What do you think?
Rate this book
Time's Agent
Pocket World―a geographically small, hidden offshoot of our own reality, sped up or slowed down by time
“What would you do, given another universe, a do-over?”
Since humanity discovered the existence of pocket worlds, academics have embarked on exploratory missions as agents for the Institute for the Scientific and Humanistic Study of Portal Worlds to study this new technology and harness the potential of a seemingly limitless horizon.
Archeologist Raquel and her biologist wife Marlena once dreamed the pocket worlds held the key to solving the universe’s mysteries. Now, forty years in the future, Raquel is a disgraced ex-agent, pocket worlds are controlled by corporations squeezing every penny out of all colonizable space and time, and Marlena now lives in a pocket universe Raquel wears around her neck in which time passes faster than on Earth, and no longer speaks to her.
Standing in the ruins of her dream and her calling, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself, to her wife and her own failed ideals and confront what it means to save something―or someone―from time.
“What would you do, given another universe, a do-over?”
Since humanity discovered the existence of pocket worlds, academics have embarked on exploratory missions as agents for the Institute for the Scientific and Humanistic Study of Portal Worlds to study this new technology and harness the potential of a seemingly limitless horizon.
Archeologist Raquel and her biologist wife Marlena once dreamed the pocket worlds held the key to solving the universe’s mysteries. Now, forty years in the future, Raquel is a disgraced ex-agent, pocket worlds are controlled by corporations squeezing every penny out of all colonizable space and time, and Marlena now lives in a pocket universe Raquel wears around her neck in which time passes faster than on Earth, and no longer speaks to her.
Standing in the ruins of her dream and her calling, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself, to her wife and her own failed ideals and confront what it means to save something―or someone―from time.
208 pages, Paperback
First published August 13, 2024
58 people are currently reading
5058 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 166 reviews
September 18, 2024
4 Stars
Truly original and truly steeped in speculative science.
Here, this is a future where small pockets of worlds exist, each with their own ecosystem and time dilation (either super slow or super fast compared to current reality). They represent every hope and opportunity to make life on earth better, learning about old civilizations, discovering new flora and fauna, and in turn, seizing a chance on renewable resources.
Following scientist Raquel, who is part of the venerated Institute that spearheads exploring these wondrous worlds, she makes one small mistake, setting off a chain reaction where every good intention goes horribly wrong.
In this alternate reality, Peynado unfurls a grim outlook on corporate greed and voracious negligent consumerism that is an endless cycle of depletion and enslavement to the big machine that keeps things turning. As Raquel tries to right her wrongs in a world that is hostile and hopeless, how Peynado brings forth Raquel’s enlightenment and ultimately, how she tries to resolve her issues was actually quite ingenious.
Overall, this story wasn’t an easy or happy read. It is seriously mired with tech, AI, scientific advancements, and unfathomable repercussions of all these small alternate realities that are readily accessible and exploitable. However, Peynado surprised me through Raquel’s grief and guilt as she offers her protagonist a miniscule chance of healing redemption through her drive for an unobtainable utopia, forcing her to make a grand sacrifice.
Again, this is far from a tidy HEA, but it made me think hard, and I only hope that Raquel’s offering was enough to keep a part of the universe whole and untainted.
Thank you to the author and Tordotcom via NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review
Truly original and truly steeped in speculative science.
Here, this is a future where small pockets of worlds exist, each with their own ecosystem and time dilation (either super slow or super fast compared to current reality). They represent every hope and opportunity to make life on earth better, learning about old civilizations, discovering new flora and fauna, and in turn, seizing a chance on renewable resources.
Following scientist Raquel, who is part of the venerated Institute that spearheads exploring these wondrous worlds, she makes one small mistake, setting off a chain reaction where every good intention goes horribly wrong.
In this alternate reality, Peynado unfurls a grim outlook on corporate greed and voracious negligent consumerism that is an endless cycle of depletion and enslavement to the big machine that keeps things turning. As Raquel tries to right her wrongs in a world that is hostile and hopeless, how Peynado brings forth Raquel’s enlightenment and ultimately, how she tries to resolve her issues was actually quite ingenious.
Overall, this story wasn’t an easy or happy read. It is seriously mired with tech, AI, scientific advancements, and unfathomable repercussions of all these small alternate realities that are readily accessible and exploitable. However, Peynado surprised me through Raquel’s grief and guilt as she offers her protagonist a miniscule chance of healing redemption through her drive for an unobtainable utopia, forcing her to make a grand sacrifice.
Again, this is far from a tidy HEA, but it made me think hard, and I only hope that Raquel’s offering was enough to keep a part of the universe whole and untainted.
Thank you to the author and Tordotcom via NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review
June 17, 2025
Ahhh this book was so good and I'm puzzled as to why it hasn't gotten more attention! It's set in the Dominican Republic in a science fiction universe where "pocket worlds" aka small alternative universes have been discovered. Time is either slowed down or sped up in these PWs. An archeologist and her biologist wife explore them with enthusiasm, until one day things go horribly wrong. This story is such a beautiful and smart meditation on motherhood, climate collapse, grief, capitalism, colonization, and of course the nature of time itself. Great ending! Highly recommended!
(CW for child death, which doesn't happen on page but the grief for the child is a major theme).
(CW for child death, which doesn't happen on page but the grief for the child is a major theme).
October 6, 2024
3.0 Stars
Video Review https://youtu.be/MpVgI5x-87A
This was an interesting premise. I loved the idea of these small bubble universes. I wish I felt more connected to the characters because I felt the author made their relationships quite central to the neighborhood. I liked the premise of this one a bit more than the execution but I always appreciate an author trying something creative
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
Video Review https://youtu.be/MpVgI5x-87A
This was an interesting premise. I loved the idea of these small bubble universes. I wish I felt more connected to the characters because I felt the author made their relationships quite central to the neighborhood. I liked the premise of this one a bit more than the execution but I always appreciate an author trying something creative
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
May 23, 2025
god I love weird time shit
August 12, 2024
TIME’S AGENT was a unique concept about a future Dominican Republic 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, and 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?)
