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The Other Valley
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Science Fiction (2024)A literary speculative novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town--except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town--except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.
450 pages, Library Binding
First published February 27, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,271 reviews
August 22, 2023
This is a quiet gem of a novel. Scott Alexander Howard takes a unique premise and executes it beautifully – never relying too heavily on his fantastical plot device to convey young Odile’s heartfelt story.
I loved the exploration of the moral and practical reasons a citizen should and should not be allowed to visit their neighboring valley to the east (20 years into their future) and to the west (20 years into their past). A more scrupulous reader might uncover some time travel plot holes here that I tried not to think too hard about – but if you suspend your disbelief and take the story at face value, you’ll find a thought-provoking and wistful tale that I, for one, greatly enjoyed.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf and follow @specshelf on Twitter.
I loved the exploration of the moral and practical reasons a citizen should and should not be allowed to visit their neighboring valley to the east (20 years into their future) and to the west (20 years into their past). A more scrupulous reader might uncover some time travel plot holes here that I tried not to think too hard about – but if you suspend your disbelief and take the story at face value, you’ll find a thought-provoking and wistful tale that I, for one, greatly enjoyed.
My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf and follow @specshelf on Twitter.
January 25, 2024
The premise of The Other Valley is high-concept, yet so simple it seems amazing no-one’s written this book before now. There’s a community in a valley. Some distance either side lie duplicate valleys – exactly the same, except one is twenty years in the past, the other twenty years into the future. Movement between valleys is both physically taxing and strictly controlled: requests must be approved or denied by a special council, the Conseil (and they are almost always denied).
Our protagonist and narrator, Odile Ozanne, is a 16-year-old schoolgirl who hopes to join the Conseil. At the same time as she enters the competitive ‘vetting’ process to win an apprenticeship, she accidentally witnesses a visit from residents of the future valley. She recognises them as the parents of her classmate Edme, and realises what this must mean: in the near future, Edme will die. Odile is drawn to him; they become friends; she begins to fall in love. In the second half of the story, we meet Odile as an adult and see how the events of her youth have affected her life.
This is a beautifully written book. One of the most impressive things about it is the clear distinction between its two parts. In the first half of the book, the valley is wistful, nostalgic and magical. The elegant prose, the evocative settings, the sense of potential surrounding both Odile’s future career and her putative relationship with Edme – all combine to create an impression of a place that feels at once familiar and entirely otherworldly. In the second half, however, that pretty facade is ripped away. We’re clearly in the same place, just seeing behind the curtain, being shown the details of the dirty work that makes this idyll possible for the lucky few. It’s such an effective way to illustrate different facets of a fictional world.
I was worried, early on, that this would be one of those books in which the course of someone’s entire life is dominated by a brief, youthful infatuation – a common plot point and one I dislike. But Howard is clearly aware this is a cliche. There’s a good balance between the obvious fact that the story’s world is unlike ours (time travel is possible here; regrets can be fixed, at a cost) and Odile’s own acknowledgement that she barely knew Edme. It’s a refreshingly unsentimental take on the trope, one that still allows for pathos and emotional heft.
The Other Valley is my favourite kind of speculative fiction, mastering the formula of compelling genre hook + stunning writing. So interesting, accomplished and such a smart idea, it’s not the type of book that immediately strikes you as a debut. I’d go out and get all the author’s other books if I could.
I received an advance review copy of The Other Valley from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Our protagonist and narrator, Odile Ozanne, is a 16-year-old schoolgirl who hopes to join the Conseil. At the same time as she enters the competitive ‘vetting’ process to win an apprenticeship, she accidentally witnesses a visit from residents of the future valley. She recognises them as the parents of her classmate Edme, and realises what this must mean: in the near future, Edme will die. Odile is drawn to him; they become friends; she begins to fall in love. In the second half of the story, we meet Odile as an adult and see how the events of her youth have affected her life.
This is a beautifully written book. One of the most impressive things about it is the clear distinction between its two parts. In the first half of the book, the valley is wistful, nostalgic and magical. The elegant prose, the evocative settings, the sense of potential surrounding both Odile’s future career and her putative relationship with Edme – all combine to create an impression of a place that feels at once familiar and entirely otherworldly. In the second half, however, that pretty facade is ripped away. We’re clearly in the same place, just seeing behind the curtain, being shown the details of the dirty work that makes this idyll possible for the lucky few. It’s such an effective way to illustrate different facets of a fictional world.
I was worried, early on, that this would be one of those books in which the course of someone’s entire life is dominated by a brief, youthful infatuation – a common plot point and one I dislike. But Howard is clearly aware this is a cliche. There’s a good balance between the obvious fact that the story’s world is unlike ours (time travel is possible here; regrets can be fixed, at a cost) and Odile’s own acknowledgement that she barely knew Edme. It’s a refreshingly unsentimental take on the trope, one that still allows for pathos and emotional heft.
The Other Valley is my favourite kind of speculative fiction, mastering the formula of compelling genre hook + stunning writing. So interesting, accomplished and such a smart idea, it’s not the type of book that immediately strikes you as a debut. I’d go out and get all the author’s other books if I could.
I received an advance review copy of The Other Valley from the publisher through Edelweiss.
August 23, 2024
1 star
Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon and Schuster for the free copy for review. This is my own unbiased opinion. Publishes February 27, 2024.
I refuse to read this book due to no indications when speech is present. No quotation marks, no italics, no dashes no double indents - nothing. It is frustrating and not worth my time to have to reread passages that just lulled on like background material when it was actually conversation.
If an author is not going to use proper symbols, syntax and language-related disciplines I do not have the time to read their work.
Sad that this is a debut book (bad habit to start out with!!) with what looked to be a good premise.
Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon and Schuster for the free copy for review. This is my own unbiased opinion. Publishes February 27, 2024.
I refuse to read this book due to no indications when speech is present. No quotation marks, no italics, no dashes no double indents - nothing. It is frustrating and not worth my time to have to reread passages that just lulled on like background material when it was actually conversation.
If an author is not going to use proper symbols, syntax and language-related disciplines I do not have the time to read their work.
Sad that this is a debut book (bad habit to start out with!!) with what looked to be a good premise.
June 18, 2025
Wholly original premise, fantastic world building, and wonderful writing had me engrossed from the first page and up all night reading. Entirely unique, unsettling, and existential crisis-inducing.... as another reviewer here wrote, "I have never read anything like this, and you haven’t either."
April 1, 2024
Some stand-out moments in this unique but flawed story of time travel that deals with themes of loss, obedience, conformity, consequences and missed opportunities.
3.5 stars rounded down. I don’t usually award half stars, but I’m so conflicted about how to rate this book that I don’t feel like I have any other option.
A brief summary from the blurb:
The time travel set-up interesting, and unique in my experience: the story is set in a valley bounded by mountains to the east and west. Beyond the mountains lie the same valley, but 20 years in the past to the west, and 20 years in the future to the east. This is an imaginative set-up for time travel. For me, though, it left significant questions unanswered that I found an ongoing distraction (more on that later).
A feeling of disconnection
First, let’s deal with the elephant in the room: there are no quotation marks. Direct speech is indicated by a paragraph break (although not always) along with the reader’s intuition that someone is now speaking due to the change in flow and tone. The story is told in the first person and there were quite a few times when I was genuinely confused about whether a sentence like “I didn’t know” was part of the first person narrative, or was being spoken by the narrator, or was being spoken by one of the other characters. I think I mostly got it right from context, but why is the author making me work so hard?
I have no problem with an author playing with convention and form for stylistic reasons or to provide a particular feel - but I simply didn’t see the point of the lack of quotation marks. Worse than that, not only did it get in the way of the reading experience, but it also got in the way of my engagement with the story and the characters. For me, the lack of quotation marks added distance - as if all of the speech was either badly remembered, or was being reported third-hand. It had the disconnected feel of a badly dubbed foreign film.
This brings me to characterisation. I’m not sure whether the main character, Odile, was supposed to be somewhat neurodivergent - with sentences like “startled, I forgot to smile back” seeming to indicate the processing of emotions being a deliberate activity - or perhaps she was just supposed to be shy. Either way, she is written with an emotional detachment, and seems to be on the sidelines for many of her experiences and relationships with other people. Unfortunately for me, this also meant that I had no sense of the depth of her emotion for her best friend, Edme, whose fate is pivotal for much of the plot. I did wonder whether this was just my own disconnection with the author - that perhaps the author wasn’t going to be able to make me feel anything for any of the characters - but this wasn’t the case: I found one of the scenes where Odile escorts an old man into an adjacent valley very moving.
The Time Travel Mechanism
I had so many problems with the time travel mechanism, where valleys to the east and west are 20 years removed…
Firstly, the entire world in which the story unfolds is only a few kilometres wide, but the society is advanced enough to have buses and cars. This means that there needs to be a certain amount of heavy industry: mining, steel works, petrochemicals, manufacturing, etc. This is briefly alluded to at one point (“The pavement ended and the streetlights tapered off at the gloomy remains of the brickyard and some factories. There was no more need for them to operate, the Conseil said“), but a few factories isn’t enough. Worse than this, the valley is also bounded to the north and south - the valley is the entire world. It’s not like there is an “industrial zone” elsewhere that would explain this. Of course, none of this is important to the plot, but I found it very distracting.
