One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I would like to thank Hana from Rebellion for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Solaris

Published – 2/3

Price - £25 hardback £7.49 Kindle eBook

Welcome to the end of time. It's a perfect day.

Nobody remembers how the Causality War started. Really, there's no-one to remember, and nothing for them to remember if there were; that's sort of the point. We were time warriors, and we broke time.

I was the one who ended it. Ended the fighting, tidied up the damage as much as I could.

Then I came here, to the end of it all, and gave myself a mission: to never let it happen again.

Time Wars – clearly the Stars are no longer enough for us. Science Fiction loves the idea of epic conflict and the idea of Time itself being constantly rewritten opens up many ideas for stories. It’s a cornerstone of the new Doctor Who; comic companies like Marvel and DC have used his for many many many and indeed many reboots; while in fiction everyone from HG Wells to Bradbury and more recently El-Mohtar and Gladstone have explored what this would mean for humanity and now into that conversation Adrian Tchaikovsky in One Day All of This Will Be Yours has delivered a darkly humorous tale that explores the last survivor of the Time War who finds to their alarm that they aren’t the last one standing.

Our unnamed narrator is the survivor of the Causality War – the war that really ended all wars as it ended up breaking the entire space time continuum. After the viciousness of a war that led to constant re-writes of history and counter strikes by time travelling armies our Traveller decided after the last battle that enough was enough. Our Traveller finally found a home in one slice of remaining time to create the Perfect Day, have a farm and take a break from it all. On occasion sampling with the aid of the last remaining time machine any moment of remaining history that appeals be it to get new farm equipment from the Soviet Union or watching a Shakespearean play. The only fly in the ointment the occasional rogue time traveller from another fragment who strays into our Traveller’s land. Our Traveller doesn’t like to share, and this usually leads for the intruder to death by dinosaur and a re-write of history for their particular society to close that avenue of time travel down one highlight making Einstein give it all up for the Patent Office. All is going well until our Traveller is told he is not going to be the last human and instead will be the founder of a brand-new twee society.

If novels like This is How You Lose The Time War are the warm ray of hope then this is the decidedly British dash of cold water to make you shiver but delivered with a cheeky grin. On the face of it our Time Traveller is and they admit it a bit of a bastard. Having had enough of the endless war that has lasted lifetimes and removed their reliable memories of their previous life and family they are fairly ruthless in sharing existence with anyone else who may change what little they now have. But Tchaikovsky cleverly builds a character firstly who you like – they have a dry but wicked sense of humour and as the story progresses, we find out how bad this war was – our lead has some serious PTSD. We end up liking them and indeed when we find out what the Causality War actually involved it may indeed be hard to blame our narrator for a decision to get away from the human race. When potential new humans do arrive, they bring all the baggage of the past with them and does anyone really want to go through that again?

I’ll be vague on the other characters that we meet as that’s very much the fun of the story. But this a novel that does have love, fear, anger and regret in it while laughing in the face of time paradoxes. Tchaikovsky turns the mood on a sixpence so one moment we can be laughing at a Les Misérables time meddling joke and then sit in awe watching the collapse of the time space continuum or stare horror watching the end of the world. Tchaikovsky is using all the standards of time travel stories and there are some easter eggs for seasoned SF fans but even for a general reader there are laughs and thoughts a plenty. How can anyone refuse a tale with a feathered dinosaur called Miffly that eats one of the most evil dictators around?

Although this is a story with some cynicism and anger at the dark side of humanity that loves to destroy things for their own gain there is also a joy in being just human expressed. Putting aside wars for enjoying the experiences that humanity creates; possibly even making a connection with someone without knowing it or a deep-seated urge to stick two fingers up to authority fingers. In other words, this is a tale that manages to be both a lot of fun but also thoughtful and hopeful. Like our Time Traveller get comfy in a chair and have a perfect day reading this with the world outside switched off.