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, and 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?)
March 28, 2024
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review! (I’m inordinately excited over being the very first person to properly review it lol.)
Time’s Agent made me sick to my stomach. The grief and pain written into the narrative was so palpable that it physically horrified me, especially in the parallels of our current lives under capitalism, and what the future and technology hold for us. It threw me off originally when I saw it was written in first person POV, but after the first chapter I realized it couldn’t have been written any other way and still be given the justice it deserved.
I read most of the book in bits and pieces at work, hiding in a corner so I could devour as much as I possible before a manager came looking. It actually reminded me quite a lot of How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu; atmospheric, full of loss and grief both personal and environmental. Time’s Agent is an ambitious and intricate story that spans decades through time travel in the way of pocket worlds that have been commodified, colonized, and pillaged by corporations. The main character is a woman lost in time by way of one such pocket world, and has found herself entirely alone beside the tiny PW her estranged wife lives in that hangs around her neck.
Loneliness plagues this story. Set in an ultra-capitalist Dominican Republic, it’s atmospheric and marked by despair at every turn, which makes each moment of remembered happiness all the more bittersweet. But there is hope. Even when it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, there was always hope.
This book made me ill. I wish I could give it ten stars.
Time’s Agent made me sick to my stomach. The grief and pain written into the narrative was so palpable that it physically horrified me, especially in the parallels of our current lives under capitalism, and what the future and technology hold for us. It threw me off originally when I saw it was written in first person POV, but after the first chapter I realized it couldn’t have been written any other way and still be given the justice it deserved.
I read most of the book in bits and pieces at work, hiding in a corner so I could devour as much as I possible before a manager came looking. It actually reminded me quite a lot of How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu; atmospheric, full of loss and grief both personal and environmental. Time’s Agent is an ambitious and intricate story that spans decades through time travel in the way of pocket worlds that have been commodified, colonized, and pillaged by corporations. The main character is a woman lost in time by way of one such pocket world, and has found herself entirely alone beside the tiny PW her estranged wife lives in that hangs around her neck.
Loneliness plagues this story. Set in an ultra-capitalist Dominican Republic, it’s atmospheric and marked by despair at every turn, which makes each moment of remembered happiness all the more bittersweet. But there is hope. Even when it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, there was always hope.
This book made me ill. I wish I could give it ten stars.
August 3, 2024
7 / 10 ✪
https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com...
In a world filled with random, rogue pocket universes, archaeologist Raquel and her biologist wife exist in a fairy tale. Working their dream job, exploring and cataloging any new aberrations that pop up, always looking for the Holy Grail: Universe Two—a dimension of a scale to our own, a real chance for a do-over.
You see, pocket dimensions come in all shapes and sizes, but they’re all relatively small. From the size of a star system to that of a living room. Anything and everything, except one to mirror our own. A one in a billion, that. Still, the chance remains, and Raquel and her team are bound to find it.
Until Raquel gets trapped in a pocket dimension running at a decelerated rate. In the blink of an eye, forty years rush past in the real world, while Raquel and Marlena (her wife) see none of it. And when they emerge—the world has changed.
Their company in ruins, their daughter long dead, each approaches their broken life in a different way. Marlena retreats to the very same pocket universe where she lost forty years, and Raquel… lets her. Stubbornly sticking it out in the real world, hoping desperately for a change. Whether it’s a disaster or a miracle doesn’t much matter. Raquel just needs something new, something to distract her, and maybe save her marriage.
And maybe that something is on the horizon, in the form of a brand new world…
—
One moment, I knew, was all it took to change a life.
—
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 talk 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.
https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com...
In a world filled with random, rogue pocket universes, archaeologist Raquel and her biologist wife exist in a fairy tale. Working their dream job, exploring and cataloging any new aberrations that pop up, always looking for the Holy Grail: Universe Two—a dimension of a scale to our own, a real chance for a do-over.
You see, pocket dimensions come in all shapes and sizes, but they’re all relatively small. From the size of a star system to that of a living room. Anything and everything, except one to mirror our own. A one in a billion, that. Still, the chance remains, and Raquel and her team are bound to find it.
Until Raquel gets trapped in a pocket dimension running at a decelerated rate. In the blink of an eye, forty years rush past in the real world, while Raquel and Marlena (her wife) see none of it. And when they emerge—the world has changed.
Their company in ruins, their daughter long dead, each approaches their broken life in a different way. Marlena retreats to the very same pocket universe where she lost forty years, and Raquel… lets her. Stubbornly sticking it out in the real world, hoping desperately for a change. Whether it’s a disaster or a miracle doesn’t much matter. Raquel just needs something new, something to distract her, and maybe save her marriage.
And maybe that something is on the horizon, in the form of a brand new world…
—
One moment, I knew, was all it took to change a life.
—
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 talk 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.
August 22, 2024
The nitty-gritty: A novella sized book packed with intriguing ideas and an emotional storyline, Time's Agent gives readers plenty to think about.
Time’s Agent is such a unique story, and I’m so glad I had the chance to read it. Brenda Peynado imagines a future where pocket worlds—alternate worlds where time moves either faster or slower than standard Earth time—have been discovered, and she’s taken this concept and built a riveting story around it. It’s also an emotional story about relationships and losing everything you have, as well as a commentary on corporate greed and environmental issues. I wouldn’t say this is a happy story, but I was glad that it ended on an optimistic note.