Secondly, the “single timeline” rules of time travel in this book would result in an incredibly delicate hold on a stable reality. Changes in the past (the west) will impact the future (the east). In fact, this is poetically described at one point: “A person goes west, he interferes, and then new time rolls over him like a wave, leaving nothing behind. It’s as simple and ruthless as that.” This set of timeline rules is fine in principle, and is well established in speculative fiction in general. However, when this is combined with the “walk west and you end up 20 years in the past” mechanism in this book, then the entire world becomes very fragile. The purpose of the “Conseil” in the book is to police movement between valleys, due to the consequences to the timeline of uncontrolled attempts to interfere with the past. However, we’re supposed to believe that the valleys go east and west without end - that they are effectively infinite. This means that the Conseil has to have a perfect record in every one of the infinite valleys to the west in order to prevent waves of updated time continuously crashing eastwards through the valleys. This seems unlikely. And what about a bird (because there are birds) flying west and, for example, causing a car accident? This delicacy of the timeline is essential to the plot, and yet is inherently infeasible.
The Good Stuff: Plot and Character
One final negative word before the good stuff: the pace is incredibly slow, and the balance of story establishment vs payoff is too skewed towards story establishment for my liking. For me, the payoff of all of the world building and character development kicked in at 80-90% of the way through, which represents quite a lot of slogging through world building up to that point.
However, the payoff was very satisfying. For all that I’ve criticised the distracting elements of style and world building, I found the progression of the plot (who ends up where, and for what reasons) to be surprising and enjoyable - there were points where the plot took a sharp turn in a way that I wasn’t expecting, and I really appreciated that.
The blurb would have us believe that the book is about lost love and redemption - the chance to bring back something that’s been lost. And while it is about that, the “something that’s been lost” runs so much deeper than a relationship with a childhood friend. Compliance to authority for the greater good in the face of personal loss is a theme that runs throughout the story. Coming to terms with regret and lost opportunity is also a persistent thread - and a thread that is made poignant by the tantalising prospect of being able to travel back in time and interfere, in an attempt to change outcomes. And it’s in the main character’s self-absorbed, introspective contemplation on the direction that her life has taken in the face of all of this that the author’s characterisation really shines. Odile’s combination of regret, resignation, and conflict later in the story ultimately gave her the sense of depth and reality that I was hoping for - and that’s what will stay with me from this book.
Thank you #NetGalley and Atlantic Books for the free review copy of #TheOtherValley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
3.5 stars rounded down. I don’t usually award half stars, but I’m so conflicted about how to rate this book that I don’t feel like I have any other option.
A brief summary from the blurb:
West is twenty years in the past.
East is twenty years in the future.
Would you travel through time to save the one you love?
Sixteen-year-old Odile Ozanne finds herself drawn into a devastating lifelong dilemma – to preserve the town’s carefully protected timeline, or to risk everything and try to rescue her one chance at happiness.
The time travel set-up interesting, and unique in my experience: the story is set in a valley bounded by mountains to the east and west. Beyond the mountains lie the same valley, but 20 years in the past to the west, and 20 years in the future to the east. This is an imaginative set-up for time travel. For me, though, it left significant questions unanswered that I found an ongoing distraction (more on that later).
A feeling of disconnection
First, let’s deal with the elephant in the room: there are no quotation marks. Direct speech is indicated by a paragraph break (although not always) along with the reader’s intuition that someone is now speaking due to the change in flow and tone. The story is told in the first person and there were quite a few times when I was genuinely confused about whether a sentence like “I didn’t know” was part of the first person narrative, or was being spoken by the narrator, or was being spoken by one of the other characters. I think I mostly got it right from context, but why is the author making me work so hard?
I have no problem with an author playing with convention and form for stylistic reasons or to provide a particular feel - but I simply didn’t see the point of the lack of quotation marks. Worse than that, not only did it get in the way of the reading experience, but it also got in the way of my engagement with the story and the characters. For me, the lack of quotation marks added distance - as if all of the speech was either badly remembered, or was being reported third-hand. It had the disconnected feel of a badly dubbed foreign film.
This brings me to characterisation. I’m not sure whether the main character, Odile, was supposed to be somewhat neurodivergent - with sentences like “startled, I forgot to smile back” seeming to indicate the processing of emotions being a deliberate activity - or perhaps she was just supposed to be shy. Either way, she is written with an emotional detachment, and seems to be on the sidelines for many of her experiences and relationships with other people. Unfortunately for me, this also meant that I had no sense of the depth of her emotion for her best friend, Edme, whose fate is pivotal for much of the plot. I did wonder whether this was just my own disconnection with the author - that perhaps the author wasn’t going to be able to make me feel anything for any of the characters - but this wasn’t the case: I found one of the scenes where Odile escorts an old man into an adjacent valley very moving.
The Time Travel Mechanism
I had so many problems with the time travel mechanism, where valleys to the east and west are 20 years removed…
Firstly, the entire world in which the story unfolds is only a few kilometres wide, but the society is advanced enough to have buses and cars. This means that there needs to be a certain amount of heavy industry: mining, steel works, petrochemicals, manufacturing, etc. This is briefly alluded to at one point (“The pavement ended and the streetlights tapered off at the gloomy remains of the brickyard and some factories. There was no more need for them to operate, the Conseil said“), but a few factories isn’t enough. Worse than this, the valley is also bounded to the north and south - the valley is the entire world. It’s not like there is an “industrial zone” elsewhere that would explain this. Of course, none of this is important to the plot, but I found it very distracting.
Secondly, the “single timeline” rules of time travel in this book would result in an incredibly delicate hold on a stable reality. Changes in the past (the west) will impact the future (the east). In fact, this is poetically described at one point: “A person goes west, he interferes, and then new time rolls over him like a wave, leaving nothing behind. It’s as simple and ruthless as that.” This set of timeline rules is fine in principle, and is well established in speculative fiction in general. However, when this is combined with the “walk west and you end up 20 years in the past” mechanism in this book, then the entire world becomes very fragile. The purpose of the “Conseil” in the book is to police movement between valleys, due to the consequences to the timeline of uncontrolled attempts to interfere with the past. However, we’re supposed to believe that the valleys go east and west without end - that they are effectively infinite. This means that the Conseil has to have a perfect record in every one of the infinite valleys to the west in order to prevent waves of updated time continuously crashing eastwards through the valleys. This seems unlikely. And what about a bird (because there are birds) flying west and, for example, causing a car accident? This delicacy of the timeline is essential to the plot, and yet is inherently infeasible.
The Good Stuff: Plot and Character
One final negative word before the good stuff: the pace is incredibly slow, and the balance of story establishment vs payoff is too skewed towards story establishment for my liking. For me, the payoff of all of the world building and character development kicked in at 80-90% of the way through, which represents quite a lot of slogging through world building up to that point.
However, the payoff was very satisfying. For all that I’ve criticised the distracting elements of style and world building, I found the progression of the plot (who ends up where, and for what reasons) to be surprising and enjoyable - there were points where the plot took a sharp turn in a way that I wasn’t expecting, and I really appreciated that.
The blurb would have us believe that the book is about lost love and redemption - the chance to bring back something that’s been lost. And while it is about that, the “something that’s been lost” runs so much deeper than a relationship with a childhood friend. Compliance to authority for the greater good in the face of personal loss is a theme that runs throughout the story. Coming to terms with regret and lost opportunity is also a persistent thread - and a thread that is made poignant by the tantalising prospect of being able to travel back in time and interfere, in an attempt to change outcomes. And it’s in the main character’s self-absorbed, introspective contemplation on the direction that her life has taken in the face of all of this that the author’s characterisation really shines. Odile’s combination of regret, resignation, and conflict later in the story ultimately gave her the sense of depth and reality that I was hoping for - and that’s what will stay with me from this book.
Thank you #NetGalley and Atlantic Books for the free review copy of #TheOtherValley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
April 27, 2024
Interesting premise - different from the usual "time travel" books. Unfortunately, the story didn't grip me. At first I thought maybe it was because the protagonist was a teen and coming-of-age-stories are often a miss for me.
However, I liked the second part when she's an adult even less. It was a predictable story that also didn't make much sense. I'd have preferred some explanation of how these valleys, parallel in every way but the years, existed. Instead we were treated to romantic feelings that I could have done without.
Not a bad book but not one for me.
However, I liked the second part when she's an adult even less. It was a predictable story that also didn't make much sense. I'd have preferred some explanation of how these valleys, parallel in every way but the years, existed. Instead we were treated to romantic feelings that I could have done without.
Not a bad book but not one for me.
May 22, 2025
This is a book for those kids who grew up reading The Giver by Lois Lowry and then fell in love with Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. A.K.A. ME!
If you like character-driven coming of age stories with a dystopian/speculative element, you have to check this one out. It's set in a small town nestled in a valley between two mountains. On each side of the valley, across the mountains, are identical towns to this one. However, to the west the town is 20 years in the past and to the east it's 20 years in the future. Crazy cool concept right?
