There is only one unbreakable rule for time travelers: do not create a paradox. Because time travelers are also humans, they can’t help but break this rule from time to time. It’s impossible not to give into the temptation to nudge history one way or another. Time travelers, after all, have the benefit of all the hindsight. In Claire North’s thoughtful, affecting new novel, As We Fall Through Time, we accompany Cal in anything but linear fashion as he/she travels through the centuries trying to fix what she/he broke.
Travelers are rare. (Thankfully.) They happen when there’s a blip in time. Perhaps their father was delayed on their way home and their conception never happened. Maybe they were luckily spared a plague that killed everyone else. (Because their very existence is a matter of chance, their appearance changes from one biological sex to another—hence the pronouns.) Cal may or may not have been born sometime during the Hundred Years’ War (I think). As a teenager, they were conscripted to fight for their local lord and, in a moment of extremis, started to fall through time. The travelers’ chronological ambiguity allows them to travel through time using the objects around them. They can travel the entire span from an object’s creation to its destruction, as long as it doesn’t also travel through space. The best objects are stationary, like buildings and monuments. As long as they don’t encounter themselves coming and going or otherwise cause a paradox, travelers can do just about anything they like.
North gives us a bunch of different intersecting plot threads to untangle—something I absolutely adore. One thread follows Cal as they fall in love with Olivier, a soldier who survives the French Revolution only to fall when Napoleon invades Egypt Russia suddenly blink out of existence right before the Hundred Days when Napoleon returns from his first exile in 1815. Obviously, Cal can’t help meddling with recorded history to save their lover. When Olivier disappears in 1815 (and also can’t be found anywhere or anywhen), Cal stumbles into another plot thread. This thread leads Cal to discover that there is a growing paradox in the early 2100s that could unravel history as we know it. Learning more about what causes this paradox causes Cal to run into an old colleague turned someone to be avoided at all costs, another traveler named Bede (not this one). Meanwhile, they have to help a friend undo a nasty paradox she/he accidentally created in Seoul.
Thankfully, North doesn’t rush anything in As We Fall Through Time. Not only are are there all the plots to tease out, there are also asides that reveal more about Cal’s education as a time traveler, how they became involved with Bede and eventually turned on Bede’s murderous quest, how the last ice age happens, and how time travelers feed, clothe, and shelter themselves without ending up on official paperwork that could cause paradoxes. There’s also a fascinating plot thread that developed in the latter half of the novel that I don’t want to reveal anything about because it’s a brilliant smack upside the head when we figure out something very important and have to start asking even more questions about the wisdom of trying to change history.
This last is what really piques my interest about time travel novels. Who wouldn’t want to go back and prevent the worst moments in our collective history? In time travel novels, we can think about what happens in the aftermath. What if we make things worse? What if stopping something awful means that we also stop something good, e.g. what if killing Hitler means that someone who ends up discovering a cure for cancer later on? How far up and downstream do we need to look to decide if something is a success or a failure? How big or small an event can we meddle with safely? As We Fall Through Time has so much of that for me to chew over. It’s honestly one of the best time travel novels I’ve ever read.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review consideration.