Raquel Petra lives in the Dominican Republic and is an archeologist who studies pocket worlds, or PWs as they are called. Alongside her wife Marlena, she works for the institute, the corporation in charge of researching and monitoring PWs, and she loves her work. Raquel and Marlena have a six-year-old daughter named Atalanta, who they love dearly. Life is good, with so many possibilities ahead, as there seems to be an infinite variety of PWs to explore. But one day, Raquel makes a terrible mistake and winds up in a short time PW by accident, and when she returns to her own world after only a few minutes, she’s devastated to discover that forty years have passed on Earth. Marlena, who was in a different PW at the time (one that Raquel wears around her neck) is furious when she emerges and realizes what happened. Life as they knew it is over. Pocket worlds are now commonplace and have been monetized. The grand days of exploration and research no longer exist, and corporate greed has reared its ugly head.
As Raquel struggles to come to terms with her new life, her marriage begins to crumble. How can she find purpose and happiness in a world that won’t protect the new worlds its discovered?
First, let’s talk about the concept of pocket worlds, which I loved. Who wouldn’t want their own private world where you could disappear for a few hours to read your book (or fill in the blank with whatever you love to do!), and return to the real world at the exact same time you left? Sounds perfect, right? But PWs are tricky, because some of them work the other way, and it’s tough to know which is which. I will admit my head was spinning during some of the explanations about PWs, but it’s easy to just go with it and not analyze it too closely. I did love the idea that Raquel wears a pocket world around her neck, which is how Marlena got pulled into the short time world with her. It’s sort of mind boggling but cool, right?
The trouble with pocket worlds forty years later is that they are being used for some awful things. Some have become landfills, where people on Earth can stash all the trash that won’t fit in our world anymore. Some are being used for silly things like childcare (a convenient place to put your kid while you’re at work) or as a way to keep parts of your body looking young. Raquel, however, wants to find an Indigenous race of people called the Taino who may have disappeared into a PW, and more than anything she wants her work in researching PWs to mean something. Of course, she runs into a lot of opposition as she’s trying to find the Taino. Peynado shows how corporations have taken over everything that happens to PWs and how most people’s lives have become worse because of that. It’s a bleak future for sure, but I thought the author did a great job with the theme without beating the reader over the head.
We also get lots of emotional moments between Raquel and Marlena—and many of these scenes deal with Atalanta, which I won’t spoil for you here—and for the most part, their interactions with each other seemed authentic. I wasn’t sure how the author was going to wrap things up, and it was not what I was expecting. But I did like the hopeful ending, even though the events leading up to it were a little confusing.
Overall, I really enjoyed Time’s Agent. It gave me lots to think about, and I will definitely be picking up Brenda Peynado’s next book.
Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.
Time’s Agent is such a unique story, and I’m so glad I had the chance to read it. Brenda Peynado imagines a future where pocket worlds—alternate worlds where time moves either faster or slower than standard Earth time—have been discovered, and she’s taken this concept and built a riveting story around it. It’s also an emotional story about relationships and losing everything you have, as well as a commentary on corporate greed and environmental issues. I wouldn’t say this is a happy story, but I was glad that it ended on an optimistic note.
Raquel Petra lives in the Dominican Republic and is an archeologist who studies pocket worlds, or PWs as they are called. Alongside her wife Marlena, she works for the institute, the corporation in charge of researching and monitoring PWs, and she loves her work. Raquel and Marlena have a six-year-old daughter named Atalanta, who they love dearly. Life is good, with so many possibilities ahead, as there seems to be an infinite variety of PWs to explore. But one day, Raquel makes a terrible mistake and winds up in a short time PW by accident, and when she returns to her own world after only a few minutes, she’s devastated to discover that forty years have passed on Earth. Marlena, who was in a different PW at the time (one that Raquel wears around her neck) is furious when she emerges and realizes what happened. Life as they knew it is over. Pocket worlds are now commonplace and have been monetized. The grand days of exploration and research no longer exist, and corporate greed has reared its ugly head.
As Raquel struggles to come to terms with her new life, her marriage begins to crumble. How can she find purpose and happiness in a world that won’t protect the new worlds its discovered?
First, let’s talk about the concept of pocket worlds, which I loved. Who wouldn’t want their own private world where you could disappear for a few hours to read your book (or fill in the blank with whatever you love to do!), and return to the real world at the exact same time you left? Sounds perfect, right? But PWs are tricky, because some of them work the other way, and it’s tough to know which is which. I will admit my head was spinning during some of the explanations about PWs, but it’s easy to just go with it and not analyze it too closely. I did love the idea that Raquel wears a pocket world around her neck, which is how Marlena got pulled into the short time world with her. It’s sort of mind boggling but cool, right?
The trouble with pocket worlds forty years later is that they are being used for some awful things. Some have become landfills, where people on Earth can stash all the trash that won’t fit in our world anymore. Some are being used for silly things like childcare (a convenient place to put your kid while you’re at work) or as a way to keep parts of your body looking young. Raquel, however, wants to find an Indigenous race of people called the Taino who may have disappeared into a PW, and more than anything she wants her work in researching PWs to mean something. Of course, she runs into a lot of opposition as she’s trying to find the Taino. Peynado shows how corporations have taken over everything that happens to PWs and how most people’s lives have become worse because of that. It’s a bleak future for sure, but I thought the author did a great job with the theme without beating the reader over the head.
We also get lots of emotional moments between Raquel and Marlena—and many of these scenes deal with Atalanta, which I won’t spoil for you here—and for the most part, their interactions with each other seemed authentic. I wasn’t sure how the author was going to wrap things up, and it was not what I was expecting. But I did like the hopeful ending, even though the events leading up to it were a little confusing.
Overall, I really enjoyed Time’s Agent. It gave me lots to think about, and I will definitely be picking up Brenda Peynado’s next book.
Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.
May 12, 2024
4.5 stars
What a lovely surprise! It's always such a pleasure to read a novella that makes you think and feel. It's not an easy job to do in a short page count.
What you will find from this story:
- scifi
- timetravel/multiverse
- queer mc
- robots
- environmental crisis
- grief and loss
What I enjoyed most in this book was the handling of loss and grief. We all experience it differently and we all behave differently when we have to face them.