Occasionally, visitors come into town from either direction for a no-contact 'visit' to see, from a distance. a loved one they either lost in the past or never got to see grow up into the future. These visits are vetted by a council that selects its members each year from a crop of students.
Our main character, Odile Ozanne, is one of those students vying for a position on the council when she accidentally witnesses a visit from the future town. She suspects she knows exactly who is visiting and what that could mean for the future of one of her companions. But she can't interfere, for any change in the present can have catastrophic consequences for the future over the eastern mountains.
There's so much to explore with a concept like that! The ethics of visitation, the regulation and decision-making behind who gets to make a visit, the butterfly effect, and all of this from a teenage perspective as she considers her own decisions, heavily influenced by her mother, and what she really truly wants out of life. Along the way the author builds out realistic, touching relationships between characters and of course throws in some twists along the way.
I hesitate to say much more because it's a book you really should read to discover on your own! I will say, if you want fast-paced, action-heavy science fiction/fantasy then this is not the book for you. It's quiet, contemplative and more literary in style; though there are definitely page-turning elements to this book purely because of the concept and what that means for the world in which they live. I was hooked from the get go, enjoyed spending my time with Odile as a main character, and very much appreciated the writing style which was so vivid and imaginative, without being overly flowery or lengthy.
I could absolutely see this as an amazing high-concept television show too. There really is so much in this world to explore and while the book doesn't fully explain all the world-building as some might want, I found it gave just enough to give context to this bildungsroman that made me feel fully immersed in this creative setting and wanting to find out what would happen.
If you like character-driven coming of age stories with a dystopian/speculative element, you have to check this one out. It's set in a small town nestled in a valley between two mountains. On each side of the valley, across the mountains, are identical towns to this one. However, to the west the town is 20 years in the past and to the east it's 20 years in the future. Crazy cool concept right?
Occasionally, visitors come into town from either direction for a no-contact 'visit' to see, from a distance. a loved one they either lost in the past or never got to see grow up into the future. These visits are vetted by a council that selects its members each year from a crop of students.
Our main character, Odile Ozanne, is one of those students vying for a position on the council when she accidentally witnesses a visit from the future town. She suspects she knows exactly who is visiting and what that could mean for the future of one of her companions. But she can't interfere, for any change in the present can have catastrophic consequences for the future over the eastern mountains.
There's so much to explore with a concept like that! The ethics of visitation, the regulation and decision-making behind who gets to make a visit, the butterfly effect, and all of this from a teenage perspective as she considers her own decisions, heavily influenced by her mother, and what she really truly wants out of life. Along the way the author builds out realistic, touching relationships between characters and of course throws in some twists along the way.
I hesitate to say much more because it's a book you really should read to discover on your own! I will say, if you want fast-paced, action-heavy science fiction/fantasy then this is not the book for you. It's quiet, contemplative and more literary in style; though there are definitely page-turning elements to this book purely because of the concept and what that means for the world in which they live. I was hooked from the get go, enjoyed spending my time with Odile as a main character, and very much appreciated the writing style which was so vivid and imaginative, without being overly flowery or lengthy.
I could absolutely see this as an amazing high-concept television show too. There really is so much in this world to explore and while the book doesn't fully explain all the world-building as some might want, I found it gave just enough to give context to this bildungsroman that made me feel fully immersed in this creative setting and wanting to find out what would happen.
October 29, 2023
What an interesting concept. I must give the author props for originality. Imagine a town in a valley. On the other side is the same town in the same valley but they are separated by twenty years. One town twenty years in the past, the other twenty years in the future. Got it?
Sixteen-year-old Odile wants a place on the council. If she gets the spot, she gets to decide who can visit/cross the borders into her town. One day she witnesses two elderly individuals and recognizes them as the elderly parents of the boy she loves. When she sees them, she realizes that the one she loves is going to die.
The premise of this book is intriguing, and I feel that this book would play out well in movie form. It took some time for me to wrap my mind around this. I am not the biggest fantasy and speculative fiction reader and I feel that others will enjoy this book more than I did.
This is a thought-provoking, original book, I will give it back. Can you change the past? Will knowing the future change your present?
Very interesting concept and original. Others are enjoying this book more than I did, please read their reviews as well. This is not a long book, but it felt longer to me, mainly because it wasn't my cup of tea and at times the pacing felt off at times.
I received a copy of this book from Atria Books and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com
Sixteen-year-old Odile wants a place on the council. If she gets the spot, she gets to decide who can visit/cross the borders into her town. One day she witnesses two elderly individuals and recognizes them as the elderly parents of the boy she loves. When she sees them, she realizes that the one she loves is going to die.
The premise of this book is intriguing, and I feel that this book would play out well in movie form. It took some time for me to wrap my mind around this. I am not the biggest fantasy and speculative fiction reader and I feel that others will enjoy this book more than I did.
This is a thought-provoking, original book, I will give it back. Can you change the past? Will knowing the future change your present?
Very interesting concept and original. Others are enjoying this book more than I did, please read their reviews as well. This is not a long book, but it felt longer to me, mainly because it wasn't my cup of tea and at times the pacing felt off at times.
I received a copy of this book from Atria Books and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com
February 17, 2024
Trigger warning: No quotation marks used in this book.
If you made it beyond that initial statement, then prepare for this quiet novel to stay in your head, lingering in the natural beauty that the valley creates.
This is a dystopian novel where every section of the valley is the same, just twenty years difference between the segments, If you go East, you go into the future and West is the past. Of course, in all dystopian lore, there is a conseil that determines if people that apply to go to another valley get to go. There are rules, and strict processes around these visits so as not to disturb the future outcome. This was a quiet novel and the writing really captured me, I found myself thinking of these characters even when I wasn't reading. Certainly one to sit with and ponder.
Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon & Schuster for the free copy for review.
If you made it beyond that initial statement, then prepare for this quiet novel to stay in your head, lingering in the natural beauty that the valley creates.
This is a dystopian novel where every section of the valley is the same, just twenty years difference between the segments, If you go East, you go into the future and West is the past. Of course, in all dystopian lore, there is a conseil that determines if people that apply to go to another valley get to go. There are rules, and strict processes around these visits so as not to disturb the future outcome. This was a quiet novel and the writing really captured me, I found myself thinking of these characters even when I wasn't reading. Certainly one to sit with and ponder.
Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon & Schuster for the free copy for review.
April 29, 2024
The last thirty pages or so are great. But the rest of the book was so hard for me to go through, I just kept going because of all the positive reviews I've seen for this book. In a way, I feel like I haven't read the same thing as everybody else. It's not a bad novel, it felt just like a miss to me because the idea of the plot is good (the blurb literally made me skip other novels on my TBR list for this one).
In a town where the neighbouring town east is twenty years in the future and the town west is twenty years in the past, we follow sixteen-year-old Odile's story. Though the passage between towns is very limited and undercover, she recognizes two visitors, the parents of her friend, and guesses a tragedy is going to happen to him and that's why their travel was allowed.
Trying to change the past to change the future is forbidden. It's about people are really capable of accepting tragedies when they could have the possibility to prevent it, and how far they are willing to go.
I had mostly a problem with how it was written. There's a problem with the pacing/ the rhythm of the sentences, that makes most of the book quite slow and boring. The absence of quotation marks for conversations leads to needing to reread entire paragraphs to get what is told and to differentiate the conversations from the narrator's storytelling. The writing of the novel overall feels very oral, which is not bad but I don't believe it works well with this, and its different parts . Maybe an omniscient narrator or a writing that felt less like someone telling their story would work better.
I think the choice of Francophone names and words throughout the novel is really interesting. As a French girlie, it broke the illusion of the book at times because of the mix between the story in English and the names in French (which are not famous to be pretty btw), but I'm a particular case, it probably didn't cause the same effect on most readers. Still, some of those names are not coherent with the others. What's especially special about the choice of those names is that they are mostly middle-aged to old people's names. With the absence of technology in the novel (I think the only thing mentioned are radios), I pictured a sort of mid-twenty-century French city type of place. It's very unusual for Speculative Fiction to happen in that sort of location but it was a clever idea if it was voluntary.
As I said, I liked the end, it doesn't save the book but I'll take it.
At the end of the book I still have this dumb question: what's on the north and south of the towns? I'm so frustrated by that because I'm almost sure it wasn't answered though it was mentioned that people who escape their town try to skirt other towns to get to the one they want to go to.
It's just so disappointing how the book doesn't live up to my expectations.
In a town where the neighbouring town east is twenty years in the future and the town west is twenty years in the past, we follow sixteen-year-old Odile's story. Though the passage between towns is very limited and undercover, she recognizes two visitors, the parents of her friend, and guesses a tragedy is going to happen to him and that's why their travel was allowed.
Trying to change the past to change the future is forbidden. It's about people are really capable of accepting tragedies when they could have the possibility to prevent it, and how far they are willing to go.
I had mostly a problem with how it was written. There's a problem with the pacing/ the rhythm of the sentences, that makes most of the book quite slow and boring. The absence of quotation marks for conversations leads to needing to reread entire paragraphs to get what is told and to differentiate the conversations from the narrator's storytelling. The writing of the novel overall feels very oral, which is not bad but I don't believe it works well with this, and its different parts . Maybe an omniscient narrator or a writing that felt less like someone telling their story would work better.
