Friday, May 10, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Time's Demon by D.B. Jackson


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the novel's release on May 28, 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way (if I'd hated the book, I just would not have reviewed it). 
Time's Demon is the second book in D.B. Jackson's "Ishevale Cycle," and the sequel to last year's "Time's Children" (which I reviewed here).  While a fantasy series, it is centered in large part upon time travel based upon an interesting concept: that the magic that allows some people to time travel causes time travelers' bodies to age as much time as they travel back/forward in time. Throw in demons of multiple types, and you have a setting that is filled with potential and Time's Children definitely set-up a ton of potential....before ending prior to doing much with that potential.  I was really interested to see if the follow-up would make good use of that legwork to build an interesting

Time's Demon thankfully does just that....mostly.  Spending most of the book away from our main characters of the series, the book continues its interesting work with one set of antagonist characters, and does some really interesting things with the titular demon character, the Tirribin Droë.  And the parts of the book that do feature the main characters does work, even if it's not as interesting as the stories of the rest of the cast.  But like its predecessor, the book ends most of its storylines incredibly abruptly, which is far from satisfying.  But it does so much before those endings that had me rapt in attention that I am definitely in for book 3, whenever that comes out.


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
Walkers Tobias and Mara have escaped Oaqamar's assassins and are now on the run with the infant princess Sofya onboard a ship.  15 years old in mine, though 29 in body, the two are awkwardly pretending to be married as they try to figure out their next move....before their pursuers catch up to them.

Meanwhile, Oaqamar agents Lenna and Orzili are trying to deal with the fallout from Tobias' escape and to figure out where he's gone.  But all is not well between them.  Lenna in particular finds herself trapped in this timeline, with the younger version of the man she loves 14 years in the future who seems now to want her instead of her younger self, and she just wishes to go back....but she can't seem to justify it while the mission is undone.  But her actions and use of her Walker powers to move through time may have implications she might never have expected.

And then there's Droë, the Tirribin (Time Demon) who in the future seemed to fall in love with Tobias and helped Mara know to go back in the past to find him and try to fix the misfuture.  Desperate to discover what love is, and why Tobias is such that she could feel such a human and un-Tirribin emotion, she journeys across Ishevale, making contact with multiple other types of demons who don't understand her wish....to learn what love and desire truly are.  But when she finds one who can help her change to understand these feelings, the result will change her completely and create something new...something that could alter the situation in Ishevale for good.....
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In Time's Children, our main character was quite clearly Tobias, though the book would alternate perspectives to show the points of view of Orzili, Lenna, Mara, and Droë (and possibly others I'm missing) from time to time.  Tobias is clearly the series' main character, but in Time's Demon he probably gets the least amount of screen time of any of the characters, with Droë essentially having the main focus and the most complete story arc in this book.  But we essentially have five major story arcs here, told a few chapters at a time before switching perspectives to another character's arc: the arc of Cresten in the past (a new character to this book), Droë's arc as she tries to change herself to understand love, Orzili's arc as he tries to find Tobias, Lenna's arc as she tries to both do her duty and not find herself trapped with this alternate version of the man she loves, and of course Tobias and Mara's arc as they try to protect the infant princess.  (There's a sixth character who sort of has an arc that ties in with Orzili's but she's far more minor).

So many of these arcs are really interesting and make good use of the particulars of the setting - especially the way time travel works and what it costs and the way demons work and interact with one another.  Lenna's story arc is perhaps the strongest and most interesting, for the second book in a row (despite her being ostensibly an antagonist!) as she finds herself trapped between her duty and the feelings that she has to help this 14 year younger version of her husband and bothered by the attraction and desire this younger version has.  It's a fascinating way of being trapped by her emotions and another's desires - made even trickier by the fact that she's aware how much even the younger Orzili is trying to prevent her from losing more years to further time travel.  And the book takes her in a fascinating direction, leading to pretty incredible but fascinating time travel shenanigans I'm not going to spoil here which work rather well.

Droë's storyline might seem the most cliche - demon tries to learn what love is! - but the book plays it straight and executes it so well that it's hard not to be fascinated by it and want to see how it plays out.  Droë is both growing up in the process - almost in a human fashion, but most definitely not in other ways and the dichotomy makes her just hard to not want to see more of as she goes through the process up to its conclusion.  Her arc is really the only one of the bunch - more on this later - that has a proper conclusion, and it's rather satisfying.

As for the other three arcs, they're not quite as strong but they all do work to some extent.  Tobias and Mara's storyline is fine, with the two of them being easy to root for - the awkwardness of them pretending to be married and the awkwardness of the idea of consummation given their internal and external ages is definitely done well and makes a rather interesting read for example.  Orzili's arc and the related character's arc are done well, if unspectacular.  And Cresten's prequel arc is interesting in how it quite clearly is building up to something given the known characters who show up in it even early on, but doesn't quite get anywhere by the end of this book.

That's really the big issue with this book, which was also an issue with the first book to a larger extent, in that Cresten and Lenna's arcs, and the others to a lesser extent (except for Droë's arc) basically just.....end without an ending in this book, with the arcs just never revisited after their last part in this book.  This is especially annoying for those two characters - for Cresten because you'll guess what his importance is rather quickly in his storyline and yet other than that reveal, it's not quite clearly why the past events matter to the present/future stories; and for Lenna because her storyline and time travel phenomena are so interesting that I'd rather have some sort of revelation or conclusion of what's going on there than move on to some of the other characters. It's just not satisfying.

Still, with so many interesting things and characters going on in Time's Demon, I'm glad I continued with this series (and grateful to the publisher for the advance copy) and will be eagerly awaiting the next installment, where I hope we have some more satisfying, if even temporary, conclusions to the arcs.
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