It took some time for me to fully understand the world and there was also one scene in the end that I didn't quite grasp, but otherwise the world-building was really interesting. Time travel is always a bit hard to understand, but in here you can experience the effects of time with our main character which made it easier to follow.
Thank you Netgalley and Tordotcom for an e-arc! This novella is publised in August 2024.
What a lovely surprise! It's always such a pleasure to read a novella that makes you think and feel. It's not an easy job to do in a short page count.
What you will find from this story:
- scifi
- timetravel/multiverse
- queer mc
- robots
- environmental crisis
- grief and loss
What I enjoyed most in this book was the handling of loss and grief. We all experience it differently and we all behave differently when we have to face them.
It took some time for me to fully understand the world and there was also one scene in the end that I didn't quite grasp, but otherwise the world-building was really interesting. Time travel is always a bit hard to understand, but in here you can experience the effects of time with our main character which made it easier to follow.
Thank you Netgalley and Tordotcom for an e-arc! This novella is publised in August 2024.
June 30, 2024
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.
* thanks to tordotcom for the NetGalley review copy. Time’s Agent publishes August 13.
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.
* thanks to tordotcom for the NetGalley review copy. Time’s Agent publishes August 13.
2024
October 7, 2025Pride TBR
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom
August 24, 2024
Time's Agent is such a unique take on universe travel! "Pocket Universes" did take a minute for me to wrap my head around, I'll admit. Eventually, I realized that they worked much like the time dilation in Season 7 of The 100, and that helped, which is pretty on brand for me. Raquel and her wife have come back to the "main" world after losing forty years during one misstep into a pocket world. That is crushing in itself, no? To top it off, they find out that their daughter died just weeks after their disappearance, so as you can imagine, things are bad. Also, really relatable for many, even if pocket world time problems are not at fault.
"Grief can make a single breath feel like a thousand years, but when you want to stay in the moment forever, time is a hound that hunts you down. Time, my enemy. Time, the thief."
So to say that the characters were emotionally provocative is an understatement. And thing is, not only did they lose their daughter (as well as basically everyone else they knew and loved), the whole world was different, and not in a good way. Again, this is incredibly thought provoking- imagine if you'd left our world 40 years ago, and popped back in now. What would it look like? You'd feel... well, you get the idea.
It's an emotional story, an exciting story, and a really unique take on the concept. Sure, I was a wee bit confused at times, but nothing so overwhelming that I couldn't enjoy the book. While it is obviously a sci-fi concept, so many of the issues presented were relevant to all of us, in a very thought provoking way.
Bottom Line: It's like if you got stuck on Skyring for five years and everyone back at Sanctum didn't even notice you were gone, but in reverse. You're welcome.
You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight
August 24, 2025
Agent Raquel works for the Institute along with her wife Agent Marlena; they study pocket worlds, with Raquel working as an archeologist and Marlena as a biologist. Due to an accident, they've ended up in the future. The first half of the book tells us the backstory of how this happened, and the second half continues the story from there.
This book reads in some ways like a work of classic science fiction with themes that will be familiar to many fans: the hubris of humanity, the labor exploitation and environmental destruction wrought by corporations looking for profit, and a scientist realizing the unintentional harms they've done in their quest for knowledge. The book is set in the Dominican Republic, with aspects of the local culture and language included; the main plot has themes related to the colonization of the Americas. There are also personal themes related to the grief of losing a child and how that affects the parents. The character backstory and arc are mainly focused on the themes of the book.
I'm somewhat surprised this book isn't more well-known and doesn't have more reviews, given the popularity of Tor's novellas and the themes that are relevant to current times. I only heard about it because someone mentioned it in a list of sapphic book recommendations. But then again, this book also has certain elements that don't fit neatly into the tropes currently used to promote books.
This book reads in some ways like a work of classic science fiction with themes that will be familiar to many fans: the hubris of humanity, the labor exploitation and environmental destruction wrought by corporations looking for profit, and a scientist realizing the unintentional harms they've done in their quest for knowledge. The book is set in the Dominican Republic, with aspects of the local culture and language included; the main plot has themes related to the colonization of the Americas. There are also personal themes related to the grief of losing a child and how that affects the parents. The character backstory and arc are mainly focused on the themes of the book.
I'm somewhat surprised this book isn't more well-known and doesn't have more reviews, given the popularity of Tor's novellas and the themes that are relevant to current times. I only heard about it because someone mentioned it in a list of sapphic book recommendations. But then again, this book also has certain elements that don't fit neatly into the tropes currently used to promote books.
February 4, 2025
3.5 rounded up.
January 5, 2025
Interesting premise that just didn't follow through.
June 5, 2025
I feel like this entire novella makes more sense (conceptually, structurally) if you spent a bunch of time as a teenager reading and rereading Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams.
November 3, 2024
It had so much potential, the whole pocket world (PW) idea. Peynardo goes in a dystopian direction with it: the corporate world harvests and eventually destroys the worlds they come into contact with. She also depicts the earth itself as used up, but doesn’t go into detail on that. So there’s a little bit of missing worldbuilding, but I could skip over that and go with the premise.
But then, it’s just repetitive and over the top on how horrible and cruel the corporations are, and how devastated the worlds are. It is, in a word, didactic. Peynardo is Trying So Hard to give us a moral lesson about the evils of capitalism, and it’s not subtle. It’s not insightful.
I wonder if this could have been a better book if it was a full-length novel. Although I couldn’t even finish the novella without just skimming the last few chapters. Was it because the character development didn’t work? Or because the dystopian world was exaggerated and depressing?
The last few chapters focus on Raquel’s research into an ancient race, and maybe the search for “universe 2” which are both an ongoing sideline in the book. This ancient race was never really explained; she seems to care a lot about it, but why exactly? Also, none of the reviews on GR contain spoilers about the ending, leading me to believe that even the positive reviewers didn’t get it, or care, enough to discuss it. My quick skim tells me Peynardo was trying to be mystical, fantastical, and deep, but in actuality it wasn’t any of those things.