I think the choice of Francophone names and words throughout the novel is really interesting. As a French girlie, it broke the illusion of the book at times because of the mix between the story in English and the names in French (which are not famous to be pretty btw), but I'm a particular case, it probably didn't cause the same effect on most readers. Still, some of those names are not coherent with the others. What's especially special about the choice of those names is that they are mostly middle-aged to old people's names. With the absence of technology in the novel (I think the only thing mentioned are radios), I pictured a sort of mid-twenty-century French city type of place. It's very unusual for Speculative Fiction to happen in that sort of location but it was a clever idea if it was voluntary.
As I said, I liked the end, it doesn't save the book but I'll take it.
At the end of the book I still have this dumb question: what's on the north and south of the towns? I'm so frustrated by that because I'm almost sure it wasn't answered though it was mentioned that people who escape their town try to skirt other towns to get to the one they want to go to.
It's just so disappointing how the book doesn't live up to my expectations.
March 10, 2024
Last month I declared that I’d found my favorite book of the year, and that was true when I said it. But I had not yet read this book.
Things have changed.
I cannot even begin to describe how much I adore melancholic narrators. I mean it. Let your sad character tell the story and I’ll probably be hooked. It doesn’t hurt to have their sad storytelling marked by gorgeous prose and a lyrical rhythm. If you manage that, I’ll be seeing stars (five of them, to be exact) as I read.
I can’t think of many narrators who have sounded more beautifully tragic than Odile.
The Other Valley was bursting with philosophical depth. It raised some interesting questions regarding death, grief, and the choices we’re left with when faced with difficult information. Most importantly, it bred thought about our right to interfere with fate. It is, in a sense, a time travel story (something I previously mentioned not liking very much), but the trope is not conventionally used, and the entire setup is quite innovative.
I was extremely reactive to this emotionally affective tale, gnawing my nails down to the quick as it shocked, devastated, and worried me. It hit me so hard that just as I stumbled into part two, it began to haunt my dreams. My mind frantically tried to stitch together all of the story’s broken pieces. I was reaching toward a seemingly unattainable hope, and desperate to see what scraps the author would give me in the end.
Despite all of this stress, I still relished its sweetness. I loved the charming banter between Edme and Odile. Although Edme’s destiny was clear from the start, I still rooted for romance, and wanting anything of that nature from a novel is fairly rare for me.
I was also impressed with how this male author managed to depict the loneliness and awkwardness of his female protagonist in a way I often found relatable. He even managed to stir my core with the illustrated accuracy of bullying, bitingly cruel passive aggression, and predatory men. It was also interesting to see how he used such a logically minded character to evoke emotion from his readers. He succeeded, and I cannot imagine that was an easy feat. I remain in awe of all he accomplished.
The Other Valley has made its mark on me and I am sure it is a permanent one. This was an incredible and intelligent debut. I cannot sing its praises loudly enough.
Things have changed.
I cannot even begin to describe how much I adore melancholic narrators. I mean it. Let your sad character tell the story and I’ll probably be hooked. It doesn’t hurt to have their sad storytelling marked by gorgeous prose and a lyrical rhythm. If you manage that, I’ll be seeing stars (five of them, to be exact) as I read.
I can’t think of many narrators who have sounded more beautifully tragic than Odile.
The Other Valley was bursting with philosophical depth. It raised some interesting questions regarding death, grief, and the choices we’re left with when faced with difficult information. Most importantly, it bred thought about our right to interfere with fate. It is, in a sense, a time travel story (something I previously mentioned not liking very much), but the trope is not conventionally used, and the entire setup is quite innovative.
I was extremely reactive to this emotionally affective tale, gnawing my nails down to the quick as it shocked, devastated, and worried me. It hit me so hard that just as I stumbled into part two, it began to haunt my dreams. My mind frantically tried to stitch together all of the story’s broken pieces. I was reaching toward a seemingly unattainable hope, and desperate to see what scraps the author would give me in the end.
Despite all of this stress, I still relished its sweetness. I loved the charming banter between Edme and Odile. Although Edme’s destiny was clear from the start, I still rooted for romance, and wanting anything of that nature from a novel is fairly rare for me.
I was also impressed with how this male author managed to depict the loneliness and awkwardness of his female protagonist in a way I often found relatable. He even managed to stir my core with the illustrated accuracy of bullying, bitingly cruel passive aggression, and predatory men. It was also interesting to see how he used such a logically minded character to evoke emotion from his readers. He succeeded, and I cannot imagine that was an easy feat. I remain in awe of all he accomplished.
The Other Valley has made its mark on me and I am sure it is a permanent one. This was an incredible and intelligent debut. I cannot sing its praises loudly enough.
March 20, 2024
Ich mag gut konstruierte Science-Fiction sehr, insbesondere wenn bei Zeitreisen die logische Konsistenz gewährleistet wird, was gar nicht so einfach ist, wenn Personen sowohl in die Vergangenheit als auch in die Zukunft eingreifen können. Der Autor vermeidet in seinem Gedankenexperiment sogar letztendlich das Zeitparadoxon inklusive die Bildung von Paralleluniversen, indem er das Ende offenlässt. So eine schlüssige Konstruktion ist zwar manchmal ein bisschen detailverliebt und etwas technokratisch, hat mich aber ob der Qualität ordentlich begeistert, zumal ja auch sehr viele philosophische Themen angesprochen werden, ob man die Zukunft verändern kann, und wenn man es kann, ob man dann so etwas tun sollte. Ob die Macht des Schicksals überhaupt existiert oder ob freier Wille möglich ist, weil ohnehin alles so kommt, wie es kommen musste, ergo der Mensch wenig Eingriffsmöglichkeiten hat. Eine sehr spannende Auseinandersetzung ist dem Autor hier mit diesem Debut gelungen.
Der sehr interessante Roman beginnt vordergründig ganz traditionell mit der Geschichte von ein paar Jugendlichen in einem hermetisch abgeschotteten Tal. Protagonistin Odile Ozanne lebt bei ihrer alleinerziehenden Mutter, der Vater ist nicht mehr da, irgendwo in einem anderen Tal. Erstmalig knüpft die Einzelgängerin Odile Kontakt zu ihren männlichen Klassenkameraden Alain und Edme und freundet sich ebenso mit den Mädchen Jo und Justine an.
Relativ bald wird klar, was in dieser beschriebenen Enklave nicht stimmt. An den Grenzen des Landes im Westen kann man anhand einer Zeitleiste in 20-Jahr-Schritten in die Vergangenheit reisen und im Osten dieselbe Zeitspanne in die Zukunft. Es handelt sich immer um dasselbe Tal in unterschiedlichen Zeitzonen. Plötzlich ist auch klar, dass Odiles Vater nicht ausgewandert, sondern gestorben ist.
Die Schüler der Klasse bewerben sich für unterschiedliche Berufe, die sie nachträglich sehr schwer wechseln können. Eine verfestigte Rolle in der Gesellschaft kann kaum mehr geändert werden. Odile und Jo bewerben sich für das sehr angesehene Conseil, das ist ein Richtergremium, das in Trauerfällen nach Prüfung des Falls ein Überschreiten der Grenzen des Tals in sehr engen Rahmenbedingungen und unter der Aufsicht von Wachleuten genehmigt, um Menschen zum Beispiel das Abschiednehmen von Verwandten zu ermöglichen. Die Wachmannschaften passen auf, dass Familienmitglieder und Freunde aus der Zukunft nicht aktiv werden, um den Tod der geliebten Menschen zu verhindern oder irgendwie anders in die Abläufe der Vergangenheit einzugreifen. Hier wird also sehr rigoros das Zeitparadoxon verhindert.
Odile weiß auch, dass ihr Freund Edme wahrscheinlich sterben wird, sie hat seine Eltern aus der Zukunft gesehen, die sich von ihrem Sohn verabschieden. Eine sanfte Liebesbeziehung keimt zwischen Odile und Edme auf, in der Zeit während sich die Protagonistin in einem Auswahlverfahren als Mitglied des Conseils bewirbt und auf Herz und Nieren ihre Loyalität und ihr Urteilsvermögen geprüft wird. Das junge Mädchen gerät in eine moralische Zwickmühle, den Freund zu warnen und seinen Tod zu verhindern wäre möglich, aber Odile entscheidet sich für das System und lässt das Unglück geschehen. Bedauerlicherweise kommt sie nach dem tragischen Todesfall mit ihrer Entscheidung nicht zurecht und bricht die Ausbildung ab.
