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?)

DNF. I think Time’s Agent is a perfectly good book – it does what it sets out to do, and does it well, I think. But it was so depressing that I had to walk away from it. Not the book's fault, I'm just not able to handle it at the moment. I doubt I'll pick it up again; by the halfway point there was so sign or clue as to how things might get better, and when I skipped to check out the end....well, no spoilers, but it wasn't what I'd hoped for. Alas!

This was a very emotional novella - full of grief and loss and longing for something that the narrator could never have. I was pulled into the story fairly quickly, but there were a lot of times I had to pause to look up a word, either due to the esoteric word choice (I'm looking at you "indefatigable") or by the blended spanglish word usage. I'm glad I read this as a kindle book so I could easily look up words. A physical book may have been put down and read at a later time.

OMG, the premise of this was so cool. This story takes place in the Dominican Republic. On Earth, there are these invisible doors into other realities called Pocket Worlds, or PWs for short. These PWs are relatively small, with some being only a few acres. They each have their own time dilation as well, where time moves faster or slower relative to Earth time. These worlds have interesting wildlife and fauna, they hold secrets to old civilizations, and of course, they come with the opportunity of renewable resources.

For being such a short book, I found a couple of things to be really impactful. First, we have the never-ending hunger of capitalism. Exploration quickly turns into exploitation. The idea that corporations would monetize and ultimately destroy a PW is believable. Because of the time dilations, time has even become a commodity. That kind of greed and hunger can never be sated and the future that she paints is bleak and heartbreaking. Second, the topics of grief and loss. When Raquel was catapulted into the future, she didn't just lose 40 years. She lost her job, her colleagues, her family, etc. I liked watching her grow as she processes all of that grief, pain, and even guilt.

Overall, this was an awesome novella. Thank you @netgalley, and @tordotcompub for the eARC in exchange for my honest, and sometimes silly, review.

A melancholy exploration of love, guilt and grief, Time’s Agent will stay with you.

Ways into what are called Pocket Worlds (PW) are popping up everywhere. Archaeologist Raquel and her wife Marlena have been exploring them, to catalogue extinct flora and fauna and look for evidence of the Taino peoples.

Raquel and Marlena are both trapped in a long time dilation world and while in it, capitalism and climate change take over.

Recommended for thoughtful teens and up.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion

7 / 10 ✪

https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com/2024/08/06/times-agent-by-brenda-peynado-review/

The writing of this one was a bit fiddly. Not bad, exactly, just a little… scattered. A conscious choice as opposed to a deficiency. At least, that’s what I’m going with. But there’s a lot of time talk involved, and time (unless it’s one, continuous, contiguous time line) makes everything a bit fiddly. Part of my issue is that pocket dimensions make my brain hurt. But most of my issues are with the fiddly writing, the interpersonal relationships, and the overall tone.

The romance—also known as Raquel and Marlena’s relationship. “Forced” would be a polite term for it. Simple fact is that when something crashed their fairytale life, they ran and didn’t speak to one another for literal years. Despite this the author keeps mashing them together, like they HAVE TO work out. Which they could, but only if she’d have written them slightly different, or you know, had them <i>talk</i> about their problems. The pandemic taught us that some matches that seemed like a good idea just weren’t feasible. This is just one of them. But if that were the point, I doubt the author would’ve kept forcing them along the path to a happy ending, like what we’re supposed to see come the end. Instead, I just saw everything going swimmingly until something untoward happened, then both splitting, only coming around later after the other had kicked it, and then blaming themselves for their partner’s death until they inevitably cooked it as well.

Heck, that’d be in the same vein as the rest of the tale. Because ye gods was it depressing. I’m honestly not sure whether it was in a good or a bad way. Seemed realistic, to a point. At which it just seemed over the top. I hate to say it, but this could all boil down to one thing—the author trying too hard. Something that seems common enough, given that writing is hard. And writing (consistently) for a living is next to impossible.

Despite all of these issues, I actually enjoyed Time’s Agent more than I didn’t. The pocket dimension bit was inspired—I’ve seen the like before, but never built nor organized quite so efficiently. So the writing and the romance were a bit off, doesn’t mean it’s not a good read. See, this one tries something—quite a lot of “somethings” in fact—sure, they don’t always succeed, but they don’t all fail, either. Yeah, you could read the same old, same old, tried and true formula for the next fifty years, but where’s the fun in that? Better to try something new every now and then, if for no other reason than to remind you why you like what you do.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.
I am conflicted about this book. I expected a time-travel story, I think, and as this was not quite that, perhaps I was a little disappointed for that reason. Also, I wanted to connect more with the lovely family at the center of the story, and felt that there was simply not enough time to develop that connection.
Also I think I just had a bit of a difficult time understanding what was happening. That is more my fault. I think many people will like this though.

A heart-wrenching adventure of grief, physics, and the destruction wreaked by capitalism. The concept of pocket worlds was fascinating and what humanity did with them is depressingly believable.

This is ultimately a story about grief and being faced to confront things in and out of our control, and the choices we make as a result. This story being told through a sci-fi lens and time dilation makes it super interesting, and it makes the hits that much harder.

Initially it took me a little while to wrap my head around the time aspect of this book, but once I got it down the book flies by. It is fairly fast paced and overall a quick read, filled with emotion.

This is a weird little book that covers quite a lot of ground and delves into some deep waters. I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend!

This book was a frantic ride through a mostly bleak possible future. It was compelling, and I found myself flipping pages forward, even while my tummy roiled with concern for the outcome.

This was an interesting sci fi with a Dominican twist—pocket worlds are discovered which exist adjacent to our world, some with slower time and some with accelerated time. The mc works for the institute tasked with cataloging and protecting these PWs. I wanted a different ending but I did like the book; I particularly enjoyed the bits of Dominican culture and mythos that were woven throughout.

Even though I wanted a different (maybe impossible and magical) ending, I understand why it needed to end the way it did.

A driven, interesting story overall.

This wasn’t what I was expecting or hoping it would be, so despite a strong start, I struggled to finish it.

The pocket worlds were a fascinating concept, and I appreciated Peynado’s frighteningly realistic look at how the corporate world would swoop in to harvest and eventually destroy whatever worlds they came into contact with — but it got tedious to me to read about nonstop dreary destruction. I think the hardest part for me was Rachel - she was honestly pretty annoying the entire book, and her research topic sounded like an episode of Ancient Aliens.

I would definitely read another book by Peynado in the future — and I hope this one finds its audience because there were some very cool aspects to this one even if I didn’t end up liking it very much.