But then, it’s just repetitive and over the top on how horrible and cruel the corporations are, and how devastated the worlds are. It is, in a word, didactic. Peynardo is Trying So Hard to give us a moral lesson about the evils of capitalism, and it’s not subtle. It’s not insightful.
I wonder if this could have been a better book if it was a full-length novel. Although I couldn’t even finish the novella without just skimming the last few chapters. Was it because the character development didn’t work? Or because the dystopian world was exaggerated and depressing?
The last few chapters focus on Raquel’s research into an ancient race, and maybe the search for “universe 2” which are both an ongoing sideline in the book. This ancient race was never really explained; she seems to care a lot about it, but why exactly? Also, none of the reviews on GR contain spoilers about the ending, leading me to believe that even the positive reviewers didn’t get it, or care, enough to discuss it. My quick skim tells me Peynardo was trying to be mystical, fantastical, and deep, but in actuality it wasn’t any of those things.
February 2, 2025
I received an ARC from Edelweiss
TW: homophobia, war, death of a child
4.2
This is an odd little book about the commodification of pocket universes, that does something out of the box without feeling like it's exploring to its potential, and is so abstract while still feeling very human.
I love that the big dilemma in this book is all about the domestic issue of family strife, coupled with the bittersweet nostalgia and watery regret of feeling as if the world has passed you by. Obviously, in this case, it's a lot more literal, but I do think everyone has a moment here and there, where you pause, look back, and get floored by all the change, and what is expected of you.
The main reason I picked this book up initially was because I love a good portal fantasy- and this book, while being technically sci-fi, does something really, really interesting with that trope. Falling into a portal and arriving back home years later isn't something we blink at in the traditions of that subgenre, but seeing it here, with layers of portals, with knowledge of what it happening from the start, knowing there's nothing you can do, it changes thing.
Not to mention the truly chilling ideas that come with the capitalism part of this whole world. The idea of corporations seizing control of something like alternate realities in this way, the disregard for human life- it's so far from the reality we're in, but so easy to see becoming true, if the opportunity was given.
TW: homophobia, war, death of a child
4.2
This is an odd little book about the commodification of pocket universes, that does something out of the box without feeling like it's exploring to its potential, and is so abstract while still feeling very human.
I love that the big dilemma in this book is all about the domestic issue of family strife, coupled with the bittersweet nostalgia and watery regret of feeling as if the world has passed you by. Obviously, in this case, it's a lot more literal, but I do think everyone has a moment here and there, where you pause, look back, and get floored by all the change, and what is expected of you.
The main reason I picked this book up initially was because I love a good portal fantasy- and this book, while being technically sci-fi, does something really, really interesting with that trope. Falling into a portal and arriving back home years later isn't something we blink at in the traditions of that subgenre, but seeing it here, with layers of portals, with knowledge of what it happening from the start, knowing there's nothing you can do, it changes thing.
Not to mention the truly chilling ideas that come with the capitalism part of this whole world. The idea of corporations seizing control of something like alternate realities in this way, the disregard for human life- it's so far from the reality we're in, but so easy to see becoming true, if the opportunity was given.
August 3, 2024
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.
{Thank you Tordotcom for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}
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.
{Thank you Tordotcom for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}
September 26, 2025
Time's Agent started out with the promise of giving me everything I love: physics, exploring the multiverse, criticism of capitalism, happily married lesbians and a story that deals with grief. Truly, this is an ambitious conglomeration of my loves and interests, and I couldn't wait to get inside this story and emerge a changed or at least an inspired person. Unfortunately, either I set up my expectations so high that I was doomed to be let down, or this just isn't as great as it promised to be. Either way, this novella turned out to be very much not for me.
As a physicist, my eye always starts to twitch every time a scifi story mentions "manipulating physics", because you can't "manipulate" physics. You have no choice. This is the physics world and we just live in it. You can discover its nature, test its limits, harness it for your own gains, but you can't manipulate the laws. That's why they're called laws. They cannot be changed, as we are not the lawmakers; we can only dance to their tunes. This is my kryptonite along with explaining any scifi phenomenon as "quantum [whatever]". Especially when it's the scientists saying this. I much prefer it when the fake science remains unexplained, because you can never explain it in a way that makes sense and that doesn't make you look like a fool instead of a smarty-pants, unless you truly go out of your way to figure out a scientifically plausible explanation (there are many loopholes and things we haven't figured out yet to explore when it comes to astrophysics) but, as you can imagine, this would have been an extra rare find if that were the case.
So I guess the main thing that took me out of this story was the fake science and it's fake explanations. I wish that it didn't piss me off as badly as it does, but I just can't turn my physicist brain off when you're trying to explain "physics" to me. Someone take "fluid dynamics" from Peynado's typing fingers, PLEASE.
What I'll give this book is that it truly is original. I haven't seen multiverse explored in fiction in this way, especially the elusive idea of pocket worlds, which is initially what drew me in. I also think that the grief part of it was done well, as well as illustrations of the far end of corporate greed. This is where my praise will end, because the resolution to the story was sloppy at best, and I was left feeling like it was too easy, a cop-out from the gigantic mess that had conglomerated to epic proportions as the story progressed. I also didn't love the implications that we had no ways out of the corporate nightmare other than simply leaving for another world, or that such all-consuming greed was an unchangeable and intrinsic part of the human condition, and that all our goodness was eradicated with the lost civilizations and our conquered ancestors. This is a very bleak worldview which I don't subscribe to, I don't see merit in pursuing and don't think is true.