In der Zukunft ergreift sie den wenig angesehenen Beruf einer Wachfrau, die genau diese Grenzgänger, die vom Conseil eine Zeitreisegenehmigung erhalten haben, begleitet und ist natürlich aufgrund ihres Dienstes im Osten versucht, erstens in ihre Zukunft zu schauen, diese in der Gegenwart zu ändern und zweitens an der Westgrenze die Fehler aus ihrer Kindheit zu korrigieren. Das ist wirklich ganz großes Kino, wie sie ihre eigene, vorab gesehene furchtbare Zukunft genau trotz der Handlungen zur Vermeidung derselben herbeiführt. ‚Ebenso meisterhaft konzipiert ist, wie der Autor in Miniszenen, die momentan sehr wenig mit dem gegenwärtigen Geschehen zu tun haben scheinen, mit den Figuren aus der Zukunft und Vergangenheit spielt. Das ist sehr komplex und trotzdem logisch, wie die Puzzleteile von Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft in dem Setting ineinanderpassen und grandios durchdacht letztendlich einrasten. Großartig! Im Finale stellt sich die Frage, ob die Protagonistin ihrem Schicksal entrinnen kann oder nicht. Das Ende ist übrigens sensationell, subtil, zum Nachdenken und lässt Platz für Fantasie!
Die Figuren sind in allen Zeitzonen ausnehmend gut gezeichnet, konsistent entwickelt, was ja durch die Sprünge auch gar nicht so einfach zu bewerkstelligen ist. Im Setting erinnert mich das Werk ein bisschen an Die Frau des Zeitreisenden von Audrey Niffenegger, mir hat aber dieser Roman besser gefallen.
Fazit: Ich bin total hingerissen von der Geschichte, dem grandiosen Plot, den Figuren und der philosophischen Aussage und fand auch kein Wort zu viel geschrieben, obwohl ich normalerweise zu starke epische Breite und Ausführlichkeit immer kritisiere. In dem Fall muss ich aber sagen, dass ich solche detailverliebten Rätsel, in Form von Literatur schon immer sehr gerne mochte. Also wärmste Leseempfehlung von mir. Plottechnisch könnte und sollte man den Roman sogar mehrmals lesen, denn oft ergeben winzige Szenen erst in der Nachschau Sinn, wenn im Finale Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft inklusive der Zeitschleifen gemeinsam auf dem Tisch liegen.
Der sehr interessante Roman beginnt vordergründig ganz traditionell mit der Geschichte von ein paar Jugendlichen in einem hermetisch abgeschotteten Tal. Protagonistin Odile Ozanne lebt bei ihrer alleinerziehenden Mutter, der Vater ist nicht mehr da, irgendwo in einem anderen Tal. Erstmalig knüpft die Einzelgängerin Odile Kontakt zu ihren männlichen Klassenkameraden Alain und Edme und freundet sich ebenso mit den Mädchen Jo und Justine an.
Relativ bald wird klar, was in dieser beschriebenen Enklave nicht stimmt. An den Grenzen des Landes im Westen kann man anhand einer Zeitleiste in 20-Jahr-Schritten in die Vergangenheit reisen und im Osten dieselbe Zeitspanne in die Zukunft. Es handelt sich immer um dasselbe Tal in unterschiedlichen Zeitzonen. Plötzlich ist auch klar, dass Odiles Vater nicht ausgewandert, sondern gestorben ist.
Die Schüler der Klasse bewerben sich für unterschiedliche Berufe, die sie nachträglich sehr schwer wechseln können. Eine verfestigte Rolle in der Gesellschaft kann kaum mehr geändert werden. Odile und Jo bewerben sich für das sehr angesehene Conseil, das ist ein Richtergremium, das in Trauerfällen nach Prüfung des Falls ein Überschreiten der Grenzen des Tals in sehr engen Rahmenbedingungen und unter der Aufsicht von Wachleuten genehmigt, um Menschen zum Beispiel das Abschiednehmen von Verwandten zu ermöglichen. Die Wachmannschaften passen auf, dass Familienmitglieder und Freunde aus der Zukunft nicht aktiv werden, um den Tod der geliebten Menschen zu verhindern oder irgendwie anders in die Abläufe der Vergangenheit einzugreifen. Hier wird also sehr rigoros das Zeitparadoxon verhindert.
Odile weiß auch, dass ihr Freund Edme wahrscheinlich sterben wird, sie hat seine Eltern aus der Zukunft gesehen, die sich von ihrem Sohn verabschieden. Eine sanfte Liebesbeziehung keimt zwischen Odile und Edme auf, in der Zeit während sich die Protagonistin in einem Auswahlverfahren als Mitglied des Conseils bewirbt und auf Herz und Nieren ihre Loyalität und ihr Urteilsvermögen geprüft wird. Das junge Mädchen gerät in eine moralische Zwickmühle, den Freund zu warnen und seinen Tod zu verhindern wäre möglich, aber Odile entscheidet sich für das System und lässt das Unglück geschehen. Bedauerlicherweise kommt sie nach dem tragischen Todesfall mit ihrer Entscheidung nicht zurecht und bricht die Ausbildung ab.
In der Zukunft ergreift sie den wenig angesehenen Beruf einer Wachfrau, die genau diese Grenzgänger, die vom Conseil eine Zeitreisegenehmigung erhalten haben, begleitet und ist natürlich aufgrund ihres Dienstes im Osten versucht, erstens in ihre Zukunft zu schauen, diese in der Gegenwart zu ändern und zweitens an der Westgrenze die Fehler aus ihrer Kindheit zu korrigieren. Das ist wirklich ganz großes Kino, wie sie ihre eigene, vorab gesehene furchtbare Zukunft genau trotz der Handlungen zur Vermeidung derselben herbeiführt. ‚Ebenso meisterhaft konzipiert ist, wie der Autor in Miniszenen, die momentan sehr wenig mit dem gegenwärtigen Geschehen zu tun haben scheinen, mit den Figuren aus der Zukunft und Vergangenheit spielt. Das ist sehr komplex und trotzdem logisch, wie die Puzzleteile von Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft in dem Setting ineinanderpassen und grandios durchdacht letztendlich einrasten. Großartig! Im Finale stellt sich die Frage, ob die Protagonistin ihrem Schicksal entrinnen kann oder nicht. Das Ende ist übrigens sensationell, subtil, zum Nachdenken und lässt Platz für Fantasie!
Die Figuren sind in allen Zeitzonen ausnehmend gut gezeichnet, konsistent entwickelt, was ja durch die Sprünge auch gar nicht so einfach zu bewerkstelligen ist. Im Setting erinnert mich das Werk ein bisschen an Die Frau des Zeitreisenden von Audrey Niffenegger, mir hat aber dieser Roman besser gefallen.
Fazit: Ich bin total hingerissen von der Geschichte, dem grandiosen Plot, den Figuren und der philosophischen Aussage und fand auch kein Wort zu viel geschrieben, obwohl ich normalerweise zu starke epische Breite und Ausführlichkeit immer kritisiere. In dem Fall muss ich aber sagen, dass ich solche detailverliebten Rätsel, in Form von Literatur schon immer sehr gerne mochte. Also wärmste Leseempfehlung von mir. Plottechnisch könnte und sollte man den Roman sogar mehrmals lesen, denn oft ergeben winzige Szenen erst in der Nachschau Sinn, wenn im Finale Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft inklusive der Zeitschleifen gemeinsam auf dem Tisch liegen.
March 11, 2024
Odile is a 16 year old girl living in a valley surrounded on either side by identical valleys - except the valley to the west is 20 years in the past, and the one to the east is 20 years in the future. She competes for a seat on the Conseil, a privileged position that controls the strictly regulated travel between valleys.
One day Odile recognizes two Visitors as the future parents of her friend Edme. Approval for visitors from the future town is rare unless to visit a dead loved one, signaling trouble for Edme, with whom Odile has been growing closer. Keeping this secret is crucial for her future and the timeline itself. But as her feelings for Edme grow stronger, can she watch and do nothing?
This debut novel seamlessly blends speculative fiction and philosophical exploration. Part science fiction, part coming-of-age story, it asks you: how far you would go to save someone you love? Initially young and impressionable, Odile grapples with identity, belonging, and the nuances of relationships, transforming into a woman burdened by her past, confronting the repercussions of her actions.
The prose is gorgeous and lyrical and a pure joy to read. My only criticism is that the author doesn't use quotation marks when characters speak, which initially made it challenging to read.
As I've gotten older, stories about memory, consequences, time and regret resonate more deeply. Anyone who has experienced loss will relate to Odile's story. I lost my mother to cancer 13 years ago, and what wouldn't I do to see her one more time? What if I could change her fate at the expense of someone else? This novel raises profound questions about morality, right vs wrong, and the essence of existence.
I think this book is a beautiful and poignant read, establishing Howard as an author to watch. I promise I'll be thinking about this book for a long time to come.
One day Odile recognizes two Visitors as the future parents of her friend Edme. Approval for visitors from the future town is rare unless to visit a dead loved one, signaling trouble for Edme, with whom Odile has been growing closer. Keeping this secret is crucial for her future and the timeline itself. But as her feelings for Edme grow stronger, can she watch and do nothing?
This debut novel seamlessly blends speculative fiction and philosophical exploration. Part science fiction, part coming-of-age story, it asks you: how far you would go to save someone you love? Initially young and impressionable, Odile grapples with identity, belonging, and the nuances of relationships, transforming into a woman burdened by her past, confronting the repercussions of her actions.
The prose is gorgeous and lyrical and a pure joy to read. My only criticism is that the author doesn't use quotation marks when characters speak, which initially made it challenging to read.
