Time Was, Ian McDonald

Received to review via Netgalley

In the end, this seemed to be rather more about Emmett chasing the tragedy of Ben and Tom than about Ben and Tom themselves. A queer time travelling couple as the mover for another dude’s life angst, yay? Also, Bury Your Gays. If I think about it in terms of rep, it isn’t great: Ben and Tom’s love might be strong and they might work at it to find each other across all the different times, but a lot goes unexplained (like how they get separated, and why they always end up in war zones), but it isn’t really about them. It’s about Emmett, and the twist at the end did not surprise me (or indeed feel like a twist) — but nor did it quite feel like it followed on logically.

It’s well-enough written (though the chapters in Tom’s point of view could do with being slightly more different in order to distinguish the narrative voices), and there are some very poignant moments between Tom and Ben, but… they’re mostly the backdrop to another dude’s story, including featuring his pointless and unfulfilling relationship with a woman, who he meets because he’s looking for evidence about Tom and Ben.

I was kind of excited about this one, but it sucks that Tom and Ben were the sideshow in a love story ostensibly about them.

Rating: 2/5

The Red Threads of Fortune, JY Yang

I might not like Mokoya as much as I came to like Akeha, but I did really enjoy getting to spend more time in this world and especially the character of Rider, who didn’t appear in the previous book. This is set after The Black Tides of Heaven, and deals with some of the fallout from what happens there. Mokoya’s grief and anger and failure to deal with everything is well done, though sometimes her husband seemed a little too good to be true. Who’s that understanding? Well, somebody I’d like to know — it just about worked.

There’s also a lot more of the magic, which is pretty fascinating, and I’d love to know more about where Rider came from and what that place is like. There’s so much hinted at and left to explore — I hope the next novella takes us somewhere new again!

Rating: 4/5

The Black Tides of Heaven, JY Yang

I know that these are supposed to be stand-alone novellas, but honestly I would start with this one anyway. I didn’t like Akeha at first — they were so possessive of their twin, so reluctant to admit that maybe they’re not absolutely identical in the end, and I didn’t agree with his decision to stay away from Mokoya for so long. But nonetheless, as Akeha started to claim his own identity — first identifying as male, then going travelling, etc — I started to root for him, and in the end I was a little disappointed that this mostly felt like set-up for the second novella.

It’s a good introduction to the world, anyway, with its various social complexities (like people being genderless before whatever age they decide to declare what they choose, and people not choosing or at least not choosing entirely) and the magic. I would like to know more about both — about how the whole situation with choosing your gender and having your body altered magically to match arose, and more about the magic and Mokoya’s part in it.

But also I wish I had more time with Akeha, because I felt like I’d just really got into his story when it ended.

Rating: 4/5