I also didn't appreciate the implication that science and exploration are inherently selfish and greedy and our insatiable curiosity is the kernel of our doom, because even though I agree that unfortunately we only do the science we are given money for, even if we go into it for self-serving reasons, we are deepening the well of humanity's understanding and knowledge. A selfish scientist is an oxymoron. However, I agree with the commentary on how scientists have a superiority complex and often are blind to the struggles of the working class — I was shocked by this discovery which I was able to see only when I entered this sphere myself, and was extremely disappointed with the mentality I found in scientific-academic circles. So I guess that's one more point in favor of this book.
All in all, I think Time's Agent tried to do too much and succeeded in little. If you know very little or close to nothing about physics, or if you simply don't care about fake explanations to fake science, you'll probably enjoy this book. I still find the end too cheap, but maybe you'll see it differently.
As a physicist, my eye always starts to twitch every time a scifi story mentions "manipulating physics", because you can't "manipulate" physics. You have no choice. This is the physics world and we just live in it. You can discover its nature, test its limits, harness it for your own gains, but you can't manipulate the laws. That's why they're called laws. They cannot be changed, as we are not the lawmakers; we can only dance to their tunes. This is my kryptonite along with explaining any scifi phenomenon as "quantum [whatever]". Especially when it's the scientists saying this. I much prefer it when the fake science remains unexplained, because you can never explain it in a way that makes sense and that doesn't make you look like a fool instead of a smarty-pants, unless you truly go out of your way to figure out a scientifically plausible explanation (there are many loopholes and things we haven't figured out yet to explore when it comes to astrophysics) but, as you can imagine, this would have been an extra rare find if that were the case.
So I guess the main thing that took me out of this story was the fake science and it's fake explanations. I wish that it didn't piss me off as badly as it does, but I just can't turn my physicist brain off when you're trying to explain "physics" to me. Someone take "fluid dynamics" from Peynado's typing fingers, PLEASE.
What I'll give this book is that it truly is original. I haven't seen multiverse explored in fiction in this way, especially the elusive idea of pocket worlds, which is initially what drew me in. I also think that the grief part of it was done well, as well as illustrations of the far end of corporate greed. This is where my praise will end, because the resolution to the story was sloppy at best, and I was left feeling like it was too easy, a cop-out from the gigantic mess that had conglomerated to epic proportions as the story progressed. I also didn't love the implications that we had no ways out of the corporate nightmare other than simply leaving for another world, or that such all-consuming greed was an unchangeable and intrinsic part of the human condition, and that all our goodness was eradicated with the lost civilizations and our conquered ancestors. This is a very bleak worldview which I don't subscribe to, I don't see merit in pursuing and don't think is true.
I also didn't appreciate the implication that science and exploration are inherently selfish and greedy and our insatiable curiosity is the kernel of our doom, because even though I agree that unfortunately we only do the science we are given money for, even if we go into it for self-serving reasons, we are deepening the well of humanity's understanding and knowledge. A selfish scientist is an oxymoron. However, I agree with the commentary on how scientists have a superiority complex and often are blind to the struggles of the working class — I was shocked by this discovery which I was able to see only when I entered this sphere myself, and was extremely disappointed with the mentality I found in scientific-academic circles. So I guess that's one more point in favor of this book.
All in all, I think Time's Agent tried to do too much and succeeded in little. If you know very little or close to nothing about physics, or if you simply don't care about fake explanations to fake science, you'll probably enjoy this book. I still find the end too cheap, but maybe you'll see it differently.
August 1, 2024
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.
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.
April 15, 2024
I want to thank NetGalley, Tor Publishing Group, and Brenda Paynado for providing me an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
As someone who does not read a lot of sci-fi, this book was fascinating! A conversation on grief, love, loss, time, and also end stage capitalism and what it does to the environment and the people in it. Archeologist Raquel and her wife Marlene are on an elite team who travel into “pocket worlds” (offshoots of our own reality, other dimensions). They travel often, explore new worlds, and are at the peak of a society that values exploration and learning, not financial gain.
Because of an accident in one of these worlds, forty years pass in the blink of an eye, and suddenly Raquel has lost everything. Her relationship with her wife is suffering, and her thriving research job has been bought out by industry focused on making money. What does it mean to save one’s self, and what one loves, from time itself?
There were so many things I liked about this book! The pocket worlds were fascinating, especially the concept of some of them having different timelines than earth. Slow time and fast time worlds. Raquel is a convincing heroine, her guilt and grief are palpable. It makes the book seem almost cyclical, which is an accurate description of grief.
I love the conversation surrounding end stage capitalism. When we sell time itself, what do we lose? And what must the world and people in it give up due to the greed of corporations?
A few things I didn’t love as much. The book felt slow at times, a lot of description and names and I got lost in the details at times. Because it dragged in the middle, and really sped up a ton at the end, I was left with a feeling of whiplash. But, in many ways that makes sense with the plot of the book, time is confusing and can leave you lost and spinning.
Overall, I enjoyed dipping my toe into sci-fi, and this book made me want to read more in the genre!!
As someone who does not read a lot of sci-fi, this book was fascinating! A conversation on grief, love, loss, time, and also end stage capitalism and what it does to the environment and the people in it. Archeologist Raquel and her wife Marlene are on an elite team who travel into “pocket worlds” (offshoots of our own reality, other dimensions). They travel often, explore new worlds, and are at the peak of a society that values exploration and learning, not financial gain.
Because of an accident in one of these worlds, forty years pass in the blink of an eye, and suddenly Raquel has lost everything. Her relationship with her wife is suffering, and her thriving research job has been bought out by industry focused on making money. What does it mean to save one’s self, and what one loves, from time itself?
There were so many things I liked about this book! The pocket worlds were fascinating, especially the concept of some of them having different timelines than earth. Slow time and fast time worlds. Raquel is a convincing heroine, her guilt and grief are palpable. It makes the book seem almost cyclical, which is an accurate description of grief.
I love the conversation surrounding end stage capitalism. When we sell time itself, what do we lose? And what must the world and people in it give up due to the greed of corporations?