As I've gotten older, stories about memory, consequences, time and regret resonate more deeply. Anyone who has experienced loss will relate to Odile's story. I lost my mother to cancer 13 years ago, and what wouldn't I do to see her one more time? What if I could change her fate at the expense of someone else? This novel raises profound questions about morality, right vs wrong, and the essence of existence.
I think this book is a beautiful and poignant read, establishing Howard as an author to watch. I promise I'll be thinking about this book for a long time to come.
April 28, 2025
Author Scott Alexander Howard first published this novel in 2024. The cover notes describe this as fantasy or speculative fiction, and I would maybe add the label of magical realism or absurdist fantasy.
Essentially there is a valley, near other valleys, and communities live in the valleys but they are related in that one will be at one time, and another will be twenty years behind and another twenty years in the future and so on. So there are some time travel elements also.
I never really bought into the idea, intriguing as it is. I never really invested in or to be honest never really understood the characters. There are some vaguely dystopian themes and some protocols I never fully grasped.
Time travel novels are hit or miss for me and while this is on its surface is kind of a time travel novel, this is more like a philosophical musing with time travel blended in. And I never really liked that either.
Weird book.
Essentially there is a valley, near other valleys, and communities live in the valleys but they are related in that one will be at one time, and another will be twenty years behind and another twenty years in the future and so on. So there are some time travel elements also.
I never really bought into the idea, intriguing as it is. I never really invested in or to be honest never really understood the characters. There are some vaguely dystopian themes and some protocols I never fully grasped.
Time travel novels are hit or miss for me and while this is on its surface is kind of a time travel novel, this is more like a philosophical musing with time travel blended in. And I never really liked that either.
Weird book.
September 30, 2024
Time travel books generally make my head hurt, but I got through this one to the end without having any questions, although I admit the circular nature of time travel did get confusing at the very end. But because of that confusion, I’m now wondering a whole lot of new questions regarding the future rather than how-in-the-worlds, which are the normal questions I struggle with when confronted by this circuity. It wasn’t clever. It was even a little sad. But it was redemptive and satisfying.
November 20, 2024
Melancholic speculative fiction that has gorgeous prose AND a killer plot??! This is my perfect book.
I really had zero issues with this. Yes I just finished it so maybe it’s recency bias but FUCK IT! I love this book!!!! And the last 40 pages felt like a breathless sprint. This is everything to me!!!!!
I really had zero issues with this. Yes I just finished it so maybe it’s recency bias but FUCK IT! I love this book!!!! And the last 40 pages felt like a breathless sprint. This is everything to me!!!!!
January 7, 2024
I do recommend going into this entirely cold. I did, and I truly enjoyed the experience of discovering the world Howard has built. It is both a genre novel and "literary," meaning, I guess, that it is a little slow and reads more like a traditional novel than the speedy prose of genre that tends to draw attention in particular ways with particular rhythms and tropes. But I know that most people will probably read the jacket copy so if you do want to know how well it does at what it does, read on.
I love time travel stories but only the very good ones. I do not like anything boring, anything I have seen before a hundred times. This book certainly met those criteria, its unusual premise is very simple but quite novel. The world it builds is similar, very simple, as is the prose. But like the good time travel stories the novelty is the pleasure, the way it makes you consider time and regret and possibility.
I thought, as I neared the end of this book, that I knew what it was doing. And I was okay with it but I was disappointed. All this interesting stuff, I thought, just to have a very by the book ending. But! I was wrong. I was surprised. And I was very, very pleased.
It is not that this book reinvents an entire subgenre. But Howard has clearly thought deeply about how to construct his plot and what it all means for his characters. It creates a really fantastic experience for the reader.
It does, as these stories do, have a tendency to make you question flaws or loopholes in its rules. I found one in particular quite obvious but I was willing to let it go and not worry about it. The thing that actually bothered me was a piece of Howard's world, making the gendarmes a low status position, which doesn't make much sense at all in the society he's built. But, again, I let it pass because he made good use of it in the story and I would rather have that then everything line up perfectly.
I love time travel stories but only the very good ones. I do not like anything boring, anything I have seen before a hundred times. This book certainly met those criteria, its unusual premise is very simple but quite novel. The world it builds is similar, very simple, as is the prose. But like the good time travel stories the novelty is the pleasure, the way it makes you consider time and regret and possibility.
I thought, as I neared the end of this book, that I knew what it was doing. And I was okay with it but I was disappointed. All this interesting stuff, I thought, just to have a very by the book ending. But! I was wrong. I was surprised. And I was very, very pleased.
It is not that this book reinvents an entire subgenre. But Howard has clearly thought deeply about how to construct his plot and what it all means for his characters. It creates a really fantastic experience for the reader.
It does, as these stories do, have a tendency to make you question flaws or loopholes in its rules. I found one in particular quite obvious but I was willing to let it go and not worry about it. The thing that actually bothered me was a piece of Howard's world, making the gendarmes a low status position, which doesn't make much sense at all in the society he's built. But, again, I let it pass because he made good use of it in the story and I would rather have that then everything line up perfectly.
Read
March 4, 2024Scott Alexander Howard, your debut made me cry over my dinner plate. I hope you’re proud. Making a reader cry is every author’s dream. Now please stop reading my review because you don’t want to know the reason for my tears.
*waits for the author to leave*
Those of you who are still reading will notice that I’m not giving The Other Valley a star rating. This is because my feelings on the book are a quantum superposition of two ratings that lie on the opposite sides of 3 stars.
First there’s the rating I want to give it for the beautiful interactions between the main character and Edme, the boy who plans to audition for the conservatory against his parents’ wishes.
This teenager loves his violin more than anything. He can hear three ugly notes and improvise around them until he has composed a violin concerto for the ages. This is also the teenager that gets drunk on his friend’s wine and describes it as “piss. Many discordant notes.” Some of the Edme scenes made me feel wonderful things.
Then there’s the rating I want to give the book’s pace. It was so slow that at certain points I was tearing my hair out as I waited to see what the narration was leading to.
Part of my problem is my very low tolerance for superfluous descriptions. I know many readers enjoy seeing a clever description of a person stirring porridge with a wooden spoon. I, unfortunately, just get annoyed because I come to fiction for the stories. If I wanted to visualize reality, I would just use my eyes instead of reading about it. The Other Valley will be more enjoyable for those readers who enjoy poetry and beautiful writing and other literary things like that.
A much bigger part of my problem was that I really, really, really wanted to like this book. Speculative coming of age novels that aren’t written for a YA audience don’t exactly come out every other hour. And hopes and expectations are never good baggage to bring into a new book.
How dare you do this to me, Scott Alexander Howard.
*waits for the author to leave*
Those of you who are still reading will notice that I’m not giving The Other Valley a star rating. This is because my feelings on the book are a quantum superposition of two ratings that lie on the opposite sides of 3 stars.
First there’s the rating I want to give it for the beautiful interactions between the main character and Edme, the boy who plans to audition for the conservatory against his parents’ wishes.
This teenager loves his violin more than anything. He can hear three ugly notes and improvise around them until he has composed a violin concerto for the ages. This is also the teenager that gets drunk on his friend’s wine and describes it as “piss. Many discordant notes.” Some of the Edme scenes made me feel wonderful things.
Then there’s the rating I want to give the book’s pace. It was so slow that at certain points I was tearing my hair out as I waited to see what the narration was leading to.
Part of my problem is my very low tolerance for superfluous descriptions. I know many readers enjoy seeing a clever description of a person stirring porridge with a wooden spoon. I, unfortunately, just get annoyed because I come to fiction for the stories. If I wanted to visualize reality, I would just use my eyes instead of reading about it. The Other Valley will be more enjoyable for those readers who enjoy poetry and beautiful writing and other literary things like that.
A much bigger part of my problem was that I really, really, really wanted to like this book. Speculative coming of age novels that aren’t written for a YA audience don’t exactly come out every other hour. And hopes and expectations are never good baggage to bring into a new book.
How dare you do this to me, Scott Alexander Howard.
May 1, 2024
An interesting premise: a series of multiverses live 20 years in the past to the west and 20 years in the future to the east. We follow the progress of one woman’s life around a tragic accident that changes the course of her life forever.
We never really uncover why this universe is the way it is, so the book ends up feeling more ‘magical realism’ than ‘sci-fi’.
The protagonist was a character I just could not connect with. She felt emotionally barren, and while there is a sort of twist at the end, it didn’t feel like a particularly impactful ending.
I am longing to read a really beautiful book right now.
We never really uncover why this universe is the way it is, so the book ends up feeling more ‘magical realism’ than ‘sci-fi’.
The protagonist was a character I just could not connect with. She felt emotionally barren, and while there is a sort of twist at the end, it didn’t feel like a particularly impactful ending.
I am longing to read a really beautiful book right now.
August 28, 2025
Really intriguing concept, but nowhere near as poignant as I’d hoped.
