half of this novella is told as a flashback to Raquel’s present-day situation. This was all very interesting, but it did mean that when the story caught back up to the present-day timeline, it lost some of its momentum. Raquel floundered in the present day, unable to reconnect with Marlena, and stuck in a loop of resetting Atalanta-as-robodog every time her daughter’s memory realizes the extent of what’s been lost.

The novella then goes into pacing overdrive in the leadup to its end, when a throwaway subplot from earlier comes back in full force. There’s a confusing, almost fantastical element to the ending probably pertaining to indigenous mysticism, that threw me for a loop and lost me.

I also found the intrusion of secondary characters upon the story abrupt. It’s partly due to the limitations of the novella format, that secondary characters don’t have the room to be developed, but some of their interactions with Raquel felt unnatural to me, while in other parts of the story their arrival or presence is so neatly convenient that it threw me out of the story somewhat.

Despite these small grievances, I still found TIME’S AGENT a novel story that perfectly extrapolates the important issues of our time into an eerily plausible dystopian future. (Because late-stage capitalism is dystopian, you know?)