A few things I didn’t love as much. The book felt slow at times, a lot of description and names and I got lost in the details at times. Because it dragged in the middle, and really sped up a ton at the end, I was left with a feeling of whiplash. But, in many ways that makes sense with the plot of the book, time is confusing and can leave you lost and spinning.
Overall, I enjoyed dipping my toe into sci-fi, and this book made me want to read more in the genre!!
August 28, 2025
Fiction>SciFi>Dystopian future
This is a great little read! I was skeptical that world-building could be done in so few pages, but Peynado did a GREAT job!!
Sci-fi is not my go-to genre, so it has to be meaningful and well-written to catch my attention. The last sci-fi I really enjoyed was The Themis Files series.
I don’t want to give too much away, but I enjoyed the intellectual exercise of messing with time. The concept for the world is spot-on for engaging me and wanting to get deeper into it for me.
To start off, I think it was useful to go into reading this knowing that there were something called “Pocket Worlds” because this quickly gets abbreviated and not explained very well up front. So, read the book to learn more, but know that PW is for Pocket World and there are a bunch of them.
I like that the focus of the setting is in The DR, but I also had trouble a few times distinguishing foreign words from words for this new world being created.
Themes of loss, grief, communication within a marriage, social class dynamics, environmentalism, capitalism.
“But time never lets it be that easy, does it? Grief can make a single breath feel like a thousand years, but when you want to stay in the moment forever, time is a hound that hunts you down. Time, my enemy. Time, the thief.”
“Which brings me back to this birthday just a year relative later. One year after discovering the meadow world. One year after tucking her into bed for the last time. Thirty-eight.”
“Working-class people sleep on the street in Portal Pod lockers in front of their workplaces, tiny worlds only big enough for a mat and someone to crawl into the fetal position, except most are too small and everywhere disembodied heads, arms, or legs jut into dodging traffic.”
“Time was now a commodity, easily manufactured, as easily thrown away.”
“…the difference between us: that she thinks of life and creation, whereas I record and exhume death and knowledge.”
This is a great little read! I was skeptical that world-building could be done in so few pages, but Peynado did a GREAT job!!
Sci-fi is not my go-to genre, so it has to be meaningful and well-written to catch my attention. The last sci-fi I really enjoyed was The Themis Files series.
I don’t want to give too much away, but I enjoyed the intellectual exercise of messing with time. The concept for the world is spot-on for engaging me and wanting to get deeper into it for me.
To start off, I think it was useful to go into reading this knowing that there were something called “Pocket Worlds” because this quickly gets abbreviated and not explained very well up front. So, read the book to learn more, but know that PW is for Pocket World and there are a bunch of them.
I like that the focus of the setting is in The DR, but I also had trouble a few times distinguishing foreign words from words for this new world being created.
Themes of loss, grief, communication within a marriage, social class dynamics, environmentalism, capitalism.
“But time never lets it be that easy, does it? Grief can make a single breath feel like a thousand years, but when you want to stay in the moment forever, time is a hound that hunts you down. Time, my enemy. Time, the thief.”
“Which brings me back to this birthday just a year relative later. One year after discovering the meadow world. One year after tucking her into bed for the last time. Thirty-eight.”
“Working-class people sleep on the street in Portal Pod lockers in front of their workplaces, tiny worlds only big enough for a mat and someone to crawl into the fetal position, except most are too small and everywhere disembodied heads, arms, or legs jut into dodging traffic.”
“Time was now a commodity, easily manufactured, as easily thrown away.”
“…the difference between us: that she thinks of life and creation, whereas I record and exhume death and knowledge.”
August 28, 2024
Thank you to Brenda Peynado, Tor Books, and Pride Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book. This is my honest review.
-
“Grief can make a single breath feel like a thousand years, but when you want to stay in the moment forever, time is a hound that hunts you down. Time, my enemy. Time, the thief.”
-
Imagine going to work one day, being pulled into a pocket universe that exists outside of your time, and then being rescued only to find out that 40 years have gone by and the world has moved on without you. Cherry on top? Your daughter died while you were gone, so you uploaded her consciousness into a robotic dog to prolong her life and your wife, who is currently vibing in another pocket universe, has no idea what’s been happening this entire time. I would simply cease to exist 🙂↕️
I was drawn to Time’s Agent and to its characters because time and space have always been a source of wonder for me. Alternate universes, pocket universes, timelines on timelines. Even more so when I experienced real, profound grief for the first time after losing my brother. I think it’s natural to wonder what if. If we could change the course of time and space, would we? If we could grasp it in both hands, would we? Those are the questions that lie at the crux of Time’s Agent and I think Peynado answers them beautifully.
Though short in length, Time’s Agent packed a contemplative and thrilling punch to the gut that I won’t forget. If you’re looking for a one sitting read that will make you think, give it a shot!
-
“Grief can make a single breath feel like a thousand years, but when you want to stay in the moment forever, time is a hound that hunts you down. Time, my enemy. Time, the thief.”
-
Imagine going to work one day, being pulled into a pocket universe that exists outside of your time, and then being rescued only to find out that 40 years have gone by and the world has moved on without you. Cherry on top? Your daughter died while you were gone, so you uploaded her consciousness into a robotic dog to prolong her life and your wife, who is currently vibing in another pocket universe, has no idea what’s been happening this entire time. I would simply cease to exist 🙂↕️
I was drawn to Time’s Agent and to its characters because time and space have always been a source of wonder for me. Alternate universes, pocket universes, timelines on timelines. Even more so when I experienced real, profound grief for the first time after losing my brother. I think it’s natural to wonder what if. If we could change the course of time and space, would we? If we could grasp it in both hands, would we? Those are the questions that lie at the crux of Time’s Agent and I think Peynado answers them beautifully.
Though short in length, Time’s Agent packed a contemplative and thrilling punch to the gut that I won’t forget. If you’re looking for a one sitting read that will make you think, give it a shot!