The writing was also a mixed bag: sometimes descriptive, but never really sparking intellectually or evoking real feeling. It might’ve been better as third person omniscient narrative voice rather than first person as well. Towards the end of the book, for example, the main character says “I had a feeling of overwhelming loneliness,” which is just so utterly underwhelming—aside from its distance, there are so many ways to convey that by setting, circumstance, description, physical movement (or lack of it), dialogue, etc. that hearing that sentence really made me rethink the book as a whole. And I realized that the story is related as a recitation of events more than anything else, but even so, books like Never Let Me Go evoke much more emotion. A book like this feels practically written to be a mid-prestige miniseries.
The story outline had such potential, but personally, the ideas and ethical dilemmas weren’t enough to leave much of an impression on me.
Audio Notes: I wonder if I would’ve enjoyed this a little more with a different narrator or reading it on my own, though. Cindy Kay has a pleasant enough voice, but there’s so little nuance in her reading that sometimes I had to go back a few seconds to make sure I understood that something fairly important had just happened. I like narrators who are more subtle and rein in their audio performances, but I’m not looking for a dispassionate reader, either.
The writing was also a mixed bag: sometimes descriptive, but never really sparking intellectually or evoking real feeling. It might’ve been better as third person omniscient narrative voice rather than first person as well. Towards the end of the book, for example, the main character says “I had a feeling of overwhelming loneliness,” which is just so utterly underwhelming—aside from its distance, there are so many ways to convey that by setting, circumstance, description, physical movement (or lack of it), dialogue, etc. that hearing that sentence really made me rethink the book as a whole. And I realized that the story is related as a recitation of events more than anything else, but even so, books like Never Let Me Go evoke much more emotion. A book like this feels practically written to be a mid-prestige miniseries.
The story outline had such potential, but personally, the ideas and ethical dilemmas weren’t enough to leave much of an impression on me.
Audio Notes: I wonder if I would’ve enjoyed this a little more with a different narrator or reading it on my own, though. Cindy Kay has a pleasant enough voice, but there’s so little nuance in her reading that sometimes I had to go back a few seconds to make sure I understood that something fairly important had just happened. I like narrators who are more subtle and rein in their audio performances, but I’m not looking for a dispassionate reader, either.
April 19, 2024
In "The Other Valley," time travel is simply a matter of geography. There are multiple valleys, each separated by lakes and mountains, and guarded by elaborate fences, towers, and armed guards. Our protagonist, who we follow over the decades, lives in her present time in one such valley. If she traveled east, she would reach the same town twenty years in the future and to her west, twenty years in the past, and so on. Given the potentially catastrophic consequences of interfering with the timelines, travel must be granted by the ruling Conseil.
Pay close attention while reading. The story is complex, intricately plotted, and compelling. Personal, moral, and ethical issues abound and make "The Other Valley" a perfect choice for book clubs or buddy reads. My rating is 3.5* rounded up to 4.
I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley.
Pay close attention while reading. The story is complex, intricately plotted, and compelling. Personal, moral, and ethical issues abound and make "The Other Valley" a perfect choice for book clubs or buddy reads. My rating is 3.5* rounded up to 4.
I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley.
June 23, 2025
Book club. We have gone rogue. Brendon has been given the task of providing the review on behalf of the club. Likes for the below review (see link) is preferred over my update of the review.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Go Brendon. Go book club.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Go Brendon. Go book club.
November 9, 2023
Imagine living in a world where you could travel to the future or the past simply by walking across a border. This book poses some fascinating questions about balance, messing around with time, and how far a person would go to save someone they love. I really enjoyed it.
For fans of:
Speculative fiction
Coming-of-age stories
Dystopian themes
Philosophical quandaries
Strong but flawed female main character
First love
For fans of:
Speculative fiction
Coming-of-age stories
Dystopian themes
Philosophical quandaries
Strong but flawed female main character
First love
abgebrochen
November 4, 202423% Abbruch
Nee, das Ding kommt und kommt nicht in die Hufe.
Ist mir insgesamt auch zu Jugendlich.
Bin arg gelangweilt von dem Rumgeeiere.
Hab den Eindruck dass hier so viel hinterm Berg gehalten wird, um künstlich die Spannung zu erhöhen, weil man nicht genug sprachliche Schlagkraft mitbringt, wenn zu früh die Themen klar gesetzt würden.
Philosophieren mit doppelter Schicht Schleier, damit keiner merkt, dass man nackig ist.
Ja, ist gehässig, bin gerade nicht in Stimmung diesem Gesabbel irgendwas positives abzugewinnen.
Stinkefinger Ahoi!
Nee, das Ding kommt und kommt nicht in die Hufe.
Ist mir insgesamt auch zu Jugendlich.
Bin arg gelangweilt von dem Rumgeeiere.
Hab den Eindruck dass hier so viel hinterm Berg gehalten wird, um künstlich die Spannung zu erhöhen, weil man nicht genug sprachliche Schlagkraft mitbringt, wenn zu früh die Themen klar gesetzt würden.
Philosophieren mit doppelter Schicht Schleier, damit keiner merkt, dass man nackig ist.
Ja, ist gehässig, bin gerade nicht in Stimmung diesem Gesabbel irgendwas positives abzugewinnen.
Stinkefinger Ahoi!
December 21, 2023
This is an excellent work of speculative fiction. It’s very original and intelligent. The fact that it’s the author’s debut is astonishing. I hope the book gathers the recognition it deserves. I feel it has the potential to become a classic. The plot flowed in such a coherent way from the first word to the last. I thoroughly enjoyed this romantic (but not sappy), fantastical journey.
I won a copy of this book on Goodreads and am so glad I did. Thank you to the publisher and author.
I won a copy of this book on Goodreads and am so glad I did. Thank you to the publisher and author.
August 7, 2024
Würdest du gerne wissen wie es dir in 20 Jahren geht? Wo du stehst im Leben und wer noch an deiner Seite ist? Oder würdest du lieber zurück reisen? Was dem Teenie von damals an Rat geben für dein Leben?
Genau um diese Fragen geht es in diesem klug komponierten Buch. Odile hat die Möglichkeit, da sie im Grenzschutz arbeitet- zwischen den Tälern, die 20 Jahre vor oder nach ihrer Zeitrechnung liegen.
Zu Beginn musste ich mich der doch sehr spröden und schüchternen Odile erstmal nähern.. sie macht es einem nicht leicht. Aber nachdem ihr bester Freund stirbt, konnte ich mich gemeinsam mit ihr diesen Fragen stellen. Denn es ist bei Strafe verboten in die Geschichte einzugreifen und womöglich die Zukunft oder Vergangenheit zu verändern!
Zum Schluss nahm das eher langsame Erzähltempo dann deutlich an Fahrt auf, so dass ich final 3,5 Sterne vergebe für diese ungewöhnliche Dystopie.
Genau um diese Fragen geht es in diesem klug komponierten Buch. Odile hat die Möglichkeit, da sie im Grenzschutz arbeitet- zwischen den Tälern, die 20 Jahre vor oder nach ihrer Zeitrechnung liegen.
Zu Beginn musste ich mich der doch sehr spröden und schüchternen Odile erstmal nähern.. sie macht es einem nicht leicht. Aber nachdem ihr bester Freund stirbt, konnte ich mich gemeinsam mit ihr diesen Fragen stellen. Denn es ist bei Strafe verboten in die Geschichte einzugreifen und womöglich die Zukunft oder Vergangenheit zu verändern!
Zum Schluss nahm das eher langsame Erzähltempo dann deutlich an Fahrt auf, so dass ich final 3,5 Sterne vergebe für diese ungewöhnliche Dystopie.
April 25, 2024
Persistence pays, and I don't just mean for the characters in this story, though the concept applies to them as well. This is an incredibly slow-paced narrative, but I'm glad I stuck it out for the payoff, which for me, was perfect, even though it felt like 40 years of wandering to get there.
This is like a mix of time-travel and the butterfly effect, with a unique premise for which you'll need to suspend your logic a bit, in order to fully enjoy it. Also, if you're a stickler for dialogue quotation marks, this might drive you crazy, because, Cormac McCarthy style, there are none whatsoever.
This is like a mix of time-travel and the butterfly effect, with a unique premise for which you'll need to suspend your logic a bit, in order to fully enjoy it. Also, if you're a stickler for dialogue quotation marks, this might drive you crazy, because, Cormac McCarthy style, there are none whatsoever.
June 15, 2024
È un romanzo particolare perché mischia assieme più generi. È principalmente un fantasy con elementi sci-fi e con la tematica predominante dei viaggi nel tempo.
Il worldbuilding è formato da una grande valle contornata dalle montagne, a est oltre le montagne si va 20 anni nel futuro e a ovest 20 anni nel passato. E questo si ripete così all’infinito valle dopo valle, ventennio dopo ventennio.
Ma questo romanzo è anche un distopico, perché in questo mondo ci sono regole molto rigide che proibiscono i viaggi nel tempo (infatti i confini della valle sono recintati e ci sono sorveglianti armati che hanno l’ordine di sparare a vista a chiunque tenti di oltrepassare i confini senza permesso).
La prima regola di questo mondo è che non si deve mai interferire con ciò che sta accadendo nel presente o che è accaduto nel passato, perché si dice che anche una sola piccola interferenza sul corso degli eventi provocherebbe pericolose conseguenze che metterebbero a rischio la vita di tutti.
Il problema sorge quando la protagonista, una ragazza di 16 anni piena di fiducia riguardo alle regole del suo mondo e alle prese con il suo primo amore, scopre per caso che proprio al ragazzo che ama sta per capitare una terribile disgrazia e le viene intimato di non dire nulla e lasciare che succeda.
Questo romanzo mi ha coinvolta moltissimo, è stata una lettura sofferta, intensa, che mi ha tenuta costantemente sulle spine e anche interessante. Ho amato la costruzione del worldbuilding, la suggestività dell’ambientazione e la tematica dei viaggi nel tempo (è un trope che trovo sempre affascinante).
La scrittura è in prima persona, molto scorrevole, però i dialoghi sono inseriti nel testo senza segni di interpunzione a delimitarli, e ciò può confondere e rallentare la lettura. Però sicuramente è uno stile voluto così per rendere la storia ancora più strana e immersiva.
4,25★
Il worldbuilding è formato da una grande valle contornata dalle montagne, a est oltre le montagne si va 20 anni nel futuro e a ovest 20 anni nel passato. E questo si ripete così all’infinito valle dopo valle, ventennio dopo ventennio.
Ma questo romanzo è anche un distopico, perché in questo mondo ci sono regole molto rigide che proibiscono i viaggi nel tempo (infatti i confini della valle sono recintati e ci sono sorveglianti armati che hanno l’ordine di sparare a vista a chiunque tenti di oltrepassare i confini senza permesso).
La prima regola di questo mondo è che non si deve mai interferire con ciò che sta accadendo nel presente o che è accaduto nel passato, perché si dice che anche una sola piccola interferenza sul corso degli eventi provocherebbe pericolose conseguenze che metterebbero a rischio la vita di tutti.
Il problema sorge quando la protagonista, una ragazza di 16 anni piena di fiducia riguardo alle regole del suo mondo e alle prese con il suo primo amore, scopre per caso che proprio al ragazzo che ama sta per capitare una terribile disgrazia e le viene intimato di non dire nulla e lasciare che succeda.
Questo romanzo mi ha coinvolta moltissimo, è stata una lettura sofferta, intensa, che mi ha tenuta costantemente sulle spine e anche interessante. Ho amato la costruzione del worldbuilding, la suggestività dell’ambientazione e la tematica dei viaggi nel tempo (è un trope che trovo sempre affascinante).
La scrittura è in prima persona, molto scorrevole, però i dialoghi sono inseriti nel testo senza segni di interpunzione a delimitarli, e ciò può confondere e rallentare la lettura. Però sicuramente è uno stile voluto così per rendere la storia ancora più strana e immersiva.
4,25★
March 15, 2025
4.5 stars
I really enjoyed this more than I expected to. The prose is so clean, yet very clear and emotive. That style matches the story, which is simple yet complex. There aren’t any wasted moments; everything fits together.
It’s not a story meant to be examined in detail for realism, but more like a fable, painting a picture of possibilities, of emotions and memories, the way our past, future, and present link together to form the person we are. Or must it? Is our future set or can it be altered? It provides a lot of food for thought anyway.
In daily life I had thought of myself as such a cowering thing. And while I felt some chagrin at the brashness of this girl, I also felt chastened by her presence. She was a witness to what had become of me: lying on this folding cot, under these sallow lights, sapped of her audacity.
I really enjoyed this more than I expected to. The prose is so clean, yet very clear and emotive. That style matches the story, which is simple yet complex. There aren’t any wasted moments; everything fits together.
It’s not a story meant to be examined in detail for realism, but more like a fable, painting a picture of possibilities, of emotions and memories, the way our past, future, and present link together to form the person we are. Or must it? Is our future set or can it be altered? It provides a lot of food for thought anyway.
In daily life I had thought of myself as such a cowering thing. And while I felt some chagrin at the brashness of this girl, I also felt chastened by her presence. She was a witness to what had become of me: lying on this folding cot, under these sallow lights, sapped of her audacity.
December 17, 2025
رمان «درهٔ دیگر» نوشتهٔ اسکات الکساندر هاوارد، از آن دست آثاری است که بیش از آنکه با روایت پیش برود، با ایده در ذهن خواننده ریشه میدواند. ایدهٔ مرکزی—وجود درههایی موازی در زمان، با نظمی سختگیرانه برای دیدار گذشته و آینده—هم هوشمندانه است و هم بهقدر کافی مینیمال که بار اصلی معنا را بر دوش پیامدهای اخلاقی و عاطفیاش بگذارد. نویسنده بهجای توضیحدادن، جهانش را «عادی» نشان میدهد؛ نظمی که برای ساکنانش بدیهی است و همین موضوع، هراس پنهان آن را تشدید میکند.
نقطهٔ قوت رمان، دنیاسازی آرام و حسابشدهای است که از دل جزئیات روزمره بیرون میآید: مدرسه، شورای حاکم، قوانین دیدار، و سکوتی که روی دانستنِ بیشازحد سایه میاندازد. این جهان بهوضوح ظرفیت آن را دارد که در روایتهای متعدد و زوایای متفاوت شکافته شود؛ ظرفیتهایی که گاه خودِ رمان نیز به آنها اشاره میکند، بیآنکه واقعاً به سراغشان برود. همینجاست که حس «مقدمه بودن» شکل میگیرد: انگار کتاب بیش از آنکه به تمامی از امکانات جهانش استفاده کند، به ترسیم چارچوبها بسنده میکند.
در سطح روایت، تمرکز داستان بر تجربهٔ فردی و درونی شخصیت اصلی قابل دفاع است، اما این انتخاب هزینه دارد. کشمکشهای اخلاقی و فلسفی که میتوانستند به بحرانهای عمیقتر و تصمیمهای رادیکالتر منتهی شوند، اغلب در حد تأمل باقی میمانند. رمان آگاهانه از ملودرام و شوک روایی پرهیز میکند، اما گاهی این خویشتنداری به احتیاط بیشازحد تبدیل میشود و تنش را پایین میآورد.
از نظر لحن و فضا، «درهٔ دیگر» اثری کنترلشده، سرد و تأملی است؛ کتابی که بیشتر از آنکه بخواهد خواننده را غافلگیر کند، میخواهد او را وادار به فکر کردن کند. این رویکرد برای بسیاری یک امتیاز است، اما وقتی دنیاسازی چنین پتانسیل بالایی دارد، انتظار میرود روایت هم جسورانهتر عمل کند.
در مجموع، با رمانی طرفیم که «بد» نیست—حتی در بسیاری لحظات خوب است—اما به سقف تواناییهای ایدهاش نمیرسد. نه آنقدر ضعیف که ناامیدکننده باشد و نه آنقدر قوی که ماندگار شود. برای همین، سه ستاره منصفانهترین ارزیابی است: اثری خوشفکر با دنیایی غنی، که بیش از آنچه میگوید، وعده میدهد.
نقطهٔ قوت رمان، دنیاسازی آرام و حسابشدهای است که از دل جزئیات روزمره بیرون میآید: مدرسه، شورای حاکم، قوانین دیدار، و سکوتی که روی دانستنِ بیشازحد سایه میاندازد. این جهان بهوضوح ظرفیت آن را دارد که در روایتهای متعدد و زوایای متفاوت شکافته شود؛ ظرفیتهایی که گاه خودِ رمان نیز به آنها اشاره میکند، بیآنکه واقعاً به سراغشان برود. همینجاست که حس «مقدمه بودن» شکل میگیرد: انگار کتاب بیش از آنکه به تمامی از امکانات جهانش استفاده کند، به ترسیم چارچوبها بسنده میکند.
در سطح روایت، تمرکز داستان بر تجربهٔ فردی و درونی شخصیت اصلی قابل دفاع است، اما این انتخاب هزینه دارد. کشمکشهای اخلاقی و فلسفی که میتوانستند به بحرانهای عمیقتر و تصمیمهای رادیکالتر منتهی شوند، اغلب در حد تأمل باقی میمانند. رمان آگاهانه از ملودرام و شوک روایی پرهیز میکند، اما گاهی این خویشتنداری به احتیاط بیشازحد تبدیل میشود و تنش را پایین میآورد.
از نظر لحن و فضا، «درهٔ دیگر» اثری کنترلشده، سرد و تأملی است؛ کتابی که بیشتر از آنکه بخواهد خواننده را غافلگیر کند، میخواهد او را وادار به فکر کردن کند. این رویکرد برای بسیاری یک امتیاز است، اما وقتی دنیاسازی چنین پتانسیل بالایی دارد، انتظار میرود روایت هم جسورانهتر عمل کند.
در مجموع، با رمانی طرفیم که «بد» نیست—حتی در بسیاری لحظات خوب است—اما به سقف تواناییهای ایدهاش نمیرسد. نه آنقدر ضعیف که ناامیدکننده باشد و نه آنقدر قوی که ماندگار شود. برای همین، سه ستاره منصفانهترین ارزیابی است: اثری خوشفکر با دنیایی غنی، که بیش از آنچه میگوید، وعده میدهد.
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