At a Glance

Title: A Future of Another Timeline

Author: Annalee Newitz

Expected Publication: September 24, 2019 by Tor Books

Page: 304

Genre: Fiction, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Adult

Goodreads Rating: 3.95 (prior to publication date)

Synopsis

“1992: After a confrontation at a riot grrl concert, seventeen-year-old Beth finds herself in a car with her friend’s abusive boyfriend dead in the backseat, agreeing to help her friends hide the body. This murder sets Beth and her friends on a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize many other young women in the world need protecting too.

2022: Determined to use time travel to create a safer future, Tess has dedicated her life to visiting key moments in history and fighting for change. But rewriting the timeline isn’t as simple as editing one person or event. And just when Tess believes she’s found a way to make an edit that actually sticks, she encounters a group of dangerous travelers bent on stopping her at any cost.

Tess and Beth’s lives intertwine as war breaks out across the timeline–a war that threatens to destroy time travel and leave only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future. Against the vast and intricate forces of history and humanity, is it possible for a single person’s actions to echo throughout the timeline?”

My Thoughts

First off, I love a good time travel novel. I think time travel is fascinating and there are so many different ways it’s depicted. The Future of Another Timeline really depicts time travel as a natural wonder, which I’ve never really seen before. I enjoyed the way it was different from so many other time travel novels but it was a little confusing to get use to how the characters actually used time travel but overall it worked.

The story itself jumps between Tess’s and Beth. For the majority of the book we follow Beth through her high school years during 1992 while we follow Tess between the present, 1992, the late 19th century, and her home time zone. For a while it felt like two completely separate stories, but it quickly meshed into one and I really enjoyed the way Newitz wove the story lines across the years.

Past the time travel pieces, this book deals with two major questions. The first being the what if’s of women’s rights. What would life be like if women’s suffrage and other big women’s victories had never happened. Newitz paints an awesome picture of how small victories have had such significant impacts on women’s lives. The other topic she covers, is the moral conundrum of messing with time. One of the biggest discussions in the book is how do changes impact the future timeline? Do smaller changes or bigger changes make a bigger impact and how do we protect the timelines from colliding. We never get an answer but the quote below was one of my favorites about how we impact change in general.

“Collective action means that when someone does something small or personal, their actions can change history too. Even if the only thing that person ever does is study ancient rocks, or listen to a friend.”

Newtiz does a really great job of writing a sci-fi novel with tones of feminism and moral obligations while still keeping the tone upbeat and with a side of mystery. ★★★★ star read for me. This book goes on sale on September 24th! Get your copy HERE!