September 22, 2025
This was maybe a 2.5 if anything. I feel like it should have resonated more with me in terms of culture, but this is such soft sci-fi that it never takes an effort to explain anything. The story enjoys the concept without the responsibility of explanation. How can a pocket world be of a finite size, but also have an atmosphere, a sun, gravity, etc. what is on the edge? It was so maddening to me as they started to explain tiny pocket worlds that were literally pocket sized.
This is not a sci-fi story, it's a story of culture, use, abuse, and grief. I didn't mention love, because I don't think you are supposed to view that plot in a positive manner. As someone who deals with grief in a non-standard way, I gave no quarter to how either character chooses to express theirs. Both were in my opinion toxic in their own ways, which maybe was the point.
It's an interesting story with a thread of sci-fi but only in its best manifestation. It's handled conceptually without real explanation, which I feel like is more of a wasted opportunity.
Culturally, I feel like the character searching for such a specific thing without support, for that thing to be the thing in the end, without ever existing supporting evidence, is just sloppy. Culturally I feel like I should be supporting the idea of this escape, but it's such a far-fetched possibility, I just feel like it loses all logical consistency by the end. There is something that feels very unearned by the time you reach the end.
This is not a sci-fi story, it's a story of culture, use, abuse, and grief. I didn't mention love, because I don't think you are supposed to view that plot in a positive manner. As someone who deals with grief in a non-standard way, I gave no quarter to how either character chooses to express theirs. Both were in my opinion toxic in their own ways, which maybe was the point.
It's an interesting story with a thread of sci-fi but only in its best manifestation. It's handled conceptually without real explanation, which I feel like is more of a wasted opportunity.
Culturally, I feel like the character searching for such a specific thing without support, for that thing to be the thing in the end, without ever existing supporting evidence, is just sloppy. Culturally I feel like I should be supporting the idea of this escape, but it's such a far-fetched possibility, I just feel like it loses all logical consistency by the end. There is something that feels very unearned by the time you reach the end.
August 29, 2024
The discovery of time distorting Pocket Worlds showed a lot of promise for the future. A war and forty years later PWs are all owed by the corporations and are squeezed of all potential and resources for every penny they can get.
Archaeologist Raquel and her wife Marlena studied these PWs dealing with the oddities of time dilation surrounding the long/short time (relative to standard time) worlds hoping to benefit humanity. After an accident with a short-time world, Raquel finds she's lost forty years, her daughter is dead, and her wife won't talk to her.
Finding one last chance for redemption, Raquel will stop at nothing to save...something...from time.
While the time "science" felt hard to grasp at first, you sink into it surprisingly easily so don't let that put you off!!
Thank you to PrideBookTours and Tor Dot Com for providing me with a free copy of this book. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Archaeologist Raquel and her wife Marlena studied these PWs dealing with the oddities of time dilation surrounding the long/short time (relative to standard time) worlds hoping to benefit humanity. After an accident with a short-time world, Raquel finds she's lost forty years, her daughter is dead, and her wife won't talk to her.
Finding one last chance for redemption, Raquel will stop at nothing to save...something...from time.
While the time "science" felt hard to grasp at first, you sink into it surprisingly easily so don't let that put you off!!
Thank you to PrideBookTours and Tor Dot Com for providing me with a free copy of this book. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
November 6, 2025
A unique take on parallel universes with a large focus on the characters. Raquel, along with her wife Marlena, are prominent researchers in the field of pocket worlds. These are alternate realities that can be entered from specific points in our world, are variably sized and have different rates at which time moves inside them. When Raquel accidentally falls into a world where a few seconds equate to 40 years in her world, she comes back to a life entirely different from the one she left. The pocket worlds are being exploited by large corporations, and people are using the time inflation/dilation for questionable purposes like toiling away for hours in a pocket world but so that only seconds pass in the core world, or for slowing down their child's growth. In this bizarre landscape, Raquel has an opportunity to do something that can make a difference. Will she be able to reclaim some of her glory or are things too far gone to even try?
I liked the idea, and while I quite enjoyed this strange world to begin with, it got a little repetitive in the middle, and outright confusing towards the end. Sci-fi mixed with native folklore but with things left unexplained left me feeling less than satisfied. Good concept, but iffy execution for my taste.
I liked the idea, and while I quite enjoyed this strange world to begin with, it got a little repetitive in the middle, and outright confusing towards the end. Sci-fi mixed with native folklore but with things left unexplained left me feeling less than satisfied. Good concept, but iffy execution for my taste.
July 4, 2024
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! Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
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! Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
January 29, 2025
3,75 ⭐️
“Don’t you know, how dangerous it is to have anything of value — worth taking or discovering or entering?”
This was a masterclass of world-building in only 200 pages. Though not an easy or subject wise a pleasant read - Peynado did evoke complex, profound emotions within such a short work.
Speculative science fiction of humanity and its nature, collapse of our ecosystems and the environment, of end-stage capitalism, corporate (and personal) greed, and of course, as the title would suggest, time.
This is a story of taking and losing.
“Don’t you know, how dangerous it is to have anything of value — worth taking or discovering or entering?”
This was a masterclass of world-building in only 200 pages. Though not an easy or subject wise a pleasant read - Peynado did evoke complex, profound emotions within such a short work.
Speculative science fiction of humanity and its nature, collapse of our ecosystems and the environment, of end-stage capitalism, corporate (and personal) greed, and of course, as the title would suggest, time.
This is a story of taking and losing.
November 5, 2024
I love the premise of this book a lot. It opens up a lot of thoughtfulness about our own world we live in. It didn't feel as though the author was telling the story, but rather was narrating a movie about it. The nuances & little details that go into actions & character development were missed. The way movies that are based on books often cut a lot of fluff & story lines to consolidate, is how this book felt. I enjoyed the overall story & ending.